My biggest mistakes while learning guitar (learn from my mistakes)

Chris Johnston said:

Thanks for starting this Alex! One of my biggest weaknesses in my playing has been my tendency to ignore learning 'Classic' Guitar songs/solos. This tends to make my job as a Guitar Tutor harder at times, as students will want to learn these things. I find I spend most of my time with Improv concepts, which although is fun & interesting to me, it isn't useful at a party, or in a paid gig This is something I've been working to improve my knowledge on this year by learning the popular solos that people want to learn (Sweet Child 'O' mine, Highway to hell, Wish You Were Here etc)

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Chris Johnston said:

On the flipside of that though - one of the things I wish I'd done earlier in my Guitar playing was to commit to learning & using Theory properly. I was a religious 'ears' guy and I was just straight up lazy & close minded about any Fretboard knowledge - This made college jazz Guitar classes a nightmare. But the minute It clicked that Theory was just creating a reference for everything I could already hear, my Guitar opened up and made so much more sense, but I only really got to grips of it after college, when I had time to experiment and understand it. It's made me a complete 'Learn Theory' preacher now though, just because I know how much Guitarists tend to over-complicate it online to make themselves look lofty and intelligent- when it's actually pretty straightforward!

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Chris Johnston said:

Another crucial thing I wish I'd done earlier is to not concentrate so much on playing fast/playing things that were out of my reach at the time. I still remember trying to play some of Syn's solos at age 16 and throwing my guitar down because my forearm was seized up - once again I didn't care about looking into things properly and patiently working on my technique, and it held me back for years!

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