Learning to play guitar is a serious business that you should take lightly. Once you have a little physical hands-on experience with the guitar you can relax and make choices about what style of music you want to learn and how you want to learn it. Once you have learnt the basic chord shapes and how they can be moved up and down the fretboard, you can experiment with strumming patterns. When you feel comfortable with strumming you can start on learning a few finger picking patterns. You must never lose sight of the goal of personal satisfaction behind your musical efforts.
Part of learning to play guitar is, unfortunately, the wondering. “Which way of learning to play guitar is the best for me?” “How many ways of learning are there?” Are books the best source of guitar learning information? Or is it better to pick some of my favorite songs and concentrate on learning how to play them?
What makes learning guitar more confusing is the fact that everybody who learns seems quite happy to have taken the path that they took and, in hindsight, would not have done anything different. Anyway, maybe talking to friends who already have been through the learning journey would probably be a good start. Did they learn to play by starting on chords? Or scales? How do people feel about their abilities as a guitar player after a few years of fooling around in a non-disciplined way?
Many guitarists have made their way by watching and talking to friends and making use of the free tabs on the internet. Choosing tabs should be a fairly stress-free job if you are guided by your personal musical tastes but there could be a problem with learning from friends. If you have a bunch of friends or family members who think they know a thing or two about playing the guitar, you are talking to someone who may or may not be aware of their own limitations.
A guitar playing friend can show you how to play a chord or a riff but they will have only limited ability to provide you with the guidance you need to chart your own guitar learning path and to judge your own progress.
If you do take the unstructured route for learning guitar, you can always take a lesson or two from a professional teacher just to make sure you haven’t acquired too many bad habits and to help with charting a course for your guitar music progress.
One experience you could do well to share with a guitar teacher is learning from a printed guitar tutor. If you choose one of good guitar lesson books you already have a structured learning program and sharing the learning with an experienced guitarist who can add his own perspective to the info in the book.
Part of learning to play guitar is, unfortunately, the wondering. “Which way of learning to play guitar is the best for me?” “How many ways of learning are there?” Are books the best source of guitar learning information? Or is it better to pick some of my favorite songs and concentrate on learning how to play them?
What makes learning guitar more confusing is the fact that everybody who learns seems quite happy to have taken the path that they took and, in hindsight, would not have done anything different. Anyway, maybe talking to friends who already have been through the learning journey would probably be a good start. Did they learn to play by starting on chords? Or scales? How do people feel about their abilities as a guitar player after a few years of fooling around in a non-disciplined way?
Many guitarists have made their way by watching and talking to friends and making use of the free tabs on the internet. Choosing tabs should be a fairly stress-free job if you are guided by your personal musical tastes but there could be a problem with learning from friends. If you have a bunch of friends or family members who think they know a thing or two about playing the guitar, you are talking to someone who may or may not be aware of their own limitations.
A guitar playing friend can show you how to play a chord or a riff but they will have only limited ability to provide you with the guidance you need to chart your own guitar learning path and to judge your own progress.
If you do take the unstructured route for learning guitar, you can always take a lesson or two from a professional teacher just to make sure you haven’t acquired too many bad habits and to help with charting a course for your guitar music progress.
One experience you could do well to share with a guitar teacher is learning from a printed guitar tutor. If you choose one of good guitar lesson books you already have a structured learning program and sharing the learning with an experienced guitarist who can add his own perspective to the info in the book.
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