Don’t be put off. Your frustration is trying to tell you something so you need to listen. My early beginnings on guitar were mostly enjoyable. I had little to no expectations. My school friend had an electric guitar and he would kindly let me play it when I would visit his home which became a regular routine (due to my desire to play his Washburn/Peavey combination). I eventually bought my own and tried to teach myself but found I was becoming increasingly frustrated. My fingers just weren’t moving faster enough and the songs never sounded quite right. I wanted to sound like a pro and couldn’t understand why despite my best efforts I sounded like a hacker. I was very close to giving up but something told me that giving up was not an option. So what then?

I decided to enrol for guitar lessons. It took a teacher a few weeks to unravel the reasons behind my frustration but gradually it all made sense. The first problem was my ear. I could certainly tell that I wasn’t sounding like the recordings I was attempting to emulate but my ear was not able to pick out these often subtle differences. My teacher was able to demonstrate and then correct me  and it made a world of difference. These days I must say that there are some excellent ear training software programs. I recommend you check out EarMaster or Pure Pitch.

We need to listen to our frustration and work out what its telling us. In almost every case I find frustration comes from not knowing the answer to a problem. This is when we need to seek the help of others.