I’m beginner 2 and here is the dumb question: how do you succeed playing a full song WITHOUT making any errors. I’ve been practicing Is there any body out there forever, and all the times there is something going wrong. I guess it is related to the fact there is too many cords…. And if you are telling me you just need continuing to practice, how do you keep motivated playing the same thing over and over and never getting it perfectly right ?? Thanks.
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Start with a simple song. 3 chords. My first song was Blowin in the wind from Justin’s songbook 1 (before it had to be removed due to copyright complaints from Dylan). It was A E and D using Justin’s anchor finger.
Now I play it a lot differently with 4 chords and a different key which doesn’t really matter. What you need is a good and easy start.
Once I learned to play that one all the way through it was all the motivation I needed.
Did I always play it without mistakes after I learned it. Nope.
If you are making mistakes, slow down.
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I can recommend a book which answers your questions, Learn Faster, Perform Better: A Musician’s Guide to the Neuroscience of Practicing by Molly Gebrian.
Try isolating the parts of the song where you make mistakes. Those short sections of the song then become practice exercises. Try doing those practice exercises 5 times in a row without making any mistakes, if you make a mistake the count goes back to 0 and start the process again.
It’s not a dumb question. How to practice is a big part of the learning process.
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You start with something simple and work your way up. Your in grade 2 and setting yourself up to fail trying to learn songs way above your play grade.
If you want to learn Pink Floyd in grade 2 try Mother
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If it was easy anybody could do it. The program is laid out for you to follow. Everyone here is on the same journey but in a different place, and with their own sense of musicality.
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You focus on the stuff you have trouble with. And yes, you do it over and over and over again until you get it right. You do that by slowing it down.
But also, professional musicians mess up all the time. Don’t give yourself unreasonable expectations for perfection too early (lots of articles out there from the past few years describing how social media is giving guitarists unrealistic expectations of perfection). It’s going to take a LOT of playing the same chords and same chord progressions over and over and over to get really comfortable and solid. And you’ll still mess up sometimes.
To start with, you don’t have a ton of choices to find stuff you enjoy that within your skill level or at least is attainable at your skill level. But the more you play, the more you’ll find stuff you have fun playing, even if it’s relatively simple. There’s a lot of stuff that I can play at my skill level, especially if I put some practice into those songs. But my go-to songs for when I’m playing by myself to have fun are songs that I enjoy playing, so I’m happy playing them a dozen times in a row or whatever. I have a relatively short list of those. I look for new ones from time to time, sure. But I keep going back to those few.
For me, I have more fun playing if I’m not just playing totally solo. I can really only sing along to one song so far, so I can’t rely on that. I play along with original recordings a lot. That makes it more fun for me. I got a drum machine to play along with, also, and that helps make songs fun. And I also have a couple of jam groups that I play with sometimes. I play songs with them that are outside of my usual go-to songs, so those force me to use other rhythms or other chord progressions than my go-to songs have. And I mess up a LOT when I play with them. But it helps me get better. And when we do a nice job on a song, that feels really good and makes it worth it.
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Gilles @StrummingMinet
I don’t get too concerned about not making mistakes, I am not a professional guitar player I am just doing it for enjoyment. If you look at some of Justin’s song lesson he admits playing the wrong chord. I use another of Justin’s maxims, don’t stop just keep going the audience if any will probably not notice.
Michael
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I echo a lot of what has been said above. If nothing other than perfection is good enough for you then you’ve got a tough road ahead.
There’s errors and there’s errors. There’s the ones that the player knows they made and there’s the ones that are bad enough that an audience would pick up on them. Those are the ones to focus on.
You need to be aware of your mistakes and the context they were made. Is it the same mistake again and again? Is it a particular transition from one specific chord to another? Are they just concentration errors?
So sadly yeah practice and more practice is at least part of the answer. Slow it down as well as you need to develop muscle memory for playing it right. If you keep making mistakes then but don’t target the errors then you never embed the good habits. If it’s a chord change, work out which aspect of the chord change is going wrong. Yes, it can be boring.
