The School of Feedback Guitar Blog

Multi-tasking is a bit overrated in my opinion. Eating a burger while driving a manual transmission and holding a conference call. Watching a game on tv while listening to music and finishing up a project for work. Guitar seems to be no different sometimes, as there seems to be about a thousand things I want to do all at once.

In the very beginning of learning guitar, I usually get a ton of questions from the person I am helping. "Should I work on switching chords?" "What about rhythm? Should I get a metronome?" Well, all that is fine but there is one very critical attitude to develop in the very beginning of guitar, at least in the way that I like to teach it: Comfortability. I am certain that it shouldn't ever hurt to play guitar, with exception to the pain at the fingertips if you haven't ever played before. Wrist pain? Anyone can play guitar without it. It takes time at the very beginning of playing to secure that foundation of comfortability. Without that foundation, playing guitar gets tougher later on because a person may not be playing in a way that is good for their hand. That's an important point. And I must say that learning to play comfortably means not taking advice blindly.

Perhaps there are times when multitasking in guitar is a good thing. Like when there is a chord progression you want to master, it's good to just sit down in front of a tv and allow your fingers to do what they have to do. In the very beginning of learning, my suggestion is not to worry about doing anything other than being comfortable. There will be a time later on when you'll begin to tackle more things at once.