Learning guitar barre chords is a difficult enough experience without putting extra pressure on yourself. Try to keep in mind that when you are playing you only need to lift your fingers just enough to change between chords. Also, when you’re holding down the barre, remember that you don’t have to barre every single string.

2. Don’t Use The Soft Part Of Your Finger

When you are making a barre try to hold it with the side of your finger and not the soft fleshy part. The easiest way to do this is to roll your finger slightly away from the fret. When you roll your finger it guarantees that you won’t be holding the barre with the fleshy bit – increasing your chances of sounding the chord cleanly.

3. Give Your Fingers a Workout

The easiest way to build your finger strength to exercise them regularly. This might seem strange at first but working out your fingers regularly will do wonders for your guitar playing. Check out the “Gripmaster” or grab a tennis ball and squeeze it for a few minutes everyday.

4. Buy a Good Guitar For Yourself

Bad guitars have bad action. Action is the measure of the distance from the fretboard to the strings and is usually measured at the 12th fret. A guitar with poor action will leave you struggling to play any chords correctly, but barre chords especially. There is nothing more frustrating than a poor piece of equipment holding you back.

5. Learn Guitar Using Lighter Gauge Strings

The reason acoustic guitarists find it so easy to pick up and play an electric is that the electric has a far lighter string gauge. When you are learning guitar the lighter strings make playing chords a lot easier. Once your finger strength has improved and you are more experienced choose the type of strings for the sound you want.

6. Try Learning Barre Chords Higher Up The Neck

The first barre chord that you learn as a new guitarist is the F major chord, followed by the B major chord. Sometimes this can a mistake. Both of these chords are near the head of the guitar where the fret spacing is much larger. If you’re struggling with barre chords, try practicing the shapes further up the neck towards the 5th and 7th frets.

7. Don’t Put Too Much Pressure on Yourself

When you do any exercise an important part of your routine is regular rests for recovery. The same goes for playing guitar. Try to take breaks and never play if your hands are sore or cramping.

Maybe you use to play and want to now get your guitar out from under the bed and become the next guitar hero? Whatever the case things have certainly changed a lot since I first learned and took lessons over 25 years ago.

Let’s face facts here; no “system” however groundbreaking is going to work for everybody. I found that attempting to learn as a beginner strictly from a book can lead to frustration.

In fact, the frustration can sometimes get to the point that you will simply drop out before you actually get started; which isn’t good. That will not get you any further along to becoming that impressive guitarist you’ve always dreamed of.

Today we’ll take a look at what online guitar lessons have to offer you. As a musician who has both taken and taught guitar lessons, I’ll attempt to break down some of differences and advantages for you.

On the surface you may think that learning to play guitar from online lessons would seem less popular or second rate compared to learning from the traditional, real live teacher. However, with the technology available today and the overall difference of costs involved, online guitar lessons are arguably the most effective teaching method available.

Today the average private lesson costs about $30 per half hour or $60 for a full hour. You’ll also need to factor in the time it takes to hop in your car and drive to wherever he or she may be and if the lessons are offered during a time that’s convenient for you. In short, realize that today you have other options.

Here is a brief overview at what is offered from online lessons and what you’ll get:

• Learn how to quickly build finger strength and agility. There are special techniques that will eliminate sore and clumsy fingers so you can play smooth, flowing guitar.

• A comprehensive library of the most commonly used chord progressions. Designed to get you playing soon and enjoy jamming along with your favorite music.

• Learning to read guitar “TAB.” Knowing Tab is the fastest way to start reading and writing guitar music. With this you can play ANY of the hundreds of thousands of songs for guitar on the web.

• Learn how to master impressive skills such as picking, strumming styles and tricked out scales. Hammer-ons, pull offs, vibrato, palm muting and much more.

• You’ll get Step-by-Step lessons on how to perform tricky guitar skills. Year’s worth of experience and hard-won information in a simple and easy to follow format.

• Discover insider secrets of how to ensure your strum sounds like a polished professional.

• Even the truth about how to get a guitar at below dealer cost and to decide if you should learn to play on an acoustic or electric guitar. Tips on what to look for when you choose to buy a used guitar.

• In many courses, you have lifetime access to online updates and a free email consultation line.

• Professionally recorded “jam along tracks” which you can play to and get the feeling of how you would sound playing with a real band.

Online guitar lessons are catching on in a big way, which is not surprising considering some of their major advantages. These courses start around $20.00 for a single DVD to several hundred dollars for the more advanced learning systems.

Most are fully backed with a money back guarantee so what do you have to lose? Regardless of your current skill level there is an online lessons course that will work for you.

Are you ready to get started and playing like the guitarist you’ve always dreamed of?

For my personal favorite course recommendation and additional bonus information, follow me here now: The Best Online Guitar Lessons. If you need to buy a guitar – visit this blog for more tips.

The whole process was long frustrating and to tell you the truth, at first, I just didn’t see the point of it.

You see, when I first started learning guitar all i wanted to do was to play my favorite songs. I had no interest in learning the background theory. I way a D.I.Y guitarist doing it all by myself, not one of those fancy kids with their music lessons.

Learning all the modes, theory and scales really wasn’t for me.

To be perfectly honest…

• I didn’t want to waste time memorizing boring note combinations or dull sets of sounds repeated over and over again.
• I didn’t understand how I could use them
• Scale diagrams might as well have been in Chinese

The really important thing I didn’t realize at the time was that by being stubborn and avoiding guitar scales I was holding myself back from mastering guitar.

There were so many benefits when you learn guitar scales that I had never thought of:

1. Learning guitar scales helps you build your finger strength. This in turn will improve the rhythm side of your guitar playing.
2. Learning guitar scales gives you a greater knowledge of the fret board and opens up new and interesting ideas and sounds
3. Learning guitar scales improves your hand eye co-ordination dramatically

But then when I started to pay attention to them I realized something terrible.

I didn’t know where to start. The sheer amount of scales I thought I needed to learn was simply overwhelming. It was like a Pandora’s box. Every time I learned something new about guitar scales it opened up a whole new range of problems.

I desperately needed help but I didn’t know where to find it.

Why couldn’t someone just tell me what guitar scales I needed to learn, how I should learn them and most importantly how the heck could I use scales to play those smooth effortless solos all my guitar heroes seemed to play with ease.

Get your 3 FREE Learn Guitar E-Books on Learning Guitar Chords (37 Pages), Learning Guitar Scales (44 Pages) and Learning Guitar Tab (17 Pages) right now at learn guitar