Tips For Practice
Practice Barre Chords Often
Barre chords are one of the tougher things for beginner students to gain a handle over. If you do not practice them often, you will never be able to play them easily. They will be uncomfortable and slow at first, but after enough time, they will become second nature. However, it is important that you do not overdo it since you may cause quite a bit of pain in your hand. Always make sure that you have your finger as close to the fret wire as possible when playing barre chords. Also, make sure your finger is as straight as possible (it should line up quite nicely with the fret wire, not angling away).
Practice Things That Challenge You
This goes along with the first point, but in a broader sense. If you only practice the things that are easy, you will never improve at the things that are tougher. Sure, you may get very good at some of your favourite songs, but your overall skills will not advance. Try to manage your practice time by starting and ending with something easy while putting the tougher stuff in the middle. This will boost your confidence going in to your practice session and you will come away from it also feeling good about your playing. Finally, when you do conquer a particularly tough piece or skill, you will come away feeling significantly more satisfied than you would have if you were only practicing easy things.
Practice Alternating Between Chords
Rather than playing the same chord with different strumming patterns, practice switching between one chord an another multiple times. This type of exercise will help you get used to transitioning between chords much more quickly and you'll be able to move on too more challenging songs more quickly. This may not be a particularly entertaining exercise, but every musician, no matter what their instrument is, has multiple exercises for improving their technique.
Always Tune Before Practicing
The act of tuning your instrument every time you play will increase your listening skills. Ear training is important for any musician to develop and tuning is one of the best ways. Not only that, playing out of tune may cause your ears to adapt to those notes which will throw you off when people around you are playing in tune.
Listen For Buzzing
It is quite common for beginners to play with improper technique. Always make sure that you are pressing the strings all the way down, playing close to the fret wires, and not brushing any other strings with your fingers. If you play with proper technique, there should not be any buzzing in your sound. If there is, see your teacher so that they can assess whether or not there is something wrong with your guitar.
Utilize Slow Practice
It is important to take new things slowly at first. This will allow you to make fewer mistakes and have a smaller chance at making habit out of the ones you do make. If you practice to quickly, you will often make the same mistakes over and over without improving. This will always lead to frustration. Try practicing at a speed where you can play the entire piece or section perfectly. Then, go from there.
Strumming Practice
A great exercise for strumming is to pick one chord and then play it in time with a metronome. Start off simple why just doing straight eight notes, or even quarter notes. You can increase the speed if that is what you are wanting to work on. After doing this basic strumming for a little bit, start throwing in different rhythms. Work your way up to more complex rhythms as you go along.