The Top 40 Common Newbie Guitarist Mistakes

You know, that list reminds me why I stopped going to places like the Harmony Central forum (and others like it)- 50,000 people criticizing each other for being "newbies" (usually written No0bz), and pretty much being just as ignorant.

Take a critical look at the list and you'll see that very few items are actually about being a beginning guitarist... they're about gear, about taste (and not just muscian taste), and about interpretation - which isn't really a "mistake", but just part of the learning curve. Most of it is arguable, or even dead wrong:

"Over use of legato with a complete disregard for tempo". The writer probably meant "slurs" or maybe "sostenuto"; legato can't really be "over used". Legato doesn't relate to tempo, either - it's how the notes flow into each other.

"Not learning how to perform a basic setup". Why's that a mistake? Your local luthier has the expeience and tools to do it faster and more accurately (he's got a $200 straightedge, etc).

"Not learning how all your gear works". Which means what, exactly? That you should be able to explain the pin assignments in a dual-gain triode like the 12AX7 tube? Understand the relationships between grid charge, electron flow, and tube bias? Be able to sketch out the mechanism inside a gearless tuner? Know how the sound envelopes differ over time between phasing and flanging? You NEVER stop learning how your gear works, because there's always more to learn.

Plenty more may be good advice for some, but don't mean much to others. Not jamming with others - is that how Segovia developed? Taking lessons from a friend... I teach for a living. So choosing me is bad if you already know me?

Having taught hundreds of "newbies" over the years, here's my top-10 list of beginner mistakes:

1. Gripping the neck like it's a baseball bat
2. Angling the guitar so you can see where your fingers are going, and contorting your wrist
3. Picking out from, instead of through, the strings
4. Gripping the pick too tightly
5. Keeping the fretting elbow glued to your side
6. Fretting with the flat of the fingers instead of the tips
7. Bending notes when you fret them (i.e. not pressing straight down on the strings)
8. Picking up ALL your fingers at every chord change, even if they're in the same place for the next chord
9. Not counting*
10. Rejecting standard notation

*this one isn't limited to beginners; yesterday one of my more advanced students kept morphing into another time signature in the tough spots of a difficult piece without even being aware that she was putting an extra beat in those measures!

Side note: Guitar Player seems to be going seriously down hill lately. I'm finding fairly serious errors in almost every issue - tab that doesn't match the standard notation above it, theory terms used incorrectly, etc. I guess it shouldn't surprise me that they're now turning to Harmony Central for content.

Heck, whats up with the 'people who think they are ready to play in a band after a year of lessons'? As far as I care you could join a band as soon as you know chords, but apparantly you need to practice for decades or something. And knowing the difference between a tube and solidstate watt. Well, from what I gathered in school a watt is a watt. Besides, I dont need to know that to play guitar.

The #1 error that, to me, really defines being a beginner is not tuning your guitar when it should be obvious it's out of tune. Things like that automatically get fixed with time and experience. For the rest I copy what Noteboat said.

You know, that list reminds me why I stopped going to places like the Harmony Central forum (and others like it)- 50,000 people criticizing each other for being "newbies" (usually written No0bz), and pretty much being just as ignorant.
My idea was to put a list to comment it and read opinions. I see it was a stupid idea.

Noteboat, sorry to disturb you.

You know, that list reminds me why I stopped going to places like the Harmony Central forum (and others like it)- 50,000 people criticizing each other for being "newbies" (usually written No0bz), and pretty much being just as ignorant.
I have found the pro reviews part of the Harmony Central forum to be useful if you are looking for a piece of gear that is being reviewed or one similar to that being reviewed. It's a mix of pro review with questions and discussion by the plebes. It's got people like Craig Anderton doing the pro part of the review. Only thing to remember is that they are being paid by HC/GC/MF to push stuff.
http://acapella.harmony-central.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=98
Having taught hundreds of "newbies" over the years, here's my top-10 list of beginner mistakes:
<list snipped>
Woo hoo! I think I've made 9 out of 10 of your list in my time playing guitar. I've probably done all 10 and just don't realize it. :D

:| OK I am an unabashed no0bz ... on the other hand, I come to this forum not necessarily to be enlightened by the great gurus of guitar (although GN HAS taught me pretty much everything I know) but mostly for inspiration, entertainment and to immerse myself in guitar culture during those moments when I don't have a prayer of putting in some honest practice but still have 30 seconds to spare - I have my computer in the kitchen :lol: it waits for me patiently between sentence fragments ROFLMAO

I'm not a newbie and have some good amps, but I still like distortion boxes. Sometimes I use a lot of distortion/gain, also. However, the reason is I am into metal. I like other genres, but metal is my favorite, so what. I have a jazz hollowbody, listen to jazz, blues, classical, 70's- 2000's progressive rock and metal.

Some of the list is true, but, I think a lot of people that respond to the magazine polls are full of bunk.

But, Nuno, thanks for your posting. It is interesting to think about some of them.

You haven't mentioned the biggest newbie error of them all - picking up the guitar, in the first place! It is the road to ruin - especially financially.

I must be doing pretty good because I haven't made most of thse forty mistakes. NoteBoat's list however...i'm still probably making some of them!

You didn't disturb me at all, Nuno - and I think it's a good topic. It just reminds me once again how much better this group is than the unmoderated (or lightly moderated) free-for-alls out there, where 90% of the threads are "my guitar hero is better than your guitar hero" or "my gear/musical taste/ability is better than yours". That's really the point of most of the 40 items on the list.

Ignar, I agree that being out of tune is devastating for beginners - it prevents you from developing your ear, and it holds you back from quickly hearing and correcting your mistakes. But it didn't make my list because of technology... when I started teaching, the first few minutes of every lesson was spent tuning. With inexpensive tuners so readily available now - two of my students even have guitars with tuners built into them - the majority of my students now show up in tune.

Hyperborea, I find the reviews (and directories) on Harmony Central very useful too; it's just the forums there - and on many other websites - that have a pretty high dreck to useful ratio.

most common mistake is reading other peoples lists of mistakes :lol:

I've made these mistakes-
Learning 100 intros and no songs.
Not taking the time to learn music theory.
Not jamming with other players.

A bit under 10%...not bad. :)

Anyways lol at the list, funny yet at the same time very true.

Hi,

Most of these so called mistakes are just passing phases. There's actually only one real mistake:

1. Not figuring out what motivates you to keep playing through the times you feel like giving up.

Everything else you can live with or grow out of. Most of the mistakes on the 40 list, and on Noteboats 10, are often just normal stepping stones found on almost every players' journey. I'm sure that I recognised many of them anyway. :wink: In the past of course... :roll:

Cheers,

Chris

Mistakes? I'm prefect, I dart makem. :roll: Yeah, I've done a few of those things on my way .........

Mistake # 347: Not learning the difference between Playing and Practicing and finding a balance between the two.

being afraid of making mistakes.

not learning theory.

rhythm, and i don't mean metronome, i mean making your body move.