12 ms·
It's Never Too Late to Learn Guitar
- telekid 9y agoI decided to start teaching myself guitar about three years ago, at the age of 24. I had always wanted to learn to play an instrument, but before guitar, nothing ever really stuck. When I picked up the guitar, I approached it from a different angle. The key for me was realizing that I could treat this like a 20 year project. I bought myself a guitar book[0] and started working through it page by page. I stopped worrying about whether I was good good or not – instead, I began to find great satisfaction in simply getting better. Three years later, I've made a ton of progress. Practicing has become a kind of meditation for me; it helps clear my head, and keeps me from getting burnt out with work. [0] William Leavitt's "A Modern Method for Guitar." This book is a pedagogical tour-de-force, though it helps to have a little bit of music theory under your belt if you are going to learn from it without an instructor.
- sp821543 9y agoGreat job! Here are some other great books for you: J.S. Bach - Six Cello Suites (transcribed for guitar) Jim Hall - Exploring Jazz Guitar Joe Pass - Virtuoso (find transcription(s) or do it yourself) Gene Bertoncini - Approaching the Guitar
- mikestew 9y agoThe key for me was realizing that I could treat this like a 20 year project. Gawd, I wished I had that realization when I was 20. Or 8. I wanted to learn everything now, and grew frustrated when I didn't. Took shortcuts that I'd pay for later. I'd be a better guitarist today had I taken your mature outlook. Thankfully, I grew up and when time came to pick up the mandolin, I now have an outlook similar to yours. Not as explicit as "20 year project", but I knew I needed to be in it for the long haul. So I haven't skipped things, I practice the mechanics (scales and the like) nearly daily, and sometimes I save something for later (like cross-picking; I'll get to it eventually after I get those arpeggios down). I've made more progress more quickly on the mandolin than I ever did on the guitar, even discounting the headstart of knowing another fretted instrument first.
- squozzer 9y agoI say do it for fun. There are plenty of hobbies available to the middle-aged, and let's face it, one can spend a lot of money being mediocre (i.e., not dominating) at any of them - e.g. racing cars. Those who have sore backs from time to time might want to avoid "traditional" Les Pauls.
- lightedman 9y agoLes Pauls are light. Here, hold my Steinberger Spirit headless 5-string bass. Let's see if you can even remain upright!
- lightedman 9y agoGuess nobody here knows the weights of either guitar. Here: Les Paul weighs generally 9 pounds. Steinberger XT-25 (the model I'm talking about) is 13 pounds. It will give you back problems playing it standing up for too long, this is why it comes with a built-in lap bar.
- Jasonbe 9y agook, so i have guitar but never use the thing, what are some resources to learn?
- mullr 9y agoRocksmith is good fun, if you like that sort of thing.
- dylanfw 9y agoJustin Guitar[1] is a great place to start! 1: https://www.justinguitar.com/ https://www.justinguitar.com/
- mrkgnao 9y agoEdit: ignore this, it's false. Proof: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guitar/comments/1cgrdq/ama_this_is_justin_from_justinguitarcom_ask_me/c9gc0dj/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Guitar/comments/1cgrdq/ama_this_is_... I don't know how this stuck with me for so long, I've practically known it to be true for as long as I've been playing. Huh. --- Interesting bit of trivia I learned long after I stopped using his resources: Tommy Emmanuel is his father.
- pinpeliponni 9y agoYousician (https://yousician.com/ https://yousician.com/). It's like an interactive guitar teacher, offering backround tracks, and evaluating how you play. The really surpsising thing is how well it works.
- adamlovesgin 9y agoLoads more guitar & Lesson related content @ The Blogging Musician - adamharkus.com
- cousin_it 9y agoWarning! If you're middle-aged and thinking of picking up the guitar, you should realize that the public image of guitarists has shifted from "sexy gods" to "annoying hobos" sometime in the last two decades. If you are at least partly motivated by popularity (and who isn't), maybe pick another hobby that actually helps people be popular now, not in your imagined past. So in a sense, yes, it is sometimes too late :-(
- croon 9y agoGreat! Now I can feel less guilty about not having picked up any guitar in the last 10+ years after playing for 15 years as a youth. Although it was never about external adoration as much as one possible tool for music creation. Much like programming, or any form of writing, it's not as much what language or style you choose, but enabling you to express or create something in a space.
- 1337biz 9y ago"pick another hobby that actually helps people be popular now" For example?
- cousin_it 9y agoThe most obvious examples are becoming a star on youtube or instagram.
- amelius 9y agoBy playing what instrument?
- NikolaeVarius 9y agoElectric Triangle
- 1337biz 9y agoI googled Electric Triangle. Urban Dictionary did not leave me dissapointed.
- cjjuice 9y agoAs someone who learned guitar recently in my late 20s, I can say don't overlook basic theory and the value of soloing/coming up with melodies. For me, the creation aspect helped keep me interested. A lot of the beauty of programming is creating new stuff. If that's what you love about programming, try to create your own music as soon as possible. You may want to start on ukulele first (4 strings/requires less pressure) to get the concepts down and start creating your own music faster.
