Am struggling before a couple of drinks! 
Start out slow then get the missus to tap the tempo up when youâre not looking. 
Playing faster sections in general is a major problem. I do practice this and it is improving, but very slowly.
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Itâs very interesting to hear the different things that cause frustration in us
I have many small frustrations - some of the same ones as are already mentioned by others here.
But the big one, maybe the perpetual one, is the voice in my head that tells me that no matter how much I practise and how many small improvements I make, Iâll never be âgoodâ or even âgood enoughâ.
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Good enough for what?
In practice of an activity that essentially has no end point, you are setting yourself up for disappointment.
I am good enough to keep learning!
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Honestly there is nothing about learning the guitar that I find frustrating. Of course there are things I canât do but to me I just enjoy playing/ practicing and itâs 100% about having fun and enjoying the journey. When I encounter something that might frustrate me I usually just park it until my skills are at a point where I can master it without the frustration.
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Without a doubt, it has to be power chords.
I simply do not want to learn them but know in my heart I really should. Knowing this I just stopped at that point. Power chords to me feels like cheating. Which is why I do not want to learn them. This also stopped me from completing grade 2 by end of year.
R
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Good enough to feel comfortable answering âYes!â when someone asks me if I can play the guitar, instead of âA bitâŚâ or âYeah, but Iâm still kinda bad at itâ.
Itâs not about the end point, but about feeling competent, I guess. Like when Iâm driving a car. Iâm not a professional race car driver, but I donât usually bump into random objects or drive off the road, either. I can parallel park.
Or, actually, a better comparison: singing. Iâm not a professional level singer, but I know Iâm somewhat competent. I could get on a stage and sing, and feel comfortable about my performance. But I also know that I still have a lot to learn and could improve in endless ways.
Hence the frustration.
Interesting thought. I donât play songs with power chords too often, but it never occurred to me that it would be cheating to use those chords. They just have a different sound than major or minor chords. Sus chords could just as well be considered cheating since they donât have the 3rd scale degree, either.
There has been a bit of this 
for me lately⌠
The first frustration that comes to mind for me at the moment is that Blues curl! I just canât seem to get it sounding right/good 
And also the not enough practice time, but also, Iâm very grateful that I have a job, a house to live in (that needs maintenance) and other things like this forum that I spend time on when not practicing 
. And to be honest, Iâd get more practice in if it wasnât for my distractable monkey mind that seems to be running wild at the moment⌠
and this 
But⌠all in all, love guitar, frustrations and all. Canât see myself ever giving it up 
That, I understand. But it does bring up the conflict between what we want and expect and the reality of learning guitar. It takes time, years of time. It isnât easy, at all.
Your profile mentions âtrying to learn âfor realâ since early 2024â. Anything you feel competent at, you probably have been doing a lot longer and guitar is one of the more difficult tasks.
You will get there, it will just be longer than your imagination would like.
Having been on this forum for several years now, I have been encouraged and thrilled to see how the members are advancing. I try not to compare myself to anyone, I move at my own glacial pace, but there are quite a few here who are making progress, becoming more competent and having a ton of fun and joy in the process. It just needs persistence and some effort.
Maybe it is somewhat frustrating to see people able to play better than I can in shorter times, but I am not them and I try hard to believe in myself and be ok with my progress. It will be one of those things were I look back after a decade and realize I actually can kind of play guitar, right?
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playing a piece perfectly with a metronome in practice and as soon as the recording light turns on, everything is forgotten and the hands stop moving
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This is almost exactly what I was typing when Saifâs post came in! There are other frustrating aspects to guitar for sure, but not being able to play - at all - when the camera comes on or when someone walks into the roomâŚ
AAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!
This is what Iâm working on daily & have seen some improvement⌠but not there yet.
Tod
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For me, itâs plateaus in learning songs and in skills development â well, learning anything really. A recent example: Iâd been working on Greensleeves, and by the end of October had it fairly well committed to memory. Someone asked me to play it during a Christmas performance mid-December. âPiece of cake!â I thought, having six weeks to work on making it good enough. Despite all my clever practice techniques, I pretty quickly reached a certain level and got stuck. I couldnât reliably play it smoothly in practice, and opted not to perform it. I find these plateaus occur with most songs and skills I work on, and theyâre frustrating as heck!
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It always sounds a bit corny when people say it but this is the point where learning to enjoy the journey is important because otherwise you are 100% right.
(I realise this is you answering @jacobbonde but Iâll continue anyway)
In my opinion, the first months of playing guitar arenât that much fun. Thereâs the initial novelty and then it starts to dawn how long itâs going to take. Practicing chord changes day after day and struggling to produce anything sounding vaguely musical is hard for sure.
And I think this is why Justin emphasises learning songs because thatâs the fun bit. All my practice sessions now involve some time trying to improve something new and some time playing something Iâve already learned. This way I get some enjoyment every day from my guitar. If you focus only on the destination then thatâs the hard way⌠and the chances are youâll immediately decide thereâs another destination thatâs also a distance away. We have to enjoy the journey
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I need to take some more time to read all your repliesâŚ
âŚ
âŚbut I just wanted to point out that in a few days this Frustration thread got more replies than the Achievements one in a few weeksâŚno no nooooâŚthis is no good! 
Please think about your achievements before 2025 comes and stay motivated 
(âŚno need to share them if you donât want to).
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This is a great one.
For the most part, Iâm a firm believer in âKeep at it, and youâll get better,â but it really is an asymptotic curve that has decreasingly small improvement from one day to the next. Then, one day, Iâll suddenly do better than ever, and then that becomes the new baseline (except for the âbadâ days).
I wonder if this is a cue for dropping it for a while, working on other things, then coming back to it later. I do sometimes find that I do better with that break. (Other times I find that I become worse at it.)
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This is the way I (try to) deal with the plateau. And while Iâve come to accept the frustration, I think an additional feeling is disappointment in my inability to reach my goal!
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Perhaps frustrations arenât so bad, as long as we donât let them get the better of us. For some of us, Iâm sure itâs part of what drives us to keep practising and working on getting better. I think frustration is a valid feeling when striving to improve and trying to reach our goals, especially if they are a bit ambitious.
I think the advice to âenjoy the journeyâ is in general good, and certainly well intended. And an enjoyable journey takes us through interesting places and hopefully allows us to reach many wonderful destinations along the way. And sometimes we have to walk through a bit of rain and mud to reach the next warm inn - and itâs ok to feel a bit grumpy about that.
If we only ever care about just keeping on walking and never about where we would like it to take us, we could be missing out. Goals and ambitions are important and motivational for learning. Perhaps we are setting ourselves up for failure when we set a goal that might be out of reach - but we might also learn more than we ever expected, just trying to get there. And how much sweeter the feeling of achievement, when we have struggled through our frustrations to make it there.
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Itâs step one to identify some things to work on, how to find alternatives, how to broaden the basics that fit below the source of frustration etc.
This is a splendid time to re-assess the goals we once set and re-evaluate for the upcoming year.
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