Put the sheet music down and noodle around every day for a few months

Slow down. A lot. Slow down a painfully annoying and boring amount and rep the hard chord changes, the weird melodies, any of it. All of good technique is just good muscle memory and muscle memory is only built up through repetition.

Remember that every bad habit that you don’t nip in the bud early can have after effects to your technique for years.

Most importantely have fun. Most people will tell you to practice regularly, but that’s only possible if you genuinely enjoy playing. If you go for a daily routine of boring exercises, there’s a chance it will create a loathing for the instrument and the practice, whereas if you do a bit of everything (cool riffs & refrains, tedious exercises, wild experiments, etc), you will build up a virtuous & pleasant realtionship with your instrument, and you will pick it up every day without even thinking about it.

Convince yourself that you’re not improving because you need that one guitar, only to play for one month and let it catch dust afterwards.

I know everyone tries to avoid this and I’m sure you’re trying to learn on the cheap like everyone else, but honestly, get a few lessons with a good local tutor. You’ll learn more from them in a few short hours than you will with months of trying to do it yourself.

Famous guitarists never seem to say how much hard work went in to perfecting their craft, but it is a lot. And all the good ones took lessons and some still take lessons even though they’re on international tours and have sold millions of albums.

Practice everyday, look into adjusting the action on your acoustic, and build calluses. Seriously though, practice everyday. There are no shortcuts to get around practice. If you practice anything enough you will get better at it.

Strumming patterns you’ll just develop a feel for. You can practice that against your knee while just casually listening to the song. An exercise you can do for this is to practice three-chord rock songs. A LOT of songs are written with a progression of A, D, Em. Two examples off the top of my head are Louie Louie and Wild Thing. The difference between them is the rhythm.

I’ve been playing guitar for 25 years now, I do know how to read sheet music from band class in school, but I’ve never combined those two skills. I’ve been handed sheet music for Piano or some other part that had guitar chords over it, and a lot of the more intricate pieces I know I learned via tablature. The nice thing about tabs is they can be fairly easily made with ASCII.

You want a fairly easy way to make yourself sound WAY more impressive? If you’re comfortable strumming chords, you can start picking individual strings instead. I like to use House of the Rising Sun as an example for this. The chord progression is Am, C, D, F, Am, E, Am, E. You can just strum along with a fairly simple rhythm, but, instead of strumming all strings, pick them individually as found in this tab. Your fret hand still does the exact same thing, but your pick hand does a little bit more. This song is a good introduction to this because your pick mostly goes “down” (physically toward the floor toward the higher strings) then back up a couple. It’s also a fairly easy introduction to finger picking.

Fun fact about House of the Rising Sun: It’s in common meter. Which means you can swap the lyrics for other common meter songs into it to interesting effect. Many of Emily Dickenson’s poems are in common meter. So is Amazing Grace and the theme tune of Gilligan’s Island. You can have a lot of fun mixing and matching lyrics with melodies. It’s a fun trick to have in your repertoire when you’re passed a guitar at a bonfire or something.

Justin Guitar, dude. On YouTube. Justin Guitar. Do it.

Practice regularly until you get blisters. Go on minimum amount of time until they’re good enough you can play some more until you build callus where you need it.

Learn wonderwall by oasis and play it for everyone 😏

Try new songs that seem easy till you find one that actually is easy, drill it till you can do it decently, try another song and do the same. That was me 25 years ago and I still love to play.

Learn to read guitar tabs, listen to single parts of the song till you can play that part and keep going till you have each part.

I found it way easier with songs I liked. They were probably harder to play but it kept me interested.

A video of someone playing the song might help with the strumming pattern but you get an ear for it pretty quick.

The best advice I have for strumming patterns is to just listen to the song and try and just focus on the rhythm. Down strokes sound a little beefier and up strokes are a little more jangly. I’m terrible at identifying chords by ear but can get the rhythm down pretty much immediately. It just comes with time.

As far as playing songs I would not worry about playing just like the recording but just getting close enough that it’s recognizable.

I really enjoy it, but I feel like I’m starting to slow down again

This is how it goes for me and I’ve been playing for quite awhile. Feels like I stagnate then an “aha! moment” happens and I’m rejuvenated. Eventually I started taking lessons to improve.

Don’t bother with sheet music IMO. Tabs are all you need. Learn the major open chords first, they’ll get you farther along quicker than anything else. Don’t fret (pun intended) if you are learning a song and it doesn’t sound 100% the same.

Learning guitar takes some dedication before you feel like you’re really getting it. Practice at least 30 minutes a day and it will come to you but it may be months before it sounds like music. As long as you’re having fun. I tell people it’s like learning to tie your shoe laces. All muscle memory. It was difficult at first but now your hands do it without you having to think about it or even look at it. Soon your hands with form those chord shapes the same way. Good luck!

Grab a circle of 5ths app and lean chords in these progressions.

I found an app called chord ai I don’t particularly like AI but an AI that can tell me a chord in any song. I kind of fuck with that.

Just to add to my other comment, rocksmith is awesome if you have the reflexes for it. Otherwise, songsterr is great too. For learning strumming patterns I’d say relax your wrist and make sure your strap height is comfortable. I keep mine raised quite a bit to be able to hit high frets with ease. A lot of guitarists will disagree with me but use a thin pick and light strings.

Also, as I said in my other post adjust string action and practice everyday. I’ve been playing since I was a teenager and I play all styles of music. My forte is advanced lead stuff but my advice works for rhythm guitar as well. I’d say if your goal is rhythm you may be drawn to thicker picks, thicker strings, and lower strap height, but it’s really about what feels comfortable to you.

Also, if you have any interest learning fingerstyle you may want to start on a nylon string guitar. I used a guitalele at the beginning and the difference in comfort blew my mind. Now I only play steel string acoustic when I need to record fingerstyle acoustic stuff, but there’s a reason nylon strings are great for beginners.

If you need more advice about anything else guitar related just hit me up. I love passing down my knowledge.