- lightedman 9y agoI'd have to argue against starting with a ukulele. You miss out on the unusual tuning quirk present 6-stringed instruments tuned to thirds, where every string but one can match the tuning of the string above it by phrasing at the 5th fret, that string being the 3rd string (G) and the one above it (B,) you have to phrase at the 4th fret of the 3rd string to get the matching B of the string above instead of at the 5th fret. I'd also say go with 6 strings because the typical chords can have more than 4 notes.
- bench_soup 9y ago"miss out on the unusual tuning quirk present 6-stringed instruments tuned to thirds" A ukulele is tuned to thirds as well. It is basically the same as a four string guitar with a capo on 5th fret (with the typical quirk of having the lowest string being an octave higher) "I'd also say go with 6 strings because the typical chords can have more than 4 notes." Typical chords for a beginner are minor and major chords which uses only 3 notes. And the augmented 7th have 4 notes which leaves you with quite some chords to play. You will be limited by extended dominant 9th,11th and 13th but I wouldn't call those typical. I think a ukulele can be fine to start as you'll get some very quick progress, but its limitations will come very quick as well.
- lightedman 9y ago"It is basically the same as a four string guitar with a capo on 5th fret (with the typical quirk of having the lowest string being an octave higher)" 5th fret represents going up at most 3 whole notes, not 8. "Typical chords for a beginner are minor and major chords which uses only 3 notes." Those are 'power chords' and not your full basic A-G chords. Your basic base E-chord is E-B-E-G#/Ab-B-E on a regular guitar and on a uke it's E-B-E-G#/Ab. Not even a major or minor, just the basic full chord itself runs at least four notes. "I think a ukulele can be fine to start as you'll get some very quick progress, but its limitations will come very quick as well." The limitations become apparent around day two when you realize the E you're playing on a uke doesn't sound as full or bright as an E played on a guitar. I put mine down after a week and never looked back. That was... 23 years ago.
- davidreiss 9y agoIf I ever win the lottery, I'd love to learn to play the guitar, learn a few foreign languages, contribute to open source software, make a bonsai tree, read all the books I have in my apartment that are collecting dust, [a long list of other stuff I'd like to do]. I don't want a big house or an expensive car or "bling". I just wish I had the money to buy time.
- monster_group 9y agoYou don't need to win a lottery to have the time to learn to play guitar (multiple foreign languages - yes you do). It is actually quite difficult to practice more than 15 minutes every day because of sore fingers and frustration. Lottery or no lottery - if you really want to do it you will be able to find 15 minutes in a day.
- omtose 9y ago>because of sore fingers Maybe in the beginning, but after having developed calluses you can basically practice for an undefinite period of time.
- bluGill 9y agoYou need some skill as well, and that takes longer to develop than calluses. 8 hours of "twinkle twinkle little star" will drive anyone insane.
- jodrellblank 9y agomultiple foreign languages - yes you do Benny the Irish Polyglot didn't. ( http://fluentinthreemonths.com http://fluentinthreemonths.com )
- Mediterraneo10 9y agoLike many of the personalities in the internet's polyglot scene, Benny is a self-promoter who hypes his skills but lacks third-party verification that he is truly "fluent" in those languages. Furthermore, “in three months” assumes that he was banging away at picking up that particular language during that time, so even his method assumes more dedication than a lot of random HN people with stressful jobs can devote. Through a combination of formal schooling (besides English etc. in school, I did graduate studies in linguistics that required doing coursework in nearly all the languages in a particular language family, and immersed fieldwork in some of them) and over a hundred thousand kilometers of hitchhiking where I could just practice with drivers all day every day, I have learned most of the languages of Europe to a degree where I can comfortably converse with local people when traveling or in international meetups. However, I am very aware that my skills are deficient in many respects, such as reading classic literature with its immense amount of vocabulary or idioms that native speakers will understand passively, but it doesn't come up in conversation frequently enough for most foreigners to easily pick it up. Learning a foreign language to that degree, which I would consider real fluency, takes an incredible amount of time, time usually spent totally immersed in that country. To give an example from Romania: Benny might come over and be very conversational in 3 months. Loads of foreigners like Erasmus students manage that if they already speak Spanish or Italian and they are motivated and spend a lot of time in cafes and clubs among local people. But if I then handed Benny a simple work of literature that any local child would read in school like Marin Preda’s Morometii or a Caragiale play, he would probably have to reach for a dictionary a dozen times on just the first page.
- francisofascii 9y agoI tried picking up a guitar this past week, and was overwhelmed. Just playing a basic chord was a struggle. How do you get your figure to press down just right on the string and not interfere with another. Amazed by people who can play effortlessly. The post encouraged me to try again. 15 min a day sounds like a reasonable practicing goal.
