In the modern realm of music education, guitar has become an increasingly legitimate instrument. Here’s what I mean when I say that: For a long time guitar was scorned by many people in the music education profession as a bastard instrument. It was felt that the guitar was not as worthwhile as pursuing, say, the violin or the trumpet. Oddly, other common band instruments of today once received the same treatment. The saxophone once fell into that category. So for a long time the guitar had no home in public music education. Thankfully, things are changing and the guitar has become an invaluable part of modern music therapy and education. Many of the beginning band methods now include a guitar book. As an educator, and someone who loves the guitar, I can’t tell you how truly refreshing that is. Yet, many people who seek out the guitar seem to think of it as an uncomplicated instrument that will require little to no time to learn how to play. I’ve seen so many people begin guitar lessons only to drop them after they realized that it was actually going to take a little work. What I want to do in this brief article is give you some basic pointers on how to begin the guitar. I think that’s the most common frustration people have when it comes to learning guitar…they just don’t know how to get started. I want to do what I can to help alleviate those kinds of concerns. Don’t be fooled into thinking that you’re about to read some magic formula that will enable heaven to begin flowing from the strings of your guitar. This article merely seeks to dispel some myths about learning the guitar while laying down some concrete facts about what you’ll encounter while you learn.
The Average Joe
This article is really talking to one kind of individual…the average joe…the person who doesn’t know much, if anything, about the mechanics of learning an instrument, much less the technical side of playing music. This is the kind of person who desperately wants to get into music but has zero concept of how to begin learning an instrument.
Myth: I could never learn to play guitar on my own!
Fact: Yes you can! However, it helps to seek out people who already know how to play. Most of my learning on guitar was accelerated by hanging out with other people who knew how to play. I merely watched them and tried to do what they were doing. I would ask them questions, quietly jam with them and one little bit at a time I found myself becoming more capable on the instrument.
Methods of Learning
Disclaimer: Everyone learns differently. There is no one incontrovertibly true way to learn an instrument. What I’m going to list below is a mere sampling of how the average individual learns how to play guitar.
**Garage Band Knowledge**
Virtually every self-taught musician (which I’ll simply call garage band musicians) has a different way of explaining what they understand about playing their instrument. This means that you may get wide ranging information from person to person, some of which is accurate, some of which is highly inaccurate, and some that falls in a wide grey area of “not wrong but not necessarily right either”. Most “garage band” musicians don’t really know much about music theory (the fundamentals of how music works). They also don’t know much about proper technique when it comes to playing the guitar. They can’t really explain how they play solos on the guitar. They can’t really tell you how chords work on a guitar. They usually can’t tell you what note they’re playing on any given string (some can but this is not common amongst most young garage band musicians…generally you get that kind of information from people that have been playing for a long time). They mostly know what chords are called. Beyond that, the average, young, garage band musician won’t have mounds of insight on the mystery of learning guitar. At this point you may be inclined to ask, “What good are these garage band musicians? They sound kind of worthless!”
Myth: Garage Band Musicians have nothing of value to offer!
Fact: Garage Band Musicians, particularly ones that have been playing for a long time, have mountains to offer.
Interesting Fact: The average classically trained musician is paralyzed once you take sheet music away from them. This kind of musician often has trouble “playing by ear”. Playing by ear is the ability of a person to listen to something and figure out how to play it without the aid of any kind of sheet music. It’s a skill that most music teachers don’t naturally develop in their students. That’s a real shame because being able to play by ear is a critical ability for any well rounded musician to have in their repertoire of skills. It is this vital skill, perhaps more than any other, that garage band musicians will have to offer.
The reason I talk about garage band musicians, a blanket term I’m using to refer to self-taught musicians, is because these individuals are often the most accessible people. Chances are you already know someone that plays and it is also an equal possibility that they have taught themselves. So they’ll be able to help you. Generally speaking you’ll want to seek out these kinds of individuals first. One of the best things about having friends that already know how to play is that you can learn to play for free. Which brings me to my final point under this section.
