How to Teach Yourself to Play Guitar
I’ve been playing guitar for about ten years. My level depends on who you ask. If you ask the average person, I’ll be pretty good, but if you ask a panel of professional guitarists, I probably wouldn’t pass the test.
That’s because my goal was never to be an advanced player who knows all the intricacies of technique and theory. My goal was just to get good at what I like to do, which is to make music and have fun.
If that’s your goal too, read on.
If you’re more the grind-it-out theory kinda person, you’ll be better off asking another grind-it-out theory kinda person.
First and Foremost: Why Should You Learn Guitar?
To me, learning musical instruments has by far been the best and most rewarding journey I’ve been on. Some people have running as their outlet, some have writing, and for me, it’s making music.
The way I see it, there are three main reasons why I believe the better part of the world’s political and religious problems could be solved if everyone just jammed out together regularly:
- It stimulates your creativity: whenever I spend time with my guitar, I feel much more open to falling into creative flow states.
- It reduces stress: it’s my number 1 anxiety reliever, and always works for me.
- It strengthens personal discipline, perseverance, and patience: practice makes perfect, but it doesn’t come quickly. You’ll have to be patient and disciplined to get to sustainable improvement, and training those traits will have a positive effect on all other aspects of your life.
Bonus reason: It automatically makes you at least 10x cooler (I didn’t make up the rules, that’s just how it works).
The Biggest Pitfall in Learning an Instrument
To set yourself up for success, you need to be aware of the thing that keeps many guitar-buyers from actually becoming guitar-players: the Valley of Disappointment.
The Valley of Disappointment is a place you’ll inevitably have to pass in the process of learning any new skill, and playing the guitar is no exception. James Clear describes this concept really well in his book Atomic Habits.
He explains that the Valley of Disappointment is the place on the learning curve where expectations by far exceed your reality.
I’ve been through this stage plenty of times and many passion projects have stranded and died a slow death in the Valley.
Speaking from personal experience, it’s likely the result of a combination of the following situations:
You’re expecting way too much of yourself
More often than not, inspiration to learn a new skill will come from role models or dream visions of what it could be like. You’ll compare yourself to Hendrix, van Halen and Clapton — not your neighbor who just started playing. You’ll play for a day, maybe two, and get frustrated that you can’t get the chords right. Nothing kills consistent practice like frustration. Go easy on yourself, and only compare yourself to past you and nobody else.
You think you’re not improving (while you most definitely are).
As you can see in the curve above, learning doesn’t happen at a perfectly linear pace. Hell, it doesn’t even happen as smoothly as that curve. It’s a rollercoaster of ups, downs, ‘’I got this!”, ‘’Ah, fuck this’’, quitting, and picking it back up. It’s easy to get fooled by one of the many downs you’ll experience and take it as a sign that ‘’it’s just not for you’’ while actually, nobody on the planet is perfect at something right from the start. Try to train yourself to look past these bumps and remember that slow improvement is improvement too.
You give up before you get the chance to get better.
How are you going to get better if you don’t stick around to find out? Sure, usually when I give up it’s not because I made a conscious decision to quit. I just kind of stop doing the thing. But it all boils down to the same thing — you’re not giving yourself enough time to grow. Ask yourself a simple question: Why am I not allowing myself to be a beginner?
Be aware of what a typical learning curve looks like and work towards the breakthrough; the A-ha moment. There will come a moment in time where you look back and realize you’ve made it out of the Valley.
From there on out, it’s all uphill.
How to Start Learning Guitar
I was barely in high school when I started playing so obviously I would have done things differently had I been a conscious and efficiently functioning adult at that point. Still, I have no regrets about my learning process whatsoever. It was all trial and error and I’m confident about where it brought me.
Figuring it out and exploring the best methods as I went, I learned some valuable lessons that I would love to be able to share with my younger self.
Don’t worry about getting a fancy guitar
Do you hear the difference between a $80 guitar and a $800 guitar? Sure. Does it matter at all when starting out? Absolutely not. The tuning is the same, the parts are the same, the nature of the sound is the same, and there’s absolutely no reason to spend boatloads of cash on your first guitar.
