1. Start With The Basics Of Playing Guitar

The first steps are always the most difficult. But you have to learn to crawl before you can walk — building up strength and confidence before you can get going. Little things like learning the names of your strings and the different parts of your guitar can help you build greater familiarity with your instrument. Here are just a few guitar basics and why you should learn them:

• How to Set Up a Guitar – Learn how to use a guitar tuner and be sure your strings are properly tuned. Learn how to replace a string in case one breaks during a practice session.

• How to Remember Guitar String Order and Names – Learning the names of strings and the order in which they appear on your guitar can help you to identify tones and notes, as well as transfer that knowledge to more advanced practices, such as reading tablature. Get tips and tricks for remembering guitar string order and their names.

• How to Hold A Guitar Pick – Holding a pick correctly can help you to create a much more pleasing sound. Understanding more about the different sounds achieved with picks of varying thickness (or thinness) can also help you to hear how the right pick can impact the tone of your guitar.

• How to Play Notes On Your Guitar – One of the earliest things you’ll learn as a beginner guitarist is learning where to place your fingers on the fretboard to be sure that note clearly rings out. Hearing notes clearly is key to identifying notes and learning how to play guitar.

• How to Strum like a Pro – Little things like keeping your wrist loose while strumming can not only help you to achieve a more fluid style of playing, but it can also help to decrease pain or tightness after a practice session. Get more tips for strumming like a pro!

• Guitar Chords – Learning to play guitar chords are one of the fundamental building blocks of a guitar education. Even if you’re not able to play a guitar solo (yet!), beginner guitarists can easily learn a few simple chords and strum along to their favorite songs as a rhythm player.

2. Find The Best Guitar For You

Whether you’re learning to play an acoustic or electric guitar, or decide that you want to learn how to play bass, finding the right instrument is essential.

Shopping for your first guitar is an exciting experience for new players. And while you might be tempted to pick a guitar based on looks, it’s important to weigh a number of factors when choosing the right guitar for you.

3. Create An Ideal Learning Environment

One of the first steps on your path to playing guitar is to set up an environment that makes you want to practice. If you’re learning guitar at home, setting up a comfortable practice space is key to wanting to sit down and play more often.

4. Build Skills By Learning Songs

Learning to play notes, scales and chords are certainly fundamentals of your musical education. But the best way to learn guitar is to put those techniques into practice while learning a new song. Strumming a chord progression or practicing a hammer-on pull-off can feel much more real when you’re playing it in one of your favorite songs.

5. Pick Up Songs By Ear

Consistent practice and repetition of different notes and chords can help you develop your ear, learning to correctly identify notes and patterns in your playing. Learning to play guitar becomes much easier when you are able to pick out which notes are in a song, what key that song is in, and what chords are involved.

6. Learn With Other New Players

If you’re learning to play guitar at home, you might not necessarily have other new players to chat with about what you’re learning, challenges you face, or breakthroughs in your practice sessions. Having a community of musicians and music lovers to connect with can help keep you more motivated to keep playing, practicing, and cheering one another on.

7. Practice, Practice, Practice

It can’t be said enough how important regular practice is to improving as a guitarist.

8. Be Patient With Yourself

Practice makes perfect… But patience is the key to it all. Every player will have good days or not-so-good days. When you first pick up the guitar, there’s a good chance that you will hit a few sour notes or those chords might not ring out as clearly as you’d like. That’s okay! Rome and Jimi Hendrix weren’t built in a day!

9. Use A Guitar Learning App Like Guitar Tuna

For many new players, using an online guitar lesson app can help give you access to the tools you need to learn no matter where you’re at. Fender Play gives new guitarists access to top-notch instructors who have been there, done that, and created an easily-accessible curriculum broken into bite-sized video lessons.

10. Learn and practice wide

Learn to play all kinds of guitar tunes or pieces you come across. Try to play exactly what you see people play in videos

1. Wash Your Hands Before A Practice Session

This is pretty straight forward. Your hands gather throughout the day a lot of unwanted elements such as dirt, grease, and dead skin cells. These elements will activate a faster corrosion rate on your guitar strings.

By consistently washing your hands, not only do you get rid of all of these unwanted corrosive agents, but you also help your strings decrease their corrosion rate.

I’d strongly recommend you wash your hands before and after every guitar session you have. It is especially more important to do this if you have sweaty or greasy hands.

2. Purchase The Proper Cleaning Products For Your Strings

Having a good combo of cleaning/lubricating products will not only extend your strings’ life but also smoothen out your playing and remove unwanted friction. There are numerous good products out there for your guitar, you can get a guitar cleaning oil from marvinempire.ng.

3. Purchase Top Quality Strings

high-quality strings, especially the ones with an added layer of coating, last much longer. They also retain a good tone for longer periods.