- philbarr 9y ago> How do you get your figure to press down just right on the string and not interfere with another Place your thumb on the back of the neck in the middle, and have your fingers curl round to press down on the strings using just the tips of your fingers. See how that hurts more? Well, once your fingers have developed callouses, and then healed over, you're well on your way to guitaring superstardom :) This hurts alot more with acoustic guitars than it does with electric, but it can help a lot when you first start out to buy a lighter guage string.
- navbaker 9y agoFind someone (or a YouTube video) that can teach you three or four basic chords that sound good together. Nothing too complex, maybe look up C, G, A minor, and E minor. Play them very slowly at first, not worrying about any kind of melody. It won't take very long before you can differentiate between the strings and hold a basic rhythm. Believe me, everyone starts out feeling like you did!
- ashark 9y agoYou can play a ton of songs with like 5-6 open chords. Find a song you don't hate that just uses G, C, and D majors, and drill the hell out of it until it's easy to transition between those. Way more fun to practice with a real song. You may pick up A-minor or something on the bridge of that song, which is nice. Pick up open A and E majors and E minor on top of that base and you can play rhythm on like 50+% of all guitar-heavy popular music ever written without going any farther. Then start working on barre and (relatedly) power chords and you'll get that number up to 90%. Wait to do that because barre chords require different hand muscles than open chords, so you'll hit trouble again when you start on them and no sense in tackling all that difficulty at the same time. Take heart: once you get over the initial how-the-hell-can-my-fingers-even-do-that hump, learning enough guitar that it's pleasant to listen to is quick. You can hit that mark with casual practice inside 3 months, easily. By contrast, I spent years playing Alto Sax and got way (way) better at it than I ever was at guitar, but that was never pleasant to listen to solo—most instruments you've got to be really really good at them before they're tolerable solo, but guitar's about as far the other direction as you can get.
- marsrover 9y agoI'm 29 and have been playing guitar for at least half my life at this point. It's a great stress reliever and just fun in general. I'm not good by any stretch of the imagination, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying myself. These are some of my personal recommendations for starting out: - Use an acoustic, you don't want to have to carry an amp around with you. - Learn to sing while you play early on. I think it's harder if you try to learn later. - If you learn a song, make it your own. Throw notes and rhythms in that don't necessarily belong. It's no fun being a robot. - Learn the pentatonic scale. - Don't be afraid to just try things. You're in the middle of a solo and don't know where to go? Jump up the neck and hope you land on something that sounds good. - Try to learn songs by ear. Even if you end up looking up the tabs, at least try to play by ear first. - Most of all, don't try to be perfect. Just try to have fun.
- fhood 9y agoSo I agree, except that I think starting out on an acoustic teaches a lot of bad habits, and can also be frustrating for beginners, because acoustics are simply more difficult to play.
- softawre 9y agoI think the trick is to start with a good acoustic. One with good action and one that stays in tune. Like a decent acoustic-electric from Ovation or something like that.
- adamlovesgin 9y agoI'd recommend starting on acoustic too. It's the quickest and cheapest route to entry.
- fhood 9y agoOvation is an exception to the rule. Those things play almost exactly like electrics.
- Inception 9y ago
- mattparlane 9y agoIf you are interested in learning /music/ and not just learning the /guitar/, I would strongly encourage you to start on the piano. I started on the piano and moved to the guitar later, and I've now realised that the piano gives you such a good musical grounding, so much better than the guitar can. There's nothing quite like having it all laid out in front of you. It's the only way that things like sharps and flats make sense, it doesn't make much sense on a guitar and that makes musical theory difficult to learn.
- amelius 9y agoI find the piano quite illogical. Playing a chromatic scale requires to jump from white to black keys. The guitar with its "basic" strings is actually much closer to the underlying physics (and thus mathematics), imho.
- bluGill 9y agoA mandolin is probably the most logical in this area. Tuned like the violin, but you get frets and don't have to learn the bow.
- snarfy 9y agoThis might be true from a physics standpoint, but it's not from a musical standpoint. The vast majority of all western music was composed on a piano first. It really does help to know it when learning any western music. Even the chromatic scale on a guitar doesn't accurate represent the physics. It's still based on sqrt 2^12 mathematics, not natural waves. If you want true temperament it looks more like this: http://www.truetemperament.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/slider2-GTR8.png http://www.truetemperament.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/sl...
- analog31 9y agoIn my view the "logic" of any historical instrument emerges as you gain experience. You eventually reach a stage where you can think and hear the music in your head, and it comes out of the instrument. At this point, the pianist finds "shapes" of their hands, that correspond to what they want to play. So in a sense the arrangement of the keys is a kind of memory aid.
