Nothing beats learning a new guitar song. I love the feeling of looking up chords, tabs, or standard notation for a song I’m excited about and diving right in.

Unfortunately, new music can take a long time to learn, and challenging songs can feel downright impossible. A lot of guitar players avoid branching out for this very reason. Is there an easier way to learn new material?

I believe the answer is a resounding “yes!” New guitar songs don’t have to be hard to learn if you approach them the right way.

In fact, learning new music can easily be the best part of your guitar practice routine! This post is all about setting you up for success when you tackle songs for the first time. Let’s dive right in.

You might not guess it, but the key to learning quickly is actually to slow yourself down. You see, guitar playing relies on muscle memory—it’s almost like a dance routine for your fingers.

When you’re practicing, what you’re doing is rehearsing this dance routine. Every time you make a mistake (which is really any movement you don’t want), you’re training your fingers to be more likely to make that mistake again. On the flip side, every correct repetition makes your future play-throughs more likely to be accurate.

Slow playing is the most powerful tool at your disposal. More than any other method, it allows you to play perfectly every time. This is exactly what you need to do to build a foundation of correct movements. Speed is simply the product of this foundation. Once your fingers have completely assimilated their various roles in the song, they can speed up without difficultly.

I’ll repeat: the key to learning quickly is to play slowly. A better post than this one would repeat that 100 times and say nothing else. Slow playing is really the entire secret to any impressive guitar display anyone’s ever seen. It’s the ultimate gold nugget practice secret.

This gold nugget becomes fool’s gold if you don’t actually play slowly, however. What’s difficult about slow playing is also what’s difficult about going for a run. If you’re in a bad mood, going for a run will probably make you feel better. Yet, are you really going to lace up your shoes and get out there (on a cold winter morning)? Such is the problem of slow playing. It’s extremely difficult to do consistently.

Those who do play slowly have enormous potential as guitarists.

This one is another little-known gem. You might notice two separate elements here: 1) listen to the song, and 2) study the score. Both parts should be done individually before you attempt to do them together.

Listening to the music you’re learning is essential practice. You might think you don’t need to listen much because you already “know” the song you’re learning. Maybe it’s a popular hit you’ve already heard 50 times. Maybe it’s a 90’s classic you’re always hearing on the radio.

In any case, you need to distinguish your inner “music fan” from your inner musician. The former thinks they know a song when they can sing all the lyrics. The latter yearns to know everything about the song: every note every instrument plays, every scrap of background information, every bit of interpretive meaning, every emotion, every structural element, and so forth. All of these background efforts will come through in your playing.

So listen frequently and listen well. One of the best ways to listen, of course, is with the score in hand. By “score” I mean any form of notation that represents your guitar part. It could be a chord progression, tabs, standard notation, a few scribbles, anything.

Play the song and follow along with your written part, imagining yourself playing as you listen. This is one of the best sorts of practice you can do, and it allows you to learn guitar songs while giving your fingers a much-needed rest.

When you’re looking to learn guitar songs, it pays to be choosey. If you commit to learning a guitar part that’s way above your level, not only will you not be able to learn it quickly, but you probably won’t be able to learn it at all. You need to be realistic about who you are as a guitarist.

I’ll give you a warning right now if you’re a beginner-intermediate level guitarist: don’t only learn songs that are way too hard for you. Most of what you’re working on should be realistic for you, if not “easy.”

Also remember that audiences are impressed by simple pieces played well, and not at all impressed with difficult pieces played badly. We’ve all seen it, heard it, and can confirm that there’s nothing worse than badly played music. So only play for others what you can play well!

If you’re eager to learn a guitar song quickly, then you should choose a relatively easy song. If you’re dead-set on a not-so-easy song, at least try to find a version of it that’s at or below your level.

Keep in mind that there’s no shame in playing easy music. Audiences prefer when you feel comfortable—they don’t want to watch you struggle.

You may need to find some humility. Some players assume that because they’ve been playing for twenty-five or more years, they’re “too good” to learn an easy piece.

To that I say, 1) you’re never too good to learn an easy piece, and 2) you can’t fake your skill level (when you’re ready to learn difficult pieces, they’ll feel relatively easy for you). I guarantee that you’ll like your results a whole lot more if you choose a manageable piece of music to learn.

Not many things hold equally true in music and war, but “divide and conquer” is one of them. You’ll find that splitting up a song by sections, measures, lines, etc., is much faster than trying to learn it all at once. It’s the best way to learn guitar songs.

Many musicians recommend a less arbitrary point of division, namely, musical phrases. These are the coherent “sonic thoughts” woven into a composition. You can also think of them as complete musical sentences, which end with a kind of period (often a short rest).

If you can break your song into musical phrases, then learning it phrase by phrase could work well for you. However, if all this talk of musical phrases is making you scratch your head, then go ahead and break up your music in any way you like.

One of my favorite ways to divide and conquer is to learn two measures at a time, start to finish. I like to practice frequently with a lot of short breaks. So I’ll often learn two measures, take a break (go for a walk, read), learn another two measures, and so forth.

You can take in more than two measures at once, but don’t overtax yourself. It’s much better to bite off less than you can chew and come back for more than to set an ambitious goal, fail to meet it, and accomplish nothing.

I know that working on a small section can be discouraging in a way, but it’s definitely the best way forward. Most professional musicians use this strategy themselves! Rest assured knowing that this method is tried and true.

Sight-reading is the art of playing through music at first sight. This means that skilled sight-readers can perform new music right away, without having to practice it beforehand. As you can imagine, these folks can learn new music much faster than poor sight-readers.

The absolute fastest way to learn new music is to be a great sight-reader. In my opinion, every guitarist should cultivate this valuable ability. I realize that sight-reading sounds hard to do, but if you manage to put a little bit of time into it every day, you’ll be amazed at how quickly you improve.

Anyone interested in a full-blown beginner’s guide to sight-reading should check out this post. It will be useful to anyone who wants to add more reading to their normal practice routine. I can only briefly summarize here some of the ideas contained in that post.

Basically, if you want to get better at reading, you need to try it. You don’t need to read new music for an hour at a time. Rather, I’d encourage you to start with a minute or two, then slowly build up to fifteen or twenty minutes as you gain confidence.

I can promise that consistent reading yields tremendous results on the guitar. Not only will it help you learn new pieces much faster, but it will help you learn the fretboard, explore new music, and experiment with new techniques.