How to NOT Sound Like a Beginner Guitarist

Here are a few tips to getting a more professional clean sound with your guitar.

Keep your left-hand fingernails very short. With nails it is impossible to hold the strings down firmly. You may want to keep nail clippers and a fingernail file in your guitar case.

Hold a string down with the tip, or pad, of your finger. Your finger should hold down a string right behind the fret. If you hold a string down directly above a fret it can produce a muffled tone. When you hold down a string too far from the fret it can produce a buzzing sound. Stay on the tips of your fingers and hold each string firmly and as close to the frets as you can.

You can always tell someone is new to the guitar when they strum strings that don't belong to a chord. Only strum the strings that are actually part of the chords. A very common mistake is strumming the 6th string when playing a 'D' chord.

The bass of a D chord is the 4th string. It sounds the cleanest to strum the top four strings for this chord. Strum just the strings in the chord and preferable with the bass string as the lowest string to strum.

Relax your face and shoulders. It's much easier to play without excess tension and when your face and shoulders relax your hands will relax too. On the other hand, if you face and shoulders are tense, it's very hard to relax your hands.

Keep your guitar in Tune. Invest in a good guitar tuner and use it every day. My favorite is the Headstock tuner since it tunes by the vibration of your instrument and not the audio sound. Hence, it doesn't matter how noisy the environment is, it still works great.

Last month I was performing one of my songs at a church event. The band's drummer was playing loudly before the even. Even with all the noise, I easily tuned my guitar without having to ask him to stop playing for a moment.

OK, I hope these tips are helpful. For step-by-step lessons and more tips we have an easy to follow Christian Guitar Lesson Program.

Jean Welles is the author of Jean Welles Worship Guitar Class(TM) DVD's, a Christ-centered guitar instructional series used in hundreds of churches. For a Free lesson visit WorshipGuitarClass.com/guitar-video-dvd.html.

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