- Tycho 9y agoHere's something I wish I'd realized when I first started playing. If you know the right set of chords you can play them in basically any order and they'll sound nice. If you take scale like C major, there's a chord that goes with every note of the scale. On a piano this would be mean playing three note chords on the white keys only, all the way up. So for the key of C that gives you C_major D_minor E_minor F_major G_major A_minor B_diminished C_major Now here is the cool part: you can play those chords in virtually any order and they are going to sound good (although probably better to skip the B diminished chord, and also helps to start or end on C). It also works in the relative minor key, in this case A minor (still just white keys on the piano, essentially): A_minor B_diminished C_major D_minor E_minor F_major G_major A_minor Those chords are all easy to play on a guitar. It would also be easy to do this in the key of G major (E minor) on the guitar. They key doesn't actually matter, but those are easy for beginners. You can just number the chords 1 to 7, then pick any sequence of numbers, eg. 145623, or 4545261, and play it, and it will sound good, and you can make up a melody or a finger-picking pattern to go with it. For some sequences you might need to get a bit creative and vary the timing (eg. some chords will work better if you move through them faster than average, some you can linger on for longer than average), but you could make lots of good music from that alone.
- mrkgnao 9y ago> C_major D_minor E_minor F_major G_major A_minor B_diminished C_major A good way to see where this comes from is to note that the major scale with C as the tonic ("root") note is C D E F G A B (the white keys on a piano), and starting at any note in the sequence and taking every other note (for a total of three) gives you three-note chords called "triads": C = C E G (skip D, take E, skip F, take G) Dm = D F A Em = E G B F = F A C G = G B D Am = A C E Bdim = B D F The intervals between successive notes are (major or minor) thirds, hence these chords are constructed by ascending (moving up the scale) in thirds. The Wikipedia page does a good job of explaining how you can construct chords like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triad_(music) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triad_(music) You can take four notes at a time instead of three to get seventh chords. I've been playing for quite some time, and have also known bits and pieces of theory for about the same amount of time, but I've never really applied the latter to my playing until recently. I'm getting into playing Bach and so on and find that I'd really like to understand, e.g. Roman numeral analyses, and being fluent in basic theory and how it "looks" on your instrument is key to this.
- beat 9y agoAs someone who has been playing for 35 years or so, here are some observations... First and foremost, guitar is a pretty straightforward instrument for beginners. There's a reason it's the most popular instrument in the world. If you put in the effort, you can be playing something musical in a few months, and proficient in basic folk/rock music in a couple of years. It doesn't take "talent". It just takes effort. Something that throws a lot of beginners is that we fret with our "weak" hand and pick with our "strong" hand, which seems backwards. That's only because they're beginners. Picking is much harder than fretting. It doesn't seem that way when you're struggling with cramped hands for your first few chords, but good picking technique is the key to actually being good, and it's very challenging. Don't try to learn on a crap guitar! If it has high action and truly hurts to play, or if it has bad tone, it'll drive you away. Learn on a good instrument. Virtually any guitar that costs over $200-300 new these days is good. You don't need to spend a fortune. And get it "set up" at a good guitar shop. It makes a huge difference in tone and playability. If you're playing rock guitar, there's a real temptation to use way too much distortion to get what you think is the sound on records. Most great rock guitar tones are much cleaner than they sound. When in doubt, use less gain. And finally, the guitar is an incredibly deep instrument. After 35 years, I feel I know less now than I knew after three years. Approach with humility.
- s_kilk 9y ago> Don't try to learn on a crap guitar! If it has high action and truly hurts to play, or if it has bad tone, it'll drive you away. Learn on a good instrument. This x1000 Far too often I've seen people try to learn on a ghastly cheap acoustic because they were "building up to" an electric, the thing they wanted to play in the first place. There's a weird kind of asceticism around the notion of paying-ones-dues on an acoustic first, which ends up just discouraging the learner and preventing them from actually enjoying the instrument.
- H1Supreme 9y agoTotally. I ran into this just recently. A friend of mine's girlfriend is starting to learn. Someone gave her an acoustic to learn with. It had: mile high action, old strings, shitty tuners, and the fretwork was awful. There is no way she's going to learn or stick with it. Not with that piece of crap.
- tarr11 9y agoI learned to play guitar as a kid, played some classical and jazz as a teenager and in my twenties, then put it down. I have a nice classical guitar sitting in my closet for a decade. My problem is that although I can read music, understand some theory, can play chords and even some can play a little bit of complex music like Villa Lobos, I have absolutely no "ear". I can't even tune the guitar without help. So this means I basically need to memorize or play from sheet music, which kind of got boring after a while.
- mabub24 9y agoYou don't really need a good ear for tuning. Pick up a tuner, they're pennies nowadays. When you're tuning by "ear", though, the trick is, on an acoustic guitar at least, to feel the body resonating. It's much more a feeling than a particular sound. I think very few people can just pluck an E note out of nowhere. That takes years of practice. A general "ear" for melody and harmony comes from practice, exposure to different music styles, and playing with other people. Some stuff that sounds awful by yourself sounds much better with accompanying instruments.
- mcrad 9y agoTry singing the melodies while playing. I never really wanted to be a "singer" but found that practicing voice has improved my ear and more intuitive side of the instrument.
- pcsanwald 9y agoI'd highly recommend the "singing against a drone" exercises in "the harmonic experience" by W.A. Mathieu. You can do them with an acoustic guitar, and they will improve your ear immensely. The first exercise is simple: singing exactly in tune with an open string.
