It is a common tale. Someone dreams of learning the guitar, playing music they love, and expressing themselves creatively. They set forth on the musical adventure with high hopes only to find themselves quitting within weeks or a few months.
Some people even give it several tries, with the same disappointing results each time.
Quitting with unfulfilled musical dreams does not have to be your fate! I believe you can become the guitarist you wish to be, and I am here to help.
This post is designed to build your awareness around the most common reasons beginners quit playing guitar and to help you remedy, avoid, or persevere through them.
It’s Not Fun:
Probably the main reason so many people quit guitar shortly after they begin is because they aren’t having fun. Perhaps they are getting discouraged, frustrated, or just finding practice to be grueling and uninteresting.
Basically if you can get practicing the guitar to feel fun and enjoyable to you, then you will be set. You’ll want to play and you’ll keep getting better.
Often beginners really struggle to experience the fun at first though because they can’t play songs or music that sounds good to them yet. The key is learning how to have fun before you even get to that point.
The rest of this list will help you with this by pointing out and remedying the other main hindrances to your guitar playing enjoyment and success.
Poor Guitar Setup:
Something most beginning guitarists don’t know is that guitars need to be adjusted or “setup” for maximum playability. A lot of guitars when first purchased have a high “action,” which means the strings are further away from the fretboard than they need to be.
This means that it will be harder for you to press the strings down, which means it will be harder for you to get a nice clean sound out of your guitar, which means learning will be a lot more frustrating and discouraging than it needs to be.
My first guitar had a very high action. It was nearly impossible to get any notes to sound clean, and I quit playing within a couple weeks. One year later, I tried learning again on a different guitar that had a much lower action, and it was a completely different story. Within a couple weeks this time, I had fallen in love with the instrument.
Don’t let what happened to me happen to you. If you have a guitar and know someone who plays, ask them to have a look at your guitar and tell you if the action is fairly low. If you don’t know anyone knowledgeable who plays, take the guitar into a music shop and ask them about the action.
If you’re told that the action is pretty high, I highly recommend getting it “setup” to lower the action. This will cost you $30-$70 and will be well worth the investment.
As a final note, if you’re buying your guitar, oftentimes you can negotiate for a free setup when you buy.
Unreasonable Expectations:
So many beginning guitarists hold themselves to an unreasonable standard when they practice. They expect themselves to improve instantaneously and get very hard on themselves when they don’t. They become their own worst enemy, taking on the role of taskmaster, and berating themselves when they make mistakes.
Nothing kills the experience of learning guitar like becoming our own personal drill sergeant when we play.
Nobody has ever gotten good at guitar without making thousands of mistakes. Mistakes are not a sign of you failing to play the guitar: they are a sign of you learning to play.
Each time you make a mistake your brain says, “woops not that,” and makes an adjustment. You can support this process by practicing being kind and patient with yourself when you play.
I have consistently seen that beginners who are kind and patient with themselves progress much quicker, enjoy the experience a lot more, and are far more likely to continue playing for years and years.
Practicing Things That Are Too Complicated:
A lot of beginning guitarists bite off more than they can chew when they start playing. They say I want to learn a particular song, and dive right in to trying to play the song.
The problem here is that playing the chords properly, changing between them quickly, and strumming all at the same time is quite overwhelming to the brain and fingers when you’ve never done these things before. We end up using far more muscular tension than is needed and start forming bad playing habits right away, slowing our progress considerably.
I have seen that the students who focus on getting comfortable with the basic building blocks of music before putting the pieces together, end up being able to play songs well far sooner than those who try to dive right into to playing songs right off the bat.
When beginning to learn, practice your chords, changing between them, and your strum patterns all separately at first. Then as you get comfortable with each, putting the pieces together into beautiful sounding music will be much easier.
Not Feeling Successful:
A major tendency for beginning guitarists is to judge their abilities based on constantly comparing themselves to the studio recordings of whatever songs they are trying to learn.
And so, since anything they play when they are first starting out is less than these images of studio perfection, they do not get a sense of accomplishment as they go. This tendency can be very discouraging.
A far more encouraging perspective is to break the elements of music down into smaller chunks/goals (like mentioned above) and look for signs of progress for these individual pieces.
For instance, say a song you want to learn is composed of an A minor, C, and G chord and also a particular strum pattern. You can look for signs of being able to play the chords smoother, change between them a little quicker, and play the strum pattern consistently in time with a metronome.
All of these are accomplishments to feel a sense of victory over. Acknowledge your successes and celebrate them. Feeling successful is really fun and it will keep you feeling encouraged to come back for more.
