So you want to learn the guitar..Step 1: Choosing your instrument

SO!  You want to learn how to play the guitar?

Learning the guitar is one of those things that people just seem to love to dream about  It seems like EVERYONE plays the guitar. I mean heck, even your kid neighbor with the extensive Pokemon card collection can play the opening to Stairway to Heaven....how hard can it be?

It's a lot harder than you'd think.

Now, if you're looking to just jam on some Blink 182 or Ramones tunes, ok.  You'll probably never need a lesson in your life and it shouldn't take you more than an hour to have mastered most of their repertoire...  By the way, I love both of these groups and am in no way hating on their songs, but let's face it, punk rock is just not a difficult genre.  If you can play one song, you can probably play them all.

However, if you're looking to be able to play anything you want (and I do mean anything you want.... From Bach to The Beatles, Glenn Miller to Led Zeppelin, Nirvana to Tupac) you're going to have to put in real effort and real time learning and mastering this complex instrument.

Of course there are steps to this process and my goal is to guide you through each step as simply and painlessly as possible while still giving you useful information.


Step 1:  Purchasing a Guitar
This is the biggest step in the whole learning process because it's usually the largest up-front cost. You're choosing to either invest in an instrument you hope to learn, or you're choosing to pass on the dream and spend your money on something else.  The opportunity cost associated with these types of purchases can be pretty heavy on your mind and often times it leads to bad decisions.
Now is saving that money for a rainy day or going out and throwing a party with it instead a bad decision?  No.  It's your money, do what you want with it.  The bad decision I'm referring to is the purchase of a sub-par instrument due to the lower price "just to try it out".  This is a bad idea.

Consider this: You have a friend over who has never had pizza (as if you have friends that are THAT sheltered!) and they'd like to try it for the first time to see if they'd like it.  GREAT!  Pizza is awesome and anything that delicious deserves to be shared with the entire world, right?  Right. Here's the thing, they don't really want to risk spending $20 on a good, authentic, made-from-scratch-like-yo-mama-do pizza...Instead they'd rather just get a $5 frozen pizza from Meijer.  I mean it says "Real Italian Taste!" right on the packaging, so it must be just as good, right?  Oh, you poor, poor child. You probably want to slap them across the face and yell "NOOOOOOOOOO!" because friends just don't let friends eat bad pizza.  Maybe instead of that, you compromise a little quality for a little cost and settle on a $10 pizza from Jets or something and save them the bad experience of unfit-for-human-consumption  pizza.  I mean, that frozen pizza could have ruined their view of the food altogether and you just can't let that happen.  Better to meet in the middle than to eat in the dumpster.

Figure A - The Dumpster Diver

Figure B - If Gibson Made Pizzas

Figure C - The Compromise

Figure A Equivalent

Figure B Equivalent

Figure C Equivalent

It's exactly the same with choosing an instrument.  Sure, you could go buy a $50 guitar with words on the box like "Great for new learners!" or something along those lines, but that would be a huge mistake. Most of those guitars can't be tuned properly, they sound like those Kleenex box guitars you make with rubber bands, and they don't even look or feel like real guitars should.  In other words, I'd rather see you use your money as fire-starter fuel for your charcoal grill than throw it away on a junk guitar.  There are so many well priced guitars out there that are built to last that there really isn't an excuse to settle that way.  You can find a really nice guitar for around $150 nowadays and that guitar will be a real instrument that you can play for the rest of your life.  You don't have to go buy a Gibson Les Paul for your first guitar and spend $3,000 just to find out you don't really like playing later on.  Don't throw your money away!  Let me just say, I LOVE Gibson guitars and have always dreamed of owning a Les Paul, but I've never been able to justify spending that much money on an instrument AND I PLAY PROFESSIONALLY!  There's no reason for a beginner to make such an extravagant purchase unless the only reason they're learning is to play on this specific guitar.  In that case, do what you want!

I've been giving guitar lessons since I was 12 years old.  That's 15 years I've been teaching how to play.  Granted, when I was first starting out, it wasn't so much theory and which notes are in what chords.  It was more teaching some chords and how to jam with others.  Over time that has evolved into my own preferred method of guitar education involving a mixture of chords and theory along with scales and note-reading, and I'm seeing great results.  What makes me qualified to teach the guitar if I don't even have a degree in music? Experience.  Period.  Dot dot dot...
I've been playing since I was 7 years old, performing professionally since I was 10, and in the past five years have seen my music career skyrocketing.  I'm not looking to become some rock star touring across the nation with my band at my back and millions of screaming fans tearing their hair out during my Ed Sullivan Show performances....although that would be pretty fun.  No, I'm looking to simply earn my living as a musician. I perform at bars, festivals, churches, concert venues, and have even performed on a Carnival Cruise Ship.  I can read music (even if I'm not always perfect at it), I can play in just about any style you could think of, and I'm able to follow other musicians by ear without a written score in front of me.
I'm not trying to brag here, but I want to show that "making it" in the music industry doesn't have to be some huge ordeal involving record labels and groupies.  I actually prefer my version since I have a wife and infant son at home.  I love to travel, but I don't want to be gone for months out of the year only to come home to a grown son and a few grandkids I've never met.  That life just isn't for me.  I simply aim to be my own boss, a musical entrepreneur who can drift off into the background unnoticed when he so chooses.

Enough about me.

Now that you see my story, maybe you have a different idea of what your guitar goals might look like.  Maybe not.  Either way, they're your goals and YOU are responsible for accomplishing them. So get out there and rock the house!