Every guitarist wants to learn their favorite songs on guitar. Unfortunately, it can take a long time to learn a new tune. But is there any way to learn a bit quicker?

This post is about how to learn songs faster on guitar. Applying these 10 secrets can cut your learning time dramatically!
 

If you want to learn songs fast on guitar, you need to be a little selective. Any random song won’t do. You want to choose a tune that’s realistic for you.

Clearly, that’s completely relative. If you’re a beginner, you want to go with a really easy song. If you’re more advanced, you might choose an intermediate-level song, and so forth.

Many new players want to learn songs way beyond their level. I wholly support that, but just bear in mind that you won’t be able to learn hard songs quickly.

You’re also more likely to learn a song fast that you already know well. The more you’ve heard a song, the more you love it, the better. If you try to learn a song you don’t like, you’re a lot more likely to skip practice sessions or even get down on your playing.
 

Slow playing is one of the best guitar practice hacks you’ll come across. If you only take one thing from this post, slow down when you practice.

When you slow down, you give yourself more time to think and react. As a result, your playing will virtually always be higher-quality than when you’re rushing.

In order to learn guitar songs fast, you want to maximize the amount of high-quality practice you do. Ideally, you never sit down with the guitar and make a bunch of mistakes.

Try to think of good playing as good information in your brain, and bad playing as the opposite. Each good repetition is conducive to speed and accuracy down the road, whereas bad repetitions will hinder your progress.
 

Taking breaks is a great guitar secret for increasing productivity. In fact, a number of scientific studies can attest to breaks offering you greater focus, creativity, and motivation.

In my view, this should change your practice time math. What I mean is that 30 minutes plus 30 minutes is greater than 1 hour. Also, 15 minutes plus 15 minutes is greater than 30.

These don’t need to be long breaks, either. Even a 2-minute intermission can reinvigorate a practice session. Get up, walk around, do a few jumping jacks, grab some water, etc. Then you can get right back to it, and you’ll be better off.

The beauty of frequent breaks is that they facilitate an extremely effective practice routine. With each break between practice sessions, you’re essentially getting more individual sessions in.

For me, the frequency of sessions is much more important than the total number of hours you practice. You’ll get a lot closer with your guitar if you pick it up every half-hour than if you only play once a day!
 

Listening is great way to learn songs faster on guitar. Simply find a good recording of the song you’re learning and listen to it over and over.

I know that sounds a little too easy. But the truth is, few players listen as much as they should or as intently as they should.

The classic mistake you might make is to think, “Oh, I know this song, I’ve heard it a hundred times.” My advice is to listen to it a hundred more.

You rarely “know” a piece of music as well as you think you do. Remember that there are basically infinite degrees of knowing a song.

To illustrate the point, let’s quantify “knowing a song” on a 0-100 scale. Many people who think they know a song well enough would only be around 50 on such a scale.

The main takeaway is that you should really push yourself to a deeper understanding of your music than you thought possible. And repeated listening is an excellent way to do that.
 

If you want to learn songs faster on guitar, you’ll want to invest in some long-term solutions. Everything we’ve covered thus far will help you learn songs now, but sight-reading will help you learn any music much faster in the future.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, sight-reading is the practice of playing music at sight. That means you sit down with notation for a song you’ve never practiced and try to play it right away.

You can probably imagine why good sight-readers can learn new pieces very quickly. In fact, they can often play them immediately, with zero practice!

But sight-reading is a difficult skill that takes time to develop. The key is to start by reading music that’s way below your level and build up from there. It’s all part of an Effective Guitar Routine.

You can choose to read tabs, standard notation, or even chord progressions depending on your style. Don’t feel like you have to read music to sight-read!
For more guidance, you should check out this Sight-Reading Tutorial for Beginners.
 

Many guitarists use Youtube guitar tutorials to learn their favorite songs rather than using notation. That’s not a bad habit per se, but it can slow down your learning speed.

If you learn from a video, you end up stuck at your teacher’s pace. You can slow things down of course, but you can’t take in a lot at a glance as you can with notation.

But reading music is intimidating—I get that. My recommendation is that you start by learning to read tabs. That’s probably the best way to break into reading music.

Tabs are highly intuitive, and you can use them to learn almost any song! Just be sure to start with some easy material to work up your confidence.

