It's this normal after six months of practice?

Yep.  That's normal.

Keep playing, and practice every day.

Hello BBDGus,

Everyone learns differently and tends to go in fits and starts so there is nothing abnormal about your level after only six months. With the singing you also need to practice that too, OK voices, particulatly male ones, do change at puberty so you will sound very different from the schoolboy soprano you once were, but your voice is like any musical instrument you need to practice with it to keep it in shape.

Good luck and keep at it,

Roger

Practise makes ..... better lol!!  Best way to progress is to play with other people.  As far as singing goes nearly everyone can to a greater or lesser degree.  Most important is to make sure that you play the song in the right key.  If you sing naturally at a higher pitch then an original tabbed song from Johnny cash won't suit you will need to transpose it. 

Enjoy above all!

Here's what a buddy of mine tells his students:

Once you start playing, you're going to suck.  You're going to want to quite because you'll think playing chords without buzzes and mutes is impossible. 

After six months of playing, you're still going to suck but you might not buzz or mute as much.  You'll feel like you've had some progress. 

After a year, you're going to start getting better.  While you'll want to play for others, they won't want to hear you.

After two years, you're going to sound OK.  Some folks may ask if you know a particular song.  You probably won't. 

After five years, they're going to send you back home to get your guitar if you forgot it. 

____

Six months and still working on chord forms and changes to play songs - no worries.  No worries at all.  You're right on target. 

I've been at it about a year now.  I can do pretty good on open chords.  I'm just beginning to play simple barre chords - but they're slow and painful and sound poor.  I know a couple of strum patterns and a couple fingerpick patterns.  I usually use the wrong ones with inconsistent timing.  With that poor playing, my buddy the instructor thinks I'm progressing very quickly and well.  I'll take his word on it.  I've only twice played with friends.  The first time they voted as to whether my singing or my playing was worse and they couldn't decide.  The second time everyone was drunk and they sang along and couldn't give a rat's patootie how I sounded.  I mean, how can you go wrong playing Take Me Home Country Roads when sitting on a campground between a country road and a river in West Virginia while pasing around a mason jar?  Can't.  Carefully selected song. 

- Zurf

In my humble opinion, the best thing you can do is come on this site!  Practise as much as you can, if you make your fingers hurt, so much the better.

Play songs you like, that will keep your interest going and I've found that the best thing is to sing at the same time, learn the words and music from the start and the timing comes more naturally that way.

I've had my guitar for about 18 months and I play well enough to please myself at this stage - my 14 year old son got his guitar on the same (Christmas) day as me and he laughs at my attempts and quite rightly so.  I play stuff like house of the rising sun, brown eyed girl etc while he shreds Arctic Monkeys and Atreyu at me.  WE ALL HAVE OUR OWN PACE!  It doesn't worry me none as my chord changes are better than his!  So practise what you like as much as you can and

Enjoy!

No its not normal -it usually takes 12 months - well done!
Ray LaMontagne sounds EXACTLY like a asthmatic goose - so spot on!

I agree with bigdj... not many learn guiitar properly these days, I've been teaching professionally for about 10 years and over that time I 've noticed a big shift to Dropped D tuning and 5 chords. In a few lessons and with enough distortion students can put together a basic song. All that is fine however there is a lot more than that to guitar (as must of us know) Unfortunately they are interested in learning as little as possible as they see so many bands these days that only use Dropped D and 5 chords. It's a bit like saying your an airline pilot and and the only thing you can do is navigate your way to the front of the plane.

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