So, you have a guitar! What’s next? Learn how to play? Or you know a bit and it’s time to advance you skills? Maybe at the time you bought your guitar, the sales person encouraged you to pick up a “learn how to play the guitar” book. If you weren’t lucky enough to spend another 10-30 dollars at the time, I’m sure it’s crossed your mind to pickup one of these ‘do it yourself’ books. In this short article, my goal is to save you a lot of time and frustration with the very least of getting you to think about options and alternatives.So, everyone is different. In my 6 years as a Guitar Teacher, each and every one of us learns in a different way and at different speeds.What I think is frustrating for everyone is when wehearof these guitaristswith this miraculousgift of “teaching themselves” or “learning to play by ear”. Don’t you hate those people? I for one did not learn how to play guitar this way and with my years of graduating from music college, playing with many different groups and teaching hundreds of people, I STILL HAVEN’T MET A PERSON WHO HAS STARTEDGUITAR IN THIS WAY!

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that this type of learnerdoes not exist. Doesn’t that make you feel better? Lets face it,we all need some kind of guidance and starting point! Maybe it’s just a cool thing to tell your friends that you learned on your own or something…nasty rumors!! It took me years of learning other artistsworks until I could start ‘learning by ear’ and ‘teaching myself’ techniques and apply them.So how do we tackle guitar? Guitar books, right?How hard can it be?NO! Hear me out…

So what’s my beef with guitar books?I don’t hate ‘do it yourself guitar books’I think the first TEN pages are great! They explain proper guitar posture, the names of the parts on the guitar, the names of the notes on the strings….etcetc. This is all essential knowledge. Then as we scroll through the rest of the bookand we start learning how to read music and play some classic songs, which doesn’t sound so bad but after 3 weeks of learning “Ode to joy” and “Yankee Doodle” your going to wonder how to play REAL guitar and wished you didn’t waste 30 bucks on this stinky book.

How to we bypass all of this junkand start playing this amazing instrument called the guitar? The key is to take intelligent action on this task. This involves getting a model a mentor and a plan.