Be careful if you’re thinking, “I’d love to take guitar lessons!” The truth of the matter is that most people don’t really want to take guitar lessons even though they think they do. Guitar teachers are very diverse in their concept of teaching. Many guitar teachers will want to start you in a book where you’re learning how to play simple songs (using single notes, not chords) on a few strings. In truth, this is not what most people want or mean when they say, “I want to learn how to play guitar.” So guitar lessons might only prove to be a waste of your money because they might not be teaching you what you want to know. When people say, “I want to learn how to play guitar,” what they really mean is, “I want to learn how to play chords.” Yet, many guitar teachers don’t want to teach someone simply how to play chords. In lessons guitar teachers often feel like they’re not giving you your money’s worth if all they’re doing is showing you how to play chords. So if all you’re wanting to do is learn how to strum out a song (i.e. be able to play the chords of a song and maybe hum or sing the words with it) then your best bet is to avoid guitar teachers…they often want more money than you might want to spend for what you want to accomplish. Instead find a friend who knows how to play guitar and ask them this question, “Could you show me how to play some chords?”
True Story: When I first started learning how to play guitar I went to one of my friends who had been playing guitar for a long time. I said to him, “Hey man, would you mind showing me how to play the chords to Sister.” Sister is a song by a band called the Nixons. It was a song that I had heard the guys playing while we were sitting around jamming. I really liked the song and it didn’t look like it was that difficult to play. So my buddy, Nate, sat down with me and took me through the chords to Sister. He showed me where all my fingers needed to be on certain strings and then he’d say something like, “Okay, you see how your fingers are set up now…that’s called G chord.” He continued this process until he’d shown me how to play three other chords. It took about a half hour, but by the time we stopped playing I could kinda sorta play Sister. The fingertips on my left hand felt like they were absolutely on fire. But the good news was that I knew the song well enough to go home, clumsily strum out the chords and even begin to sing along to what I was doing. I had to work really hard to smooth out moving from one chord to the next but once I finally mastered that one song I felt like I could tackle anything on the guitar as long as it didn’t require me to do more than strum chords. It’s amazing how much confidence I had to trudge forward and continue learning more chords and more songs.
That one half hour I spent with Nate, a good friend who didn’t charge me, taught me more about playing the guitar than all the hours I had spent looking over do-it-yourself books. So needless to say, I recommend this method to anybody.
**Do-It-Yourself Guitar Methods**
What if you literally have no one that can help you learn how to play guitar? You might be a really shy person who has very few friends. You may live in a small town that is musically challenged. If you find yourself to be such a person, don’t fret…learning the guitar is still very possible for you. One of the reasons many people don’t like do-it-yourself methods is because they don’t want to take the time to read how to do things. Many people, like myself, would rather sit down with someone and be shown how to do something. However, if you’re a motivated individual who is willing to take the time, then there are many guitar methods out there that you will find helpful.
So many choices….
There are, literally, thousands of guitar methods out there. Each of them will boast to be one of the best or best-selling or most comprehensive or easiest or fastest. I’ll go ahead and save you the headache and tell you that there exists no single method that I’m aware of that is truly the most comprehensive or the easiest or the fastest or even the best. Many guitar methods are the same and, being as such, many of them share the same problems. I’ve seen methods that were either way too hard or way too easy. I’ve seen methods that progressed too slow or too fast. There are methods that focus solely on reading music for guitar. There are methods that combine reading “TAB” (a shorthand number system for notating music without notes) in conjunction with lessons on reading regular sheet music. There are methods that focus solely on playing chords and developing your knowledge of chords. There are methods that focus on playing “leads” in all kinds of varying styles (blues, rock, jazz, etc.). There are methods that attempt to cover all the main topics in guitar playing only to create more confusion than help. Swimming through the sea of methods that exist for learning guitar can often be enough to discourage people.
True Story: I was once in a Sam Goody store and I noticed this poor woman desperately pouring over a bunch of guitar methods. She asked one of the clerks, “Which one of these would you recommend?” The poor clerk knew nothing about guitar and honestly told the woman, “I’m sorry, I don’t really know. We have a few guys on staff that play guitar but none of them are here right now.” You could see the woman’s final hope deflate from her. She was trying to find a good book about learning guitar for her daughter and you could tell she felt like she was failing her little girl. The woman, confused and dejected, began to put the book down so that she could leave and continue her search elsewhere. I stepped in and told her that I was a music teacher and that I might be able to help her. The relief that flooded over her face was really cool to see. Needless to say, we managed to comb through what was there and I was able to find some good books that would prove very helpful to her little girl. I was also able to give this concerned mother some advice about how she could assist her daughter in the learning process. She seemed highly optimistic and supremely confident that she now had the knowledge she needed to help her daughters dreams of playing guitar become a reality.