- baby 9y agoCan't you ditch all of that and use one of these cool new programs where they show you where to play on the guitar, you play in there, and the mic detects if you played correctly then proceeding with the next note? I think RockSmith is one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaHsqGSetVo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaHsqGSetVo I think there are others that might look more pedagogical.
- acomjean 9y agoRocksmith works with Bass and Guitar and is a lot of fun. Its basically rock band with real instruments. It has some basic video lessons too. The guitar <-> usb cable works with other programs too, though the reverse is not true (you needed to use the rocksmith adapter cable with the program). melodics is the software to learn finger drumming (though they're adding real drums to the software).
- JustinAiken 9y ago> you needed to use the rocksmith adapter cable with the program There's a nocable patch for PC, and for Mac you can create an aggregate audio interface named "Rocksmith USB Cable" so you can use any interface you like - it's much funner with Apogee gear than the toy cable!
- Devthrowaway80 9y agoThe best "app" I've tried is a digital recorder and a metronome. My process: Play slowly until you think you've nailed it. Listen to the recording, realize you didn't. Fix the parts that sound bad. Repeat until you actually nail it. Increase the metronome by 10%. Repeat until you're slightly faster than performance speed. Back off and playing at performance speed will sbe easy.
- Lon7 9y agoRockSmith is a fun tool to practice with but I'd be very hesitant to recommend someone use it as a method to actually learn the guitar. The biggest problem is that by learning differently, you create a real barrier between yourself and other musicians. Most guitarists learn to play in a somewhat similar manner. You learn to follow along with music and play by the tab or sheet music. The feedback you get is solely from your own ear. You learn how to stay on tempo and key from auditory cues, not visual ones. RockSmith changes all this. RockSmith is useful to practice really difficult passages, but it becomes a major crutch at all other times and I really can't imagine someone become a well rounded guitarist while depending on it.
- ClayM 9y agoI played the piano growing up, but pretty much stopped when I was 16 - i discovered sports, computers, girls When I was 30, I decided to pick up the guitar. Knowing how to read music was certainly a jump start, but it's certainly doable. JustinGuitar.com is a fantastic resource, but finding a teacher is the best.
- H1Supreme 9y agoHere's my $0.02: Learn barre chords straight away. Don't waste your time learning all the open chord songs you can before you jump in. Jump right into it. Open chords will be easy down the road. Training your hand to barre strings with one finger, while moving the rest independently, is the most challenging, and the most rewarding thing to learn. It opens up so many doors to your playing.
- otterpro 9y agoWow, I wish I had known before I started learning. Moving up and down the fret with barre chord is cool and easy once it is mastered. However, Barre chord is also the hard to learn to play, requiring a lot of finger contortion, and also probably most painful for players as the finger presses down on all 6 strings. A lot of beginners either skip or avoid barre like the plague. I've found that it is easier to do barre on either light string and/or electric guitar.
- beat 9y agoI hardly ever play full barre chords. I can, but I don't. (I was subjected to practicing all the CAGED chord shapes as barres in circle of fifths up the neck, which is great for the hands and the brain.) I don't like the sound of six-string chords generally. So I mostly chord two or three strings at a time, and move what's getting picked from strum to strum to mix the low and high notes. It's much more dynamic and interesting, and sounds a lot less cluttered. But that's me. The result is that my barres are lazy. Since I'm only trying to get three notes at most to ring clearly at once, I'm just muting the rest, which is a lot less effort. Muting technique is everything!
- mikesickler 9y agoInstead of a private lessons, I use ArtistWorks.com. I am enrolled in the banjo course and have found the video lessons really effective.
- adamlovesgin 9y agoThanks for the comments everyone, and glad you enjoyed the article!
- criddell 9y agoThe last time I thought about getting serious about practicing was after I had read Anders Ericsson's book Peak. I was trying to come up with a practice routine that fit the deliberate practice model. If you've gone down the same path and worked on optimizing your practice time, what did you come up with? I bought my first guitar in the mid-90s and have worked at it off-and-on since then and still can't play a single real song.
- texteller 9y agoThis is an timely write up, bought a brand guitar way back 1 years back and still thinking if this is the right age to learn. This write up changed my prescriptive.
- adamlovesgin 9y agoThanks a lot. Start. Now!
