The guitar is the chosen instrument of many great musicians, from rock gods like Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton to classical greats like Andres Segovia. If you love music, but never learned how to play, it is never to late to start. Use the following advice to start mastering the guitar.

Get plenty of practice. It may seem obvious, but practicing is the best thing you can do to learn how to play the guitar. Many people neglect practicing or get discouraged when practicing grows tedious or fails to show immediate results. Keep at it! It may take time, but practice will make perfect.

Switch up your routine on occasion. Practice is important, but practice can get boring. You don’t want to lose your enthusiasm for learning, so be sure to try new things regularly. Every once in a while, try a song you love or attempt something challenging. Don’t let yourself get bored.

Take your time learning basic guitar playing skills and build on them slowly. Practicing even the simplest skills until they are perfected. Learn how to read music, be able to identify and play each chord and know how to tune your guitar. Initially, try to concentrate on learning notes and scales.

Try not to spend too much money when you’re just starting out. It can be alarmingly easy to overspend on a guitar and all sorts of gear you don’t really need as a beginner. Find an affordable guitar to start with. Try not to go over $100 until your absolutely sure guitar playing is something you want to stick with.

Try learning new techniques when playing guitar. It is important that you learn all the basic like strumming and picking to start with. When you have improved your dexterity with those, you should practice using new techniques. Try mimicking some different ones from your favorite songs. Eventually, you will find the techniques that you play best.

Learning to play the guitar can be hard on your hands and fingers. You will probably have to endure a little pain while you build up calluses. Learn specific finger practice exercises and do them daily to build up the muscles in your hands. Otherwise, your hands may cramp up while you practice.

Train the muscles in your fingers. Playing guitar can wear your hands out and cause them to cramp. This is especially true if you’re practicing often or playing for long periods of time. It’s important to have strong fingers if you want to play the guitar. Learn exercises for your hands and do them regularly.

Your fingertips will get sore with constant practice. During this time, it may cause less pain to play an electric or nylon-string guitar. Steel-stringed guitars will hurt the most when you play. While soaking the tips of your fingers in alcohol can provide some relief, avoid harmful chemicals, such as turpentine.

Try to practice, at least, thirty minutes every day. Don’t squeeze all your guitar playing into one lengthy practice session at the week’s end. Practicing every day is much more effective. Be consistent and keep at it. Try your best to make time for practice and fit it into your daily schedule.

If you are a beginning guitar player, be sure to learn the different types of strums. Start strumming slowly, with a simple up-and-down strum, and once you have that down, you can move on to more difficult strum patterns. Learn the basics, such as country rhythms, and rock rhythms. You can learn many types of music with these simple strums.

Many great musical pieces have been written for the guitar in many different musical genres. You may not be the next Jimi Hendrix, but you can still enjoy playing the guitar. The sooner you get started, the sooner you will be able to have fun playing your favorite songs on the guitar.