Books
So what kinds of methods would I recommend? For beginners, most of whom just want to learn how to play chords so that they can jam along to their favorite songs, I recommend methods that focus on teaching chords. The problem is that you won’t find many methods that just say, “I’m going to teach you how to play chords and how to generically play anything.” Remember that’s more of a garage band approach. Most methods seek to be more specific. There are some really cool methods out there that come fully equipped with CD’s that help you learn how to play guitar using familiar tunes (stuff by the Rolling Stones, Kiss, Pink Floyd, John Cougar Melloncamp, etc.) These books seek to teach you the basics behind playing chords and “riffs”. Even if you don’t know what a riff is, chances are good that we all know at least one very popular guitar riff. If you can hum the beginning guitar part to Sweet Home Alabama, you know a riff.
Two of the more popular publishers of guitar methods today are Mel Bay (www.melbay.com) and Hal Leonard (www.halleonard.com). I, personally, am not all that fond of Mel Bay methods. However, they do offer a wide selection of videos, DVD’s, methods in all different styles and even streaming video that you can purchase and beginning watching right now. Hal Leonard is kind of like the Wal-Mart of the music world. They’ve been swallowing up smaller music companies for years so they can do lots of things with their methods that others can’t. For example, they can use popular music in their guitar methods because they have permission to do so. This is more of a difficult task for smaller companies, especially those that deal only in guitar based products. Hal Leonard, being the giant that it is, is capable of offering really unique learning opportunities for the guitar. If you go to the link above for the Hal Leonard site you’ll need to follow a few links for getting to the guitar methods. Once at the Hal Leonard home page you’ll need to search on the left hand side of the page for a clickable link entitled “Guitar/Bass & Fretted”. Once you’ve clicked that link and arrive at that page you’ll notice you have several choices in direction. I recommend that you click the link that says, “Presenting the Hal Leonard Guitar Method – 2nd edition”. Once you click this link you’ll arrive at a new page that describes the Hal Leonard guitar method. It’s actually quite a large series with many different books in it. Past this description you’ll find a few more links. Click on the link that says, “Stylistic Methods”. On this new page you’ll find methods that teach you how to play in different styles like blues, rock, and jazz. If you have an acoustic guitar you might want to check out the method that’s designed for acoustic guitar. If you have an electric guitar you might want to check out the rock guitar method. Either way, the method books seem to focus largely on teaching you chord basics and then using those basics to play songs you probably already know. The acoustic and rock methods use a wide range of popular songs to help you learn how to play.
Video
Yet still, books might not be the best way for you to go. The good news is that with technology advancing the way that it is, so many things are becoming available on VHS and DVD. For example, if you navigate back to the Hal Leonard home page (www.halleonard.com) you’ll notice a link, a little ways down, called “Software and Video”. Click on this link. You will then be prompted to enter a search. In the search field simply type in “guitar”. When I did this I got nearly 400 matches in the category of software, video, and DVD. You don’t have to look far into the list to find a 2 DVD set called The Acoustic Guitar Method. Click on it and check out the description. It seems to cover most of what the books cover. That might not be a bad idea. Yeah you might shell out a little money but in the long run it will still be cheaper than paying for lessons. And look at it this way…you’d have a professional guitarist in your DVD rack that you could consult any time you wanted. Spend some time looking over the different videos that Hal Leonard has to offer. Look online for other sources. Go to Amazon.com and type in the name of the product you’re interested in. This will help you see editorial reviews on the product and see what other people who have bought the same thing have said about the product.
I haven’t even scratched the surface on exploring the vast abyss of guitar methods and videos that are out there. I’ve merely provided you with a starting point. Remember, in this day and age, the internet can be your friend. So use it to your advantage. Go to any random search engine and search something like “guitar methods” and you’ll get enough hits to keep you busy for the rest of your life. Research different products. Email someone. Get on a message board. There are so many ways that the internet can help you get started on the guitar. You might even be able to find resources that are free and reliable. I’ve found a few in my day although I can’t remember where they were (sorry!).
If you use one of the few methods that I’ve described you will be well on your way. Remember, don’t get discouraged. Learning guitar is like learning anything else. It takes time and patience. Some people find that they have a natural aptitude for the instrument whereas others find out that they really have to work hard to get better. In my time as a music educator I had to learn how to play all kinds of different instruments so I consider learning any new instrument a true joy. I guarantee you that won’t always feel that way when you’re learning your first instrument. I can honestly say that the guitar has been one of the most rewarding instruments I’ve ever learned. I think you’ll feel the same way once you begin to get the hang of playing the guitar.
Enough reading…start learning how to play the guitar!
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