- gooseyard 9y agothat's a guitarron in the picture which, coincidentally, is the instrument I am trying whether to decide I am too late in my musical career to bother learning :)
- hobbyguitarist 9y agoI have been playing guitar on and off since college and it is one of my biggest joys and a great way to relax. I am self-taught so am missing a few key ingredients to really master the instrument but it remains one of my favorite hobbies. I was put off learning to play guitar in high school by more experienced guitar playing classmates (as well as an actual clerk at a music store) who scoffed and sneered that someone would have the audacity to learn guitar so 'late'. The refrain was "you'll never be good, what's the point?" (Of course, these were high schoolers and I shouldn't have been so easily swayed, but as a shy teenager hearing these types of things make you crawl back into your shell very quickly.) I bring this up on this site because in many instances this "don't bother, the playing guitar club is FULL" attitude was prevalent when I began to learn programming around 5 years ago with the hope of changing careers (I'm mid-30s). While seeking out guidance in various forums online it became clear to me that to many experienced programmers it was inconceivable that I'd ever be successful as a programmer while starting so 'late' and I shouldn't even bother. The reasons were plenty: I didn't have a CS degree, I wasn't much interested in low-level programming (at the time), I didn't have an interest at getting a job at the big 4 and just wanted to write small web and mobile apps to start (the horror!), I didn't much care for committing to memory every sort algorithm in existence, etc. In short, how dare I knock on the door of their prestigious club? Fortunately I ditched the learning online route and took the bootcamp plunge while it was just kicking off, where I found a similar community of people and some really awesome instructors who were extremely patient and encouraging. I can't speak for all bootcamp students but for me at least it remains, years later, one of the best decisions I've made and has transformed my career and life for the better. Will I ever be a virtuoso, Carnegie Hall-playing guitarist or a "rock star" engineer at Google working on the most cutting edge AI? No, probably not, and I'm OK with that. Maybe in my next life. But what I'm doing is making me happy and is a constant source of new knowledge and discovery. I would just hope that in the future, whatever our expertise(s) we are more careful not to be so quick to dismiss new learners as well as other interested people in other industries and walks of life.
- vparikh 9y agoAs the late great Jimi Hendrix mused: 'Sometimes you want to give up the guitar, you’ll hate the guitar. But if you stick with it, you’re gonna be rewarded.' I have been playing for 6 years and am just now getting to the point where I can confidently say that I "play" guitar. Its a long journey and at times painful. But stick with it as the rewards are well worth it. Here are some tips for the new guitar player from my experience: 1. You don't need an expensive guitar - you just need a good guitar. I know we walk into the guitar shop and dream of owning that Gibson Les Paul 59 Reissue or the Custom Shop Stratocaster or the PRS. But its not the guitar that makes the music - its you! 2. Patience. Give yourself some time to see progress. Practice everyday, even if it is for 10 minutes. Pickup up the guitar and just do it for 10 minutes. 3. Stick with it. The guitar will challenge you. It test your patience, tenacity, discipline, will power and your determination before it will give you anything back. 4. To get the quickest path to start playing and having fun - Learn power chords first, bar chords next. And the minor pentatonic. 5. Learn the notes on the fretboard as soon as you can. In fact start learning them form day one. Do one string at a time. Learn the root notes of the minor pentatonic and where they are in relation to each other. If you do these five things first, you will be surprised how far you are going to get. These are the basic tools of most blues and rock guitarist and 90% of music of that genre can be covered by that. If you have started the journey of learning the guitar, remember its is a journey that won't ever end. So enjoy it!
- ff7f00 9y agoThe "What Musicians Can Learn about Practicing from Current Brain Research" article[1] linked to in the practice section was interesting. The Mental Practice experiment mentioned is pretty amazing. I'm curious, what do people's practice schedules look like? I've been trying to regiment my practice schedule but it's not easy and the only resource I've used is Justin Sandercoe's intermediate practice routine[2] but it tends to lean toward a longer 1-hour workout. Has anyone found an effective method for 15-30 minute practice schedules? [1]: http://www.cti-home.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Practice-Current-Brain-Research.pdf http://www.cti-home.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Practice-... [2]: https://www.justinguitar.com/en/PC-502-IntermediatePractice.php https://www.justinguitar.com/en/PC-502-IntermediatePractice....
- k__ 9y agoLike with many things, to get really good you need to put in the time. I'm playing for 14 years now, started with 18, and I'm a pretty mediocre player. I know people who also started with 18 and got really good in under 4 years.
- OhHeyItsE 9y agoGlad to see this on here. Really, it's never too late to learn anything, but I can offer context here as I have been playing for 25+ years. I can say without a doubt that picking up a guitar is one of the best things I've ever done in my life. It is just so rewarding. There are no barriers to your level of achievement. Want to get better? Just play more. In fact, the first thing I do after a bad day at work is pick up my guitar. I know that I have at least something in my day that I can do better at than I could have the day before. It's also tremendously rewarding to be able to kind of level-up to your heroes. I can play things now that I only dreamed of when I was a kid. Iconic solos and riffs that I thought required some kind of superhuman level of skill. Turns out it just takes a lot of practice. The difference being that those heroes wrote those solos in their early twenties, while I'm merely mimicking them in my late thirties. But I still get to hear those sounds coming out of my amp, created by my fingers. What other hobby or activity could offer that? Most of us could spend 12 hrs a day in the driveway shooting hoops but could never even dream being the worst player in the NBA.
