Senior Instructor at Halifax Guitar Lessons
Learning how to play the guitar is a dream you likely have had for a long time.
Most of the people I talk to tell me this same thing. A lot of them even tried to learn before but were not successful.
Maybe you tried to learn before and found it difficult and you stopped for whatever reasons.
Learning to play the guitar is not easy for most people, especially if you go about it the wrong way.
Here are 3 ways to make it more likely that you can be successful and learn to play the guitar so you can finally make that dream come true.
1. Be Prepared To Do The Work
Learning to play the guitar does require some effort.
For most people it is actually awkward to try and play a guitar when they first try it out. This is totally natural though because you have never done this so your muscles are not trained yet.
Because of this awkwardness, it can be difficult to learn to do even simple things properly for a while. It will take some time and effort to train your brain and muscles to do what they need to do.
If you are not prepared for the work before you launch out and start learning to play the guitar you can become disappointed, impatient, frustrated and quit.
It certainly does not have to be that way if you come in with the right expectations.
2. Take In-Person Guitar Lessons
Learning how to play the guitar is not natural and it is not easy for most people.
There are a lot of different ways you can learn to play in this day and age. Options you have include books, DVDs, games, apps as well as online videos and courses. Many are quite cheap and very convenient too.
Unfortunately, many people end up struggling to learn with these methods.
There are many technical aspects to playing the guitar that are not intuitive and if you do not learn about them you can get stuck and frustrated and possibly quit even trying.
There is no possible way for those methods to deal with every individual situation as they come along and tend to be more generic and not tailored to you.
To increase your chances at success your best bet is to find a local guitar teacher and take lessons from them.
This will make it a lot more likely that you will find out what you are doing wrong and hopefully fix them before they become bad habits.
3. Find The Best Guitar Teacher In Your Area
Unfortunately, not all guitar teachers are the same and you are going to get a huge difference in results depending on who you sign up with.
On top of that, most guitar teachers are not trained to teach and are guessing at what the best way to do so is. You do not want to be someone’s guinea pig.
To help you succeed the best thing you can do is find the best guitar teacher in your area.
There are several things you should look for to know that they are worth your time and money.
The first thing is training. Ask them if they have been trained how to teach and further to that ask if they have specific training on how to teach the guitar.
Most guitar teachers have zero training in either area. A university degree is not what I am talking about either. I am talking about hands-on training on how to actually teach guitar.
How To You Find The Best Guitar Teacher In Your Area
Finding the best guitar teacher in your area will take some work but it is worth every minute.
You should find everyone that teachers in your area and boil you list down to the top 2 or 3 candidates. That’s the hardest part. You will have to research each one and if they pan out call and interview them until you have you short list figured out.
If you know what to look for it will make it much easier. The main thing you want to find is a guitar teacher that has actual hands-on training on how to teach guitar specifically and that has been trained by a professional guitar teacher.
Find out if they teach full-time or if it is something they do on the side. This is very important because a full-time teacher will be more likely to work harder to help you progress. It’s all they do and are not distracted by other priorities.
When you call them listen to the questions they ask you. Conventional teachers will ask you what, music you like and what time you want a lesson. Professional teachers will want to find out much more about you.
Also, make sure they actually have proof that they have helped other people just like you before. Ideally you can find testimonials online but you should also always ask them directly if they have ever helped someone like you.
By the time you go through all this you will likely only have or two options left. Pick the one that you like the best and then have fun learning!