These are my top 3 brands for acoustic or electric guitar string sets: D’Addario, Fender and Yamaha. They are also quite durable, so you won’t have to constantly change them.

4. Keep Your Guitar In A Moisture-Free Space

Moisture is the most corrosive agent you can be in contact with that you have little control over. It’s not like you can decide to move to another country or place right away or just magically change the climate.

However, a couple of things you can do are storing your guitar in the driest place in your house or purchasing an air dehumidifier. Mind you; if you don’t live in a very humid place (like near the sea), this might not be your biggest problem. However, it never hurts to have a good dehumidifier at your place.

5. Always Clean Your Guitar After A Session

Out of all of the tips here, this is the most important and influential habit you can implement.

Regardless of how much you sweat, how greasy your hands usually are, and your overall hygiene, it’s a fact that you are most in contact with your guitar when playing (duh…).

Therefore, this is the time when your guitar strings are most prone to storing corrosive elements.

Suppose you make it a habit to always clean your strings, pickups, and all of the metal parts in your guitar. You can DRASTICALLY reduce all of the corrosion rates happening in your guitar and your strings.

1. Don’t Play With Sweaty Hands

Excess sweat and grease are two of the most common problems when it comes to strings rusting. The main reason is that both sweat and grease contain minerals such as sodium, calcium, magnesium, and potassium. When these minerals pair with the natural toxins your body secretes, corrosion takes place. Overall, moisture from liquids also plays an important role in string corrosion. Now, if you’re a sweaty person like me, your string set’s life will dramatically decrease, and you’ll have to change strings all the time.

2. Don’t Store Your Guitar In A Humid Space

As I mentioned before, humidity and moisture are also two of your guitar strings’ worst enemies. In fact, having your guitar strings be in constant contact with humidity exponentially increases the rate at which they rust. This happens when you combine oxygen, moisture, and electrons found on metal.

The humidity levels are related to the moisture in the area you live in, the materials used to build the space you’re in, or storing your guitar in a poorly ventilated area. That is the main reason why your guitar strings start to rust at a faster rate.

3. Don’t Buy Bad Quality Strings

Buying cheap strings can be very enticing, especially if you need to change them frequently. However, in the long run, there’s a big downside to having poor-quality strings.

Let’s talk about string material first. Your typical guitar string’s core is completely made of steel. Manufacturers then use different metal alloys for the winding of said string.

The most common material used in string winding is nickel-plated steel. This material is more susceptible to rust than other alloys such as pure nickel or zinc plated steel. However, cheaper guitar strings corrode faster, which, in turn, will force you to change them more often. You will end up spending more. Go for quality guitar strings.

4. Don’t keep Bad Hygiene

Apart from moisture and sweat, there are other corrosive agents we put on our strings. Dirt, dead skin cells, and grime are the most common elements we transfer from our hands to the guitar strings.

It only makes sense our hands will transfer a lot of dirt since it’s what we use most in our day-to-day. If we have poor hygiene habits, it is more than likely we will constantly transfer these agents to the guitar strings, which will create corrosion at faster rates.

When to Replace Guitar Strings

Regardless of how long a guitar string is “supposed” to last, sometimes it doesn’t make it that long for any number of reasons. Here are six signs it’s time to change the strings on your guitar.

1. A string is broken

We’ll start with a self-explanatory situation — if a string breaks, you need to replace it. Not only is it a lot harder to play the songs you want with only five working strings, but the loss of neck tension changes the tuning and intonation on the remaining strings.

2. Your strings have changed color

There’s no mistaking the shiny, beautiful look of brand-new guitar strings. Over time the oils from your skin will tarnish the strings, turning steel to a dull gray color and bronze acoustic strings to dark brown. Strings may also start looking splotchy since some sections are touched more than others. Discoloration and splotchiness are good early indicators of needing a string change.

3. The strings are falling out of tune easily

After the initial “break-in” period, strings will hold their tuning well for a while barring major changes in temperature or humidity, especially steel strings. If it circles back around to where your tuning changes significantly from session to session, even if you’ve kept the guitar in the same conditions, it’s time for a string swap.

4. The tone has gotten dull

Strings are their brightest and snappiest when new, mellowing out once they’re broken in. Some guitar strings hold brightness better than others, but when you play them too long, they’ll end up dull, flat and muted. If your guitar has a dull sound even after maxing out the treble knob, a string change is in order.

5. The strings feel different

Unless you play heavy-gauge strings, new guitar strings should be flexible and smooth. If they start feeling stiff, that means the metals are corroding. Also, grime can start to build up on the surface, making the strings rougher. Both are signs you should change the strings or at least keep a spare set handy.

6. You want to have a different sound

Different string gauges, materials and construction methods change how your guitar sounds and feels. If you’re not satisfied with the tone coming from your guitar (too bright, too dark, etc.), a new set of strings is a simple and inexpensive adjustment.