- osteele 9y agoI started guitar in my mid forties. Four years later, I've reached the point where (some) non-musicians are envious, and actual musicians categorize my sounds as “music” more often than not. There's lot of great advice on this thread. (Especially about deliberate practice; and about avoiding instruments so cheap they'll just increase the difficulty while making you sound worse than you are.) I'll fill in a few notes from my own journey. YMMV. Choosing a guitar: * Steel string is hell on the fingers for a beginner. It is effective altitude training for nylon and electric. I love the tone and I'm really glad I started with steel string. However, had I known how hard it would be, I don't know that I'd have advised myself to start with it. * Electric is easy-peasy (callus- and finger-strength-wise). I think a decent electric is cheaper than a decent acoustic too. Con: (1) you're less likely to pick up the instrument for two minutes of spontaneous practice when you walk past it on its stand. (I've probably got a lot of practice in from two minutes that turned into fifteen that turned into fifty.) (2) If you're a unmusical nerd like me, it's easy to get distracted from the hard work of making cleaning notes, by the comfort zone of playing with electronics. * Nylon (classical) is easier on the fingers than steel but more difficult than electric. It might represent a happy medium between beginner fingers and practice activation energy, even if you don't play classical. Beware: new nylon needs to be tuned again every five minutes. After a month, it finishes stretching out, and holds its tuning about as well as steel. * You can play any style of music on any guitar, except: (1) you can't really bend (a blues staple technique) a nylon string; (2) electric guitars have much greater sustain than any acoustic guitar: if the music you want to play sounds more like a violin or voice (sustained, tonal) than like a piano (percussive), you need an electric; (3) let's not talk about slide. * What everyone else says about too cheap a guitar (or, “guitar-shaped instruments”, such as acoustics available for <$150-200). Specifically, you're looking for (1) “low action” (don't have to press a string too far for it to reach the fret), (2) good intonation (fifth fret low E is the same pitch as the open A, etc.), (3) stays in tune. Depending on your tolerance, you may also require (4) good tone (timbre). Cheap instruments are generally deficient on all of these, and this can really kill your motivation. Decide whether you want to strum (harmony) or play individual notes (melody, or “lead”; also most of classical). These are almost different instruments. (For the beginner. A lot of melody is playing off of chord shape hand posiitons; and, coming from the other direction, embellished chords get to sound a lot like lead.) If accompanying (you sing or play harmonica, or can play with in a band), strumming is a valuable contribution. If you're playing solo, you probably need to play lead in order to have music that can stand its own. Decide whether you want to play with a pick or finger style. It's easier to be loud with a pick, and it's especially easy to be loud strumming with a pick. If you're playing acoustic with a band, this may matter to you. Classical, on the other hand, is always finger style. Otherwise, don't make too much of this decision – there's a fair bit of technique to each, but most of what you need learn as a beginner applies to both, and if you continue with guitar you'll probably want both under your belt anyway. Just find some musicians or music that you want to sound like, and do what they do. Choosing a learning style. Try each of the following; see which one(s) seem effective for you. * Learn from an instructor. If this is how you learn best and you have funds and access, find someone you can trust, and then ignore everything else I've written. * Play by ear. Listen to something, try to make your guitar sound like that. Many of today's older guitarists wore out vinyl records this way. Man I wish I could learn this way. * Jam with friends. This may work if you're musically talented (I'm not), and/or coming from another instrument. Ditto. * Learn by watching. Watch people's fingers, do what they do. If this is your learning style, YouTube is the golden age. My pseudo-science theory is that if you're good at learning from watching (e.g. sports, dance, watching people's hand motions when they sew, cook, juggle, drive, etc.), maybe you have a well-functioning mirror neuron system and this will work well for you. Yet another style I aspire to but suck at. * Play from tab. Learn to play tab, and get some pieces under your belt. I kind of feel like this is the least-musician-y thing to do, but it matches my strengths so much better than the others that I went with this. At this point the road forks: (1) Classical: now learn the (newer!) standard staff, and leave tab behind – that was your starting wheels. (2) Folk/pop/rock/etc. * Play from standard notation. This is really only used in classical repertoire. Even for classical, tab (which is the older notation) is still easier as a stepping stone, and has the advantage of building in performance notes about fingering, but if you're working with an instructor or you're not going to be put off by learning several hard things at once, then skipping tab gets you to the endpoint more directly. * Play from chord diagrams or lead sheets. This is good for strumming (harmony). I'm not a strummer; don't have much to say here. Practice: * “What you do is what you do every day.” 15 minutes / day beats two hours once a week * “The journey is the reward.” Find a way to enjoy the practice itself. * Allocate some time each day for (1) skills, (2) repertoire, (3) noodling around. When you're starting, you won't have any repertoire (2), and there may not be much distinction between (1) and (3) (“I'm just trying to get any single note to sound clean.) * At any particular point, have one or more skills you're working on. I've iterated through: play without fret buzz, use each finger without fret buzz, finger adjacent strings, finger non-adjacent strings, chromatic scales, blues scales, various chords, various chord alternations, making a barre, hammer-ons and pull-offs with various fingers, flat picking at tempo, flat picking alternate strings at tempo, finger picking a chord, bending a note, banjo rolls. Spend fifteen minutes a day on each active skill. (Exception: when you're starting, you may only have strength or callus for five minutes. “It's a marathon not a sprint.”) I probably spent fifteen minutes a day on barre for a week or two before hearing anything that even vaguely resembled success; eventually, it locked in. * Learn to play at higher tempo by (1) playing as fast as you can with zero errors. Drop the pace until you can do this. There's a theory that you can learn even faster by (2) playing even faster, with errors, so long as you also do (1). This has worked for me. * Some great musicians swear by practicing with metronomes; some advocate doing without them so that you develop your own sense of rhythm. If the latter, record yourself and play it back against a metronome, so you can tell if your tempo is as good as you think is is. * Isolate and repeat difficult sections. Spend a minute, or five, or fifteen, on the smallest problematic section (maybe a single chord, or chord alternation, or four notes from a melody); don't play the whole piece and only hit the problem spot every few minutes.