Once you’re comfortable with tabs, it’s time to start learning standard notation. This is going to take more time, but it’s absolutely worth it. You might even start with this handy article on reading guitar music!
 

Music theory gets a bad rap in the guitar community. Some players think that learning theory is impossibly hard, or that theory will somehow make them unoriginal or boring musicians.

But there’s no need for this sort of theory-phobia. In fact, the more formal knowledge you have of music, the better! And yes, it’s extremely helpful if you’re trying to learn guitar songs faster.

The reason theory helps out is because most music (and virtually all popular music) is made up of the same sorts of patterns. Theory helps you recognize these patterns, allowing you to understand many songs at once instead of one song at a time.

Theory is also extremely helpful is you’d like to improvise on the guitar. Understanding chords, scales, rhythms, and keys can really speed up your ability to create real music from scratch.

That said, learning theory does take time and effort. I suggest you get yourself a few Beginner Guitar Theory Books and work your way through them.

If you just get started learning theory, I guarantee you’ll have some fun in the process! Plus, you’ll really feel the difference in the practice room. And if you’re still not convinced, here are even more Reasons to Learn Guitar Theory.
 

You might guess that learning songs guitar songs fast is all about time-efficiency. The mistake a lot of players make (including myself) is to practice entire songs at once instead of focusing on what’s difficult.

With any given song you’re learning, you’ll find that some (or most) of it is relatively easy for you. Maybe half the chords are ones you’ve played before, or you find yourself picking through the verses, no problem.

But then you come across a section that’s genuinely hard. It could be a tricky chord change, an awkward right-hand pattern, or shift up to the higher register of the fretboard. Regardless of what it is, you need to identify the problem part.

Next, you need to ensure you spend most of your practice time on these difficult bits. And honestly, this can take some discipline. After all, it’s always more fun to run through the parts you’re good at than to problem-solve the hard passages.

Isolating problems is also a chore because this type of practice doesn’t even look like playing music. Rather, you might be trying to Master a Chord Change for an hour or more! That’s effective practice, but it’s not easy to do.
 

I’m a believer in simplifying a song when you need to. Sometimes, you just can’t wrap your fingers around a certain chord shape, or you can’t quite master a strum pattern.

When that happens, I don’t think it’s the worst thing in the world to simplify the music a bit. For chords, that means choosing an easier substitute. For strumming, that means adopting a pattern that resonates with your right hand.

Let’s get specific. Say you want to learn the chords to Fight Song by Rachel Platten. The main ones are G, Em, Cadd9, G/B, D, and Em7.

Beginner players may be familiar with G, Em, and D, but not so confident with the other three. To make things easier, I propose you simplify Cadd9 to C, G/B to G, and Em7 to Em. Easier, right?

You will lose out on some nuances by doing this, but sometimes it’s worth it if a really tricky chord is messing up a whole song for you. You can even make the F chord more playable!
 

Mental practice is both a long-term and short-term investment. You can benefit from it right away, but the more you do it, the more powerful it becomes as a learning tool.

But how do you practice mentally? There are as many types of mental practice as you could possibly imagine. However, I tend to distinguish two broad categories.

First, mental practice can substitute your normal practice, except without the guitar in hand. You can use visualization to play through songs, scales, or even technical exercises.

This type of practice is much easier if you’re working with notation in hand. However, going by your memory alone can also be valuable. You can’t memorize a song more securely than playing it all the way through in your head.

The second category of mental practice is about cultivating productive guitar-related attitudes. You’ll find that what you believe about yourself and your guitar playing plays an enormous role in your musical outcomes.

For me, this second category is ultimately the most crucial, yet most neglected, mode of practice. Your mind determines your habits, and your habits yield material results.
 

With the right practice method, I believe anyone can learn songs fast on guitar. Even if you’re not there yet, just have faith in yourself and keep moving forward.

You’ll find that learning guitar gets easier over time. That means, these 10 secrets aside, you’re bound to learn a little faster each day that goes by. So stay consistent and have fun!

Are you looking to upgrade your gear or browse some awesome guitar learning materials? Check out my recommendations page to see all my favorite stuff. 

Want to streamline your fingerstyle guitar progress? I just released my new ebook, Fingerstyle Fitness, which presents 10 easy exercises to quickly develop your fingerstyle chops. Grab it today!