How To Play Guitar
So You Want to Play the Guitar? Important Reminders for Beginners
The guitar is one of the most wonderful instruments on the planet. It’s more than just a piece of wood with strings attached to it. It’s more than just playing songs just for the sake of it. There’s a certain beauty in producing each note, always different from the one that precedes it. Even if your fingers are forming around the same chord and you’re strumming it to the same direction, the second strum will always be different. The melody it creates is art and art gives more value to the lives we live. That is why it’s not a surprise if people get easily attracted towards playing it. And they should be.
If you are one of those who wants to play the guitar, you will need to know that it’s both easy and not easy. You may think it doesn’t make sense but think of it this way: it’s easy because to borrow Auguste Gusteau’s words and tweak it a little, anyone can play the guitar. And it’s hard because anyone can quit. At the end of the day, you will either be able to produce music with it or you won’t. There’s a very thin line separating these two realities, and that is hard work.
Here are important reminders you need to tell yourself if you want to succeed in learning how to play the guitar:
This is where everyone–including your idols–starts
Hard work is critical in learning the guitar. The amount of resilience you need to have is unimaginable. Or that may be an exaggeration, but you get the point. The truth is, it is a harrowing experience. You may have heard from people you know how it will give you callouses. Yes, it will. Lots of it.
What’s more is you will certainly suffer from the agony of having hand cramps. The muscles in your hands will hurt so much that it will make you question why you’re doing this whole thing in the first place. You have to accept that all the great geniuses you look up to have experienced the same pain. They were in your very shoes at some point in their lives and that’s quite amazing to think about. Eventually, you will reach the point where you’ll be able to say to yourself that it’s not a bad kind of pain at all.
Be ready with the boring part–and be patient with yourself
Be disappointed with this fact now: there are lots of boring stuff. You may think that playing the electric guitar is so cool. There’s no lie in that really. But in the process of learning the guitar, you will soon find out that it’s not all rainbows. You will also have to deal with pretty much unexciting things such as tuning your guitar or even restringing it. You will be using it a lot. That simply means it will get so used that soon enough you’ll have to replace the strings. Tuning is also a skill that you are going to develop in the process. Don’t get disheartened when you can’t somehow tune it properly. Just like everything in this journey, it takes a lot of practice.
There is so much more to playing the guitar
There is so much more to playing the guitar than forming your fingers to form guitar chords and strumming it away. You will encounter things you don’t understand. At first. This should come as no surprise for you. There are things such as the music notation that you will eventually learn to read. You might also encounter bits of information about music theory if you want to delve deeper into it. You will also learn of course about the different kinds of guitar such as the acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and bass guitar and how you can be experts in all of them. It is a fun mix of both exciting and informative experience and all of them will help be a better guitar player.
Where should you start?
There are so many different ways you can learn the guitar. There are people who teach themselves through watching videos. There are also those who are purely self-taught. And of course, there are some who have guitar teachers to guide them through the process.
All these have their own unique pros and cons but the third one may be the easiest one to do. For one, a teacher can actually show you how it’s done. Also and more importantly, they can provide you with feedback. Compared to videos where you’re mostly on your own, having a teacher also means that you can receive error correction right away. There are times when you think you’re already doing it right but a second opinion will certainly help.
A guitar teacher will also help you with other things such as purchasing your first guitar. This is very important because good guitars can be quite expensive and the last thing you want is to end up with the wrong one. That can be quite devastating considering this should be a memorable experience. Guitars differ in so many ways such as playability and sound quality. You will need to know how to judge a good guitar.
However, you should not think that this is the only good option. Consider what you prefer and what you have at the moment and work with it. There are other options available for you such as online lessons which you can get from a lot of websites these days. All in all, as long as you work hard, any method of learning will be a good start.
When you are trying to learn something, there are so many things that flood your mind. Can you do it? Perhaps you ask yourself this question too many times. Aren’t you too old already? You’ll be surprised to know how age is such an irrelevant factor. Do you have everything you need? Most probably you don’t. And lastly, can you do it? You let these questions occupy your mind and more often than not, they paralyze you into doing absolutely nothing at all. But what you fail to understand is there is only one question that matters and it’s: do you want it enough? If yes, then go for it. Go learn that guitar and add music to the world.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]