- pcsanwald 9y agoI've been a professional guitarist since I was a teenager, and switched to upright bass about 3 years ago (I'm 40). The biggest advantages to learning as an adult is on average you are going to have money to pay for lessons and a decent instrument, and are probably going to be more organized in terms of practicing and all that. The disadvantages are that it's harder to network and find others at your level to play with. And, to be clear, the way to get good at, and enjoy music, is to play with other people. Even one-on-one lessons are a form of playing with others, and many adults use lessons as a proxy for playing with others. Playing with other people was a very easy thing for me to do when I was coming up, and I'd imagine it would be significantly harder for an adult. But, I believe it's critical to enjoyment and success in music.
- fenwick67 9y agoYeah it's been a real struggle for me to find people to play with as an adult. It's hard to find adults who aren't either A. really good, B. really bad, or C. too busy
- pcsanwald 9y agoI honestly think the best thing to do is to take lessons, and ask your teacher if they have other students who'd like to play with you. You can also go to jam sessions if you live in an area that has a good music scene; I live in SF and there are regular jam sessions for bluegrass/jazz/folk/country/blues nearby. But, the thing about jam sessions is that you have to be able to play at a certain level to really enjoy them. I think honestly the best solution is one that almost no one takes: hire really good musicians to play with you. When I was in music school, I had a professor that would literally say: "For all the money y'all pay in tuition, you would play better if you took that money and hired $famous_drummer and $famous_bassist to come play trio with you at your house". Obviously if you are a beginner you don't need to hire the best people in town, but most professional musicians in this day and age are going to be happy for a gig like this.
- zwieback 9y agoStraight to upright or did you play bass guitar first? I started playing upright in addition to bass guitar and it's a lot of fun but a lot of relearning as well.
- nnd 9y agoWhat do experienced guitar players think about apps like Youcisian (which are basically interactive tabs with timing assistance and learning feedback)? Do they actually help in understanding the instrument and music composition?
- EADGBE 9y agoWhatever helps you get over that initial hump of pain and frustration is a great asset to use. I've found when learning guitar (and therefore music), that any holes you encounter seem to get filled in later; at one point or another. Surrounding yourself with enough resources to close these holes is only good for you.
- probably_wrong 9y agoSince there are so many guitar players in this thread, I'll go ahead and ask The One Question that pushed me away from playing (and keeps me away): How do you know what to do with your right hand? Most books I've (admittedly, casually) read and most tabs on the internet are surprisingly silent about this.
- themckman 9y agoThat's a great question and one that I've struggled with myself. Best I can do is tell you to find a guitarist who you respect and appears to play without effort, find videos of them playing and try to emulate what they do. Practice with a metronome at very slow speeds and really focus on the motions and positioning required as you move from note to note and string to string. Arpeggios work really well for this type of practice because they're going to require you to hybrid pick and sweep to play them really fast.
- pcsanwald 9y agoThe jazz guitar form of bikeshedding is discussing right hand picking technique. There is endless amounts of discussion on consecutive picking, alternate picking, sweep picking, gypsy picking, benson picking, etc. Have a look at Tuck Andress' take on this to get a flavor: https://www.tuckandpatti.com/pick-finger_tech.shtml https://www.tuckandpatti.com/pick-finger_tech.shtml
- yahna 9y ago> The best guitarists practice for hours every day This is why I suck at guitar after 15 years (although I stopped for several). I just don't stick with it enough.
- zwieback 9y agoIsn't that a guittaron (fretless guitar/bass combo) in the image at the top of the post. I've been wanting to get one of those but have too many instruments already...
- simon_uberchord 9y agoHi folks, I just had a look at the user statistics of our guitar teaching app Uberchord. More than 10% of our user base is actually older than 50. If you look at the most active users, the percentage is even higher. So it seems that even if you are late in the game, you can still start learning with a little help of your phone.
- EADGBE 9y agoAs much as I love guitar, these principles can apply to any instrument, so don't think you're pegged into learning guitar because you started late. You can pick up the bassoon or piano just as well.
- eternalvision 9y agoCongratulations to Adam Harkus and to "adamlovesgin". This was the post that broke the camel's back. I am going to leave earth now because of this article. I'm jaded from the endless harassment. Good job to Palantir and others for the wonderful weapons you've built. See you in hell, possibly. Bye!