The only thing you should decide for yourself is what kind of guitar you want to start out with. In general terms, there are two types you could go for: a Western guitar or a Classical guitar. The main difference is that Western guitars have steel strings that sound brighter and more metally. Classical acoustic guitars have nylon strings, which are more gentle on the fingers if you aren’t used to playing yet.
Many beginners start on a Classical acoustic purely because of that reason, but don’t let that stop you from picking a Western off the bat if you prefer that sound. Your fingers will get used to it soon enough. Ultimately, it comes down to personal preference (and now I love my Western more than I do my Classical).
You can hear the difference in sounds here.
Prioritize fun over mind-numbing practice
Honestly, if I would have forced myself to learn theory right from the start and practice Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star over and over again, I would have never made it past the 1-month mark. That’s me talking about myself, not about you. You might benefit from this method, but chances are that you’re like me and you like your hobbies to be fun (shocker). The beginning is the period with the highest risk of quitting, so especially in the beginning; make it as fun as possible for yourself.
Practice songs you like. Even if you can’t play them fully yet, you’re still working towards a tangible goal that likely made you want to learn guitar in the first place. Nobody wakes up with a newfound burning desire to learn Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star.
Practice whatever it is you want to be able to play.
Change up your practice methods
There are multiple ways to learn a song. Trimming it down to three main ways to learn would leave the following:
- Download the app Ultimate Guitar Tabs. This app (they also have a desktop site) has been my partner in crime for learning and playing guitar, piano and ukulele and still is today. You’ll find about every song that exists on this planet and you can easily check out how to play a chord as you go. They also have a beginners course that will teach you the most common chords, and upon completion, you’ll be able to play more than 5,000 songs. How’s that for a start?
- Explore the pits of YouTube. There are more free tutorials and teachers on there than you could possibly ever go through. If you’re set on learning a specific song, you can just search for tutorials on how to best approach that specific song. If you’re focused on general guitar playing or technique, have a look at JustinGuitar, Andy Guitar, or Paul Davids Guitar.
- Play with others. I have precisely 0 friends who play guitar but if I did, I’d have definitely switched it up and played with others every now and then, especially in the beginning of my learning process. Of course, you can also connect with people you don’t know, so if that’s your cup of tea, check out Facebook groups, communities that guitar instructors might have, download Viper to find musicians near you, or check out Meetup.com to join jam sessions.
- Bonus point: this wasn’t around when I started but Udemy has tons of great beginner courses on guitar! And any other instrument for that matter. I’m following a course now to learn saxophone and having all starters-info at hand packaged into a nice structured course is really great.
Prioritize consistency over intensity
I’m sure you’ve heard this before, and I wouldn’t include it if it weren’t so true. Practicing consistently (i.e. 15 minutes per day) is much more effective than practicing once per week for three hours. You’ll train your muscle memory, your fingers will get used to it quicker, everything you learn will stick much better, plus you integrate it into your subconscious brain — the place where you store all your habits. If you practice daily, it will feel much more natural to you than if you only play once a week.
It’s like a constant deposit into the piggy bank weeks after weeks, year after year — it adds up.
Things I Would Have Done Differently
I definitely don’t have it all figured out. I’m good at chords, strumming, fingerpicking and whatever else comes with that but I still regret not learning scales sooner. I’ve been learning them lately but I can tell I’m not so great with getting myself to consistently practice ̶b̶o̶r̶i̶n̶g̶ things like that.
Here comes the million-dollar question: do you have to learn them?
I’ll be the last person to force you to learn scales. I’ve done without for years, but my goal has shifted over the years. I love my electric guitar but playing that right now is like driving a Ferrari in second gear on a roundabout, and I’m tired of keeping my Hendrix solos between me and my air-guitar. But for me, that was never the first goal. My first goal was to make music and have fun. Consider that achieved. Now, my next goal is to be able to solo and improvise on the electric. And for that — you guessed it — I’m going to have to learn scales.
For the rest, I wouldn’t have done anything differently. Playing guitar is such a big part of my life and I’m happy with how the journey has been so far.
Parting Words
Still in doubt whether to start learning guitar? Do it. Give it a try for three months consistently and if you hate it after that, drop it. But it’s way too valuable and too much fun to not even try.
When you start, go easy on yourself. Give your fingers rest, because it might hurt a tiny bit in the beginning. Try and be consistent. Play what you like, and like what you play. And above all:
Enjoy the process.
It’s pretty great.