Cultivating Bad Playing Habits:
When you first begin playing the guitar, your fingers don’t move how you would like them to move. In order to try to be as accurate as possible, most people start hyperfocusing on their fingers, holding their breath unconsciously, and tensing their muscles a lot more than they need to.
This creates playing habits that actually interfere with our progress. When we practice in an overly tense way, our body can’t move freely and getting our fingers to do what we want becomes even more of a struggle.
Even though at first it can seem like the extra tension is actually helping you sound better and play more accurately, in truth you’re laying a foundation of strain that will slow your progress dramatically.
See if you can consciously relax your muscles as you practice. Ask yourself how little you can do muscularly in order to do what you’re trying to do on the guitar. Notice when your attention is getting hyper focused on your fingers and see if you can relax a bit and notice your surroundings.
Notice when it feels like you are death gripping the guitar neck in order to try to play something well. Pause and relax and start again.
If you want to be able to play the guitar so that it feels easy and relaxed, it is very important to practice in an easeful and relaxed way. The old saying, “you reap what you sow,” is absolutely true when it comes to playing guitar.
Insecurities and Self-Doubt:
Many people want to play guitar so much but at the same time have limiting beliefs that they are bound for failure, they have no musical talent, or they could never be good at guitar.
No matter how much time and energy they give to practicing the instrument, these beliefs keep popping up and overshadowing their progress. Even when they are complimented for their playing, they feel suspicious of the compliment, not believing it to be true.
Often these beliefs are rooted in some past event from our childhood where we were told something that made us feel inept. You are not alone in feeling these things. It is actually quite common and the bottom line is that these beliefs are NOT TRUE!
You are absolutely capable of being a good guitarist. Time and time again I have seen people with these beliefs overcome them and become great musicians.
If and when these beliefs pop into your mind, do your best to just notice them and label them for what they are, just stories of your mind. This can be tricky but in time, they will soften and disappear.
Not Feeling Inspired:
When people begin playing guitar, they dive in with a certain amount of excitement, passion, and inspiration. When they start experiencing challenges in their learning process though, these feelings often quickly start to fade.
It can be super helpful to do whatever it takes to keep your inspiration alive. Get clear about why you love and want to play the guitar, watch performances and interviews of your favorite guitar players, go to concerts, make a playlist of your favorite bands and listen to it regularly.
Start to eat, sleep, and breathe whatever inspires you about the guitar and let it fuel you to power through any challenges that arise in your learning process.
No Music Community:
Oftentimes when people begin playing guitar they do not seek outside connection with other musicians. Sure, they have a myriad of online resources at their fingertips, but they don’t seek human to human connection for support.
There’s nothing like other people who are walking a similar journey to you at various stages on the path to help facilitate musical growth. It also helps you feel not so alone in your struggles and challenges.
Seek out other musicians, start conversations with them, and ask them questions. I know it can be intimidating to ask musicians who have been playing far longer than you for advice, but it really can be hugely beneficial. People tend to love sharing their wisdom anyway.
If you don’t know any musicians in person, join an online community. Facebook has several guitar groups. Members are always willing to help on these group forums and they can be very informative and inspiring.
No Guide or Teacher:
And the final reason beginners tend to quit, following up on the previous one, is that they do not have a reliable guide or teacher when learning.
Now there are a ton of great guitarists out there who never took a formal lesson from a teacher so this is not essential. A teacher that you feel aligned with though can be an invaluable resource.
I have met several guitarists who had little success trying to learn on their own, and found that having a good teacher made all the difference. A good teacher not only shows you what to practice to maximize your progress, they also act as a coach, a cheerleader, a problem solver, and a counselor for you as need be.
Also, just having a set lesson each week is oftentimes very supportive toward getting people to sit down and practice consistently during the week, knowing that they’ve got their next lesson coming up.
This is not to say that any teacher will work well for you. There are many teachers out there that can also kill a guitarist’s passion. Do some research about the teachers available to you both in person or online. Interview them to see if you feel they’d be a good match for you.
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There are millions of people who are experiencing the joy of being able to play guitar in the world. You are absolutely capable of being one of them. Stay aware of these common reasons for quitting and you will be off to an excellent start.
And remember - The biggest key to your success is to keep looking for the fun!
If you are getting hung up on any one of these challenges or something else is interfering with your guitar playing, feel free to leave a comment. I am more than happy to help if I can.
Also if I’ve forgotten any reasons beginners tend to quit guitar, please help your fellow musicians out by sharing it in a comment.
Thanks for reading, and I send you best wishes on your musical journey.