If you have found a guitar teacher who has agreed to provide you with guitar lessons and this will be your first time attempting to master this instrument, you might want to read through the tips below.

Do not 'play through the pain' if your fingers start to get sore

After your first few guitar lessons, you will probably find that your fingertips feel a bit tender. This is normal and is caused by the friction between your fingertips and the guitar strings. Over time, you will build up calluses on your fingertips that will act as barriers between them and the strings, and these will put a stop to this soreness.

As such, you will only need to tolerate this discomfort for a short period. However, if the skin on your fingertips bleeds or stings a lot when you play your guitar during this time, you should postpone your next couple of lessons and take a break from your at-home practice sessions until your fingertips fully heal. Under no circumstances should you try to play through this pain, as this could result in several issues.

Continuing to play could, for example, irritate and widen the small cuts on your fingertips, which could then cause them to become infected, in which case they could several weeks to heal, instead of a few days. You would have to avoid playing for the entirety of this long healing period and may, as a result of this, forget much of what you previously learnt. Secondly, if you continue going to your lessons and playing your guitar whilst your fingers are bleeding, you may end up leaving small blood stains on the fretboard or the body of the guitar that may spoil its appearance.

Don't try to master complex chords before you're used to playing the more common ones

If you're eager to learn as much about guitar playing as possible, you might have thought about asking your teacher to show you how to play some of the more advanced chords. However, it's best to hold back and work on mastering the chords that are most commonly used first before you try your hand at the more complex ones.

There are two reasons for this. Firstly, it is better to be able to play a few simple chords very well than to play a dozen chords rather poorly; you'll probably end up doing the latter if you bombard yourself with too much chord-related information at once. Secondly, many popular songs that can be played on the guitar feature just three or four straightforward chords; as such, you will be able to play a lot of the songs that you love even during the first couple of months of starting your lessons when your chord repertoire will still be quite limited.