When I first started, someone told me to practice dovetails with “hard maple” because it was not compressible and required a lot of accuracy. That was very bad advice which, had I followed it, would have guaranteed failure, at least for me.

Perhaps I just lack natural ability, but I began by practicing just individual cuts for hours and hours and then dovetails for hours and hours. And I continued practicing for years, just as I practiced scales every day back when I played classical guitar.

So for me, the best beginner woods were (a) inexpensive since I used a lot (b) easy to saw cleanly and (c) a bit compressible since accuracy takes time to build and you want some decent level of success to avoid frustration. I tended to use cheap pine and pine like woods, but also any scraps I had laying around. Some of that cheap wood was not great because it did not saw cleanly, but hey, it was cheap. I quickly did try some poplar since I had some scraps and dabbled in a bit of oak. Ultimately, you do need to move to harder woods such as oak. I never did try hard maple since I never built anything with it.

I am not sure everyone would agree, but I found sawing skills were far far harder to acquire than chisel skills, so I was not at all worried by the fact that some of the woods I used did not chisel very well, especially with my rudimentary sharpening skills. For me it was all about the sawing.

Darren mentioned using a dovetail angle jig. I assume he means one of those magnetic jigs that holds the saw at the correct angle as you saw. I bought one but for some reason never used it. I know some hand tool workers start with them and leave them behind once they get the hang of the angles, and others start with them and use them forever. I do wonder what experience others had with them.