My other answer is I only play songs that I enjoy and then my motivation is to be able to learn a song that I love and it takes as long as it takes. I don’t waste time learning music that I don’t enjoy.
Attitude is also important. If you allow yourself to get frustrated by the mistakes it definitely won’t help. Guitar isn’t easy and mistakes are part of the process. Remember when you couldn’t even play the basic chords? Chances are you’ve made significant progress, don’t forget that and get down on yourself for not being perfect.
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Hi
I read somewhere that Jimi Hendrix once said “I like it when I here others trying to play my songs, but it often copying my own mistakes.”
It takes time as others have said and patience, it not very often I play something without a mistake or a bit I don’t like. Something also to consider is if you pick a song above your skill level then you will make mistakes, certainly at first, it is no different to when you first picked up a guitar and could not play a chord properly until you practiced fo sometime.
If you are making the same mistake at the same part of a song then STOP, if you keep trying without taking direct action to fix it you are likely to embed the mistake into muscle memory and your brain, and will continue to play it that way. I made this error for some time.
If you get a part that you aways get wrong isolate it, e.g it may be 2 bars with a chord change or a bar of a Riff/solo. Put the music/backing track into computer software that will slow it down but keep the pitch. Transcribe! which is free does this. Find the troublesome section and listen to it slowed right down say to 50%, listen to it and get it into you brain, read the tab/music and play through it very slowly without the backing track, if you get any part wrong, stop and start again. Once you can play it slowly, then try with the backing track, at 50%, then gradually increase speed say 10% at a time, if you start making mistakes stop and go back to a lower speed, eventually you will get to 100% then try playing in the whole song.
I think you may be surprised if you do the above, and may make quicker progress. It is also a good way to learn a new song, riff, solo, or rhythm etc, break it down, slow it down, practice it and gradually speeding up and adding new parts as you go, until all is done.
I hope that helps along with all the other advice. 
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Thanks. Yes, sometimes I isolate some sections but can’t say there is one specific section at trouble. The errors are kind of coming randomly. But I will try the 5 consecutive successful approach !!
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Thanks for this great answer. Definitely don’t have the skill level to play with others, but will try to apply a few of the stuff you mentioned.
Yes, maybe you are right. Maybe I’m too concerned of trying to make it perfect. We should not loose track that all of this is just for fun. Thanks
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I’d suggest looking to see if there are any groups you can jam with in your area. Doing so has really helped me get better and I’ve technically only completed Justin’s beginner 1.
Yes, you are right that I already made a lot of progress. Justin site is absolutely amazing in that regard. I’m the kind of person seeing the glass half empty….need to work on that as well I guess, and not just the guitar. Thanks.
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Yes, this I do. When the error is always at the same place, I’m able to isolate and work on that section, or just realize I don’t have the skills yet to play that song. The issue I’m facing now is that I’m able to play the all song but errors are happening randomly in different sections. So that’s why I was questioning myself what is the best way to address that.
That may be a very good approach. I think I’m just not confident enough at this point to start playing with others 
I wonder if the song is too hard for your level (as @tony suggests). This song is not taught by Justin, can you indicate which version (TAB, chord chart, or video tutorial) you are learning from? Also helpful would be a short clip of you trying to play the song. Then somebody qualified could comment on the suitability of the song for your playing level.
Whenever I try to learn a song that is too hard for me, no matter how patient and conscientious I am about learning it, I always end up putting it aside.
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It’s not as bad as it sounds. Especially if the group says it’s beginner-friendly. I was intimidated at first. My first time joining was after I’d been playing for only about 6 months. It was a bit too much for me then, but I at least had an idea of the sorts of things I needed to work on. And when I attended another jam, I did MUCH better.
It’s a really common trait, one that I’m working on also. It’s easy to focus on the mountain that lies ahead and lose sight of the journey to get to where we are today.
The community is great. It’s reassuring to know that actually learning guitar is hard for many people and it generally takes a lot longer than we’d hope to get “good” (however you define that) and actually the risk is that no matter how good you get you’ll always be chasing the next target. This can mean that someone can be a fantastic player and yet never satisfied. This is why I think looking back is important.
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==> Jimmy Hendrix