[Chris C]

Over the past year my view of learning music has changed from a fairly tense "Must get that box ticked before I move on" sort approach, to relaxing and now seeing it as a journey that essentially has no end point. It's a scenic stroll not a forced march.

So, oddly enough, I'm not sure that I view any of the things on the list as hard.

That's not to say that I'm brilliant at them all - I'm definitely not, I'm only a beginner really. It's more that I do have a set of strategies to help work through all of those issues. So I don't think of them as either easy or hard, really - they're just interesting things that I'm working on improving. And always will be.

If anything is still hard with music, it's being a bit more disciplined about picking what to do next, instead of leaping around all over the place - trying a bit of this and a bit of that....it's all fun though...

[John Burr]

The number one hardest thing for me is fighting off the groupies! Next would be finding a bunch of really strong looking folks standing together for when i do "Crowd Surfing". Other than that timing is the biggest thing for me. I can keep going fine if it's somethig I am singing along with but lately I have been trying to lay down guitar and vocals separately and I really have a problem. I sort of got over by just plugging in the guitar and singing along anyway, then recording the vocals by themselves but I don't know if that's really any better than just singing an playing at the same time.

It's always going to be something I guess...

BSR

[sportsfan]

The numbers of replies singling out "Making your fingers obey" is statistically significant enough for me to venture--to virtually guarantee, actually--that the early poll returned that result (assuming all choices were worded identically in the first poll), That's my personal reply as well--I'm referring to the picking fingers, not the fretting ones.

Fighting off groupies would be a choice only if the fingers obeyed--or, at my age, not an option ;)

[eddiez152]

Beautifull tone of each string at each fret. Achieving that haunting vibrato sound.

eddiez152

[fast eddie]

As a beginner its getting my fingers to go where I want them to and not where they want to go

Hopefully it will get better with time and practice

[Europa]

At first I thought makin your fingers obey, but I changed my mind.
Making your fingers obey is far easier with practise then keeping time I'd say.

[axl_rose]

definetly making fingers obey. im getting better though!

[eddiez152]

Has Kirk given his best response answer ?

[autoriot]

Originally Posted by jasoncohen

i think the hardest thing about playing guitar for when you are first starting out is your finger dexterity and being coordinated and in sync with the right and left hands.

Very true, thats pretty much my biggest problem at the moment. Always having touble with picking the right strings in songs where you have to change strings quickly...

[KGrob]

I'm a beginning guitarist and the hardest thing for me right now is playing Barre chords...maybe that could be categorized as not getting my fingers to obey...or not.

Although right now I'm progressing at properly fingering and quickly changing the open chords...I'm not having much difficulty with those.

I'm just starting to get the hang of fingering the "F" series but am still having difficulty at making timely changes to these chords...especially when changing from the open chords.

I'm still having enormous difficulty with just about every aspect of the "B" series...I just can't seem to get those for some reason.

On the plus side though, I don't have any problem keeping the beat or anything like that...all the beat/rhythm/strumming type stuff seems to come easy for me.

[chanda]

Well....I really have to say all of them, but strumming for some reason I keep getting wrong. My right hand for some reason just won't strum with the beat in my head. Weird huh?

[knight46]

Even though I have been playing off and on (mostly off) for the past 40 years or so the most difficult thing for me is "seeing" the music. Knowing where it is going and anticipating its arrival. It seems that Kirk's ideas of progression through chord sounds and root notes is a much simpler and better way to look at music and will help me a great deal.
Knight46

[imjustspecial321]

My point of view is that over time and with a lot of practice, you fingers will eventually be at your command to do what you want them to do. I'm at that point with my viola, so I know it's only a matter of time before I am there with guitar. My main problem is making sure the strings ring properly. If you train your fingers to play chords a certain way through bad habits, and it doesn't ring, you then have to unlearn the bad way, and learn it again so it sounds good.

If that makes any sense at all...

[Lcjones]

**

The hardest part of guitar playing is overcoming the overwhelming thought that you can't play guitar.

Cowboy up.

**
LC

[scorpius]

I selected "getting the strings to ring properly".
I have actually read only a few posts here (i'm just using dial-up ) but I think everyone gets to meet 1, or 2, or all of the difficulties mentioned above depending at what stage they are in in their guitar-playing or guitar-learning. In my case, whenever I play songs having a lot of barre chords (America's "Inspector Mills", for one) my left hand get tired easily so the chord sounds are not that clear because the pressure on the strings become weak.