Ever wonder how people learn to play the guitar? Did you have trouble when you were a beginner? Do you think you are stuck being a beginner ever since you started playing? I'm not a professional guitarist or a musician, I'm probably just a beginner-intermediate player, but here are some tips from me to you if you want to learn it the right way.

Yes, you read it right - the right way, and not the fastest way to learn how to play guitar.

Over my years of playing guitar, there are many things and lessons I have learned and realized as I progress (slowly), in which I should have done and have studied first as a beginner, and here are some of those:

1. Scales - hearing this word doesn't actually boost your interest in learning how to play the guitar. In fact, it does the opposite because people tend to associate scales as a complicated music theory for professional musicians but in reality, it isn't. If you want to pursue a music career or just want to play casually with your friends (as a band or just for random jams) or just yourself in your bedroom, then start with scales alongside learning basic chords. It's one of the fundamentals of music that you should learn first so you won't have to rely on the internet whenever you want to play something.

2. Family Chords - this is based on scales. Family chords are a set of chords that limits the possible chords that you have to play in some songs, especially with pop music in the past years up to the present, but this works also with other genres. So just study the scales, start with the major scale and learn how to construct family chords.

3. Learning Songs - Of course you have to learn songs if you want to learn how to play the guitar. You don't have to learn specific songs to learn how to play, just learn how to play the songs you want or songs that you listen to. You can start this by searching the chords online (assuming that you just started studying scales and family chords) and playing along with the song instead of singing if you want to concentrate on your fingers, but you can also sing along with how you play it.

4. Practice Routine - This is where you want to put those 3 things I have mentioned above into action. Make a schedule on how you want to do those 3 things. Set a time for each one and make sure to do it every day if you can. If you have the patience, try a 10-minute plan for each of those, you can start with any of the 3, just make sure to include all of it.

Consistency and dedication to practice is the key to learning the guitar or any musical instruments.

There's no shortcut where you can instantly play how you want to play or become a guitarist and musician on a certain level. And when you see other people playing better than you, don't compare them with yourself and then get frustrated afterwards. Admire people in a way that it motivates you to play and study harder.

So just to give you an insight on my experience, I started learning how to play the guitar as a past time because my parents didn't allow me to stay in front of the computer for more than 2 hours so after playing and browsing for 2 hours, I basically do nothing aside from eat, sleep and do whatever things to waste my time. I started learning songs with no music theory involved and just by relying 100% on the internet for chords and tabs so when I decided to elevate my musicianship, that's when I realized I shouldn't have skipped the fundamental music theory because I have poor foundations. I got frustrated and I rarely practiced so I ended up being a beginner again 3 years after with a little knowledge of chords and songs.

The contents of this article may look ridiculous to some people, but if I were to give advice and direction to myself when I first started playing the guitar, these are some of them and I do hope this helps some of you a little (if not much).

One more thing, if you have the money to invest in a music lesson with a professional musician, then go take the course because you'll never go wrong with it anyway. If you want to self study or just don't have the money to hire a music teacher or enroll for a music course, then take my tips and make sure to make good use of the internet to expand and widen it.