TIPS FOR BEGINNERS

1. Sight reading and music theory are a must for any guitarist who aspires to master his playing. Knowing music theory, music history and musicianship help to make the musician secure. In order to build your own personality as a musician, you must know the roots of the profession perfectly. " Guitar technique is the road, musicianship the wheels and talent the fuel. " - Renato Ballucci
2. Guitar playing can not be achieved overnight. It needs constant practice and devotion. The only thing you require is an utmost interest and concentration on what learn.
3. Practicing the right things correctly is an investment, practicing the wrong things correctly or incorrectly is a complete waste of time.
4. Learning about the established musicians and their music literature is a great asset for any beginner in order to absorb different musical ideas.
5. ADVANTAGE OF SLOW PRACTICE - Over the years, many musicians and teachers have emphasized over and over that slow practice always helps in attaining greater speed due to the fact that it helps to build a very positive and accurate habit within ourselves and no vagueness or uncertainty seems to occur when playing the same thing at a faster speed. So, the best way to practice a piece of music would be to play four times slowly, then once fast.
6. Learning music is similar to learning a language. First you learn letters and words - then you make up sentences with the words you have learnt, and with the sentences you build up paragraphs depending upon the vocabulary you possess. Then you express your feelings, ideas in the form of a story or a poem - through which you share your emotions, joy and feelings with others. The same thing applies in music, too. - Jazz guitarist Mike Stern
7. "Learning to play guitar is largely a process of committing skills to instinct, of developing the necessary motor-skills or what is sometimes known as "finger-memory" .And the only way to achieve this is by practicing, repeating the same thing over and over until it becomes automatic." - Howard Roberts, jazz guitarist and teacher.
8. “When I heard Charlie Christian for the first time, I thought he really was not so much, because I felt I could play faster than that. Then after a few more times it really hit me, and I realized that speed wasn’t everything. I got quite emotional – put my guitar away and said I’d never play again. But the next day I got it out and started trying to play like Charlie.” -– jazz guitarist Herb Ellis
9. READING AND WRITING NOTES ON STAFF may easily be conceived by keeping in mind that all the notes with letter names of both major and minor scales ascend or descend consecutively through each line and space on the staff - with none skipped or repeated.
10. PLAYING all types of scales in all keys not only develops the fluency of fingers of both hands, but also trains the ears in identifying cycles of notes in major and minor keys.
11. "The creator's function is to sift the elements he receives from imagination - for human activity must impose limits on itself. The more art is controlled, limited and worked over, the more it is free." - Neo-classical Russian composer Igor Stravinsky's view on music composition in his Poetics of Music.
12. "In the past, every composer has had to take from his environment what he needed, reject what he could not use, and restate to his contemporaries the eternal truth of music as he himself has been able to comprehend it." - from The History of Music