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Introduction
Confusion and overwhelm.
Boredom and lack of motivation.
These are very common feelings for floundering guitarists - they taint your entire guitar playing experience. Instead of making you want to pick up and play your guitar, they make you want to throw it away. Although it seems like you’re trapped, you can get rid of these feelings by undergoing a transformation from a floundering guitarist to a thriving guitarist.
The key to this transformation is clarity and organization.
That's what this essay is about. Each part will address a piece of a system to overcome these feelings. Here's an overview:
Part 1
🐟 Floundering guitarists are wishy washy about sticking to their goals.
👌🏽 Thriving guitarists pick a program, stick with it, develop a daily habit, and try to become a musician (not just a guitarist).
Part 2
🐟 Floundering guitarists aren’t exactly sure what they want to learn.
👌🏽 Thriving guitarists know exactly what they want to play and why.
Part 3
🐟 Floundering guitarists struggle to sift through online content and apply it.
👌🏽 Thriving guitarists know what they need, how to find it, and how to organize it for the best learning experience.
Part 4
🐟 Floundering guitarists pick up their guitar and don't know where to start each day.
👌🏽 Thriving guitarists always have something relevant to practice depending on their mood and energy level.
By the end of this essay, you’ll have a system to get your shit together, keep your shit together, and create a better guitar playing experience for yourself.
Part 1
What does a guitar teacher do? What am I missing by not going to one? How can I get started?
The very first thing you need to know: with the right approach, you can probably teach yourself guitar better than a lot of teachers can.
Becoming a thriving guitarist is about clarity, organization, and setting up the right routines and environment more than actually playing the guitar. This is what a good guitar teacher does and, to frame your journey properly, it's helpful to know how you can apply these principles by yourself.
What are you buying when you go to guitar lessons? Is it even possible to do the same thing by yourself? These guiding questions put your practice into perspective and save you tons of time, energy, and frustration.
So here: a good guitar teacher is primarily responsible for these five things:
They show you how to play the guitar. They show you how to put this finger here, strum this way, play that song, apply this scale this way, use this finger exercise for that, etc.
They show you how to be a musician. They know the idiosyncrasies of different kinds of music (beyond just the guitar) and how to translate them into guitar playing.
They show you how to “finish” learning concepts and techniques on the guitar. They teach you to go from 0 (no knowledge/skills about guitar playing) to 1 (able to play guitar comfortably and confidently). They try to make sure you don’t end up the world’s okayest guitar player - somewhere between 0 and 1.
They give you feedback on how you play. They tell you what you’re doing wrong and how to fix it. They know strategies to help you improve faster.
They keep you accountable. They send you home with homework, give you tips on how to get into a daily practice, and hope you show up for the next lesson ready to move forward.
If you’re going to teach yourself guitar, you’ll have to put yourself on the hook for these five things.
Obviously, there are no replacements for one-on-one lessons with a good teacher.
They take the guesswork away - you don't have to worry about what to learn, you get to just focus on learning itself. But if you can overcome the struggle of getting started and follow a few basic principles while saying “fuck the rest”, you can do it easily. Remember, you're just putting one foot in front of the other and trying to keep things simple and doable. In these initial steps, you're putting yourself on the hook for those five things above and being consistent.
If I had to start from scratch today with no teacher, here's what I would do.
Find a fitting course
Since there's so much content out there, the very first thing I would do is narrow down the possible inputs.
In general, the really popular resources are popular for a reason (like JustinGuitar, for example). Do some research and see which resource makes sense to you. This seems like a big decision, but it's not. I would just pick one course and stick with it. Anything that shows up on the first page of Google is going to have the right information to get started. If I were starting today, the course I would choose is Tomo Fujita's Guitar Wisdom. I would definitely throw $10 a month at him for his experience and focus on the fundamentals.
For at least a few weeks, I would work only on this course without distractions from random YouTube videos. My goal would be to learn some of the mechanics of guitar playing and music making without stressing about the bigger picture yet.
Remember, these courses aren't really designed to be totally comprehensive for everyone. They get the ball rolling and give you the necessary background. You're still on the hook for your journey during and after an online course.
Create a daily habit
The importance of creating a daily habit of playing and practicing can't be overstated.
Daily playing and practicing is responsible for a huge percentage of your success as a guitar player, especially if you're teaching yourself. It trumps talent and your teacher. It's also one of the hardest parts because people are busy. Just starting out, I wouldn't be able to carve an hour out of my day to do the hard work of learning guitar from scratch. Instead, I would focus on maintaining shorter periods of practice (like 15 minutes) to improve my ability to commit.
Daily habits are easier when there are small wins all the time. I want to get into a flow with my guitar playing and start feeling like I'm making good progress quickly. I would treat every small thing as a win and try to organize my practice to allow for a tangible achievement everyday.
I would use the framework from this Something to think about section to help create a daily playing and practicing habit.
Learn songs first, theory second
This is how I learned when I started and it's how I recommend everyone learn when they're starting.
I learned songs by looking up terrible, inaccurate tabs. I did what I could on my own and my teachers would fill in the blanks. But now we live in modern times and there are high quality, step-by-step tutorials for so much music available online. After making good progress with the course I chose and feeling like I've got some fundamentals down, I would focus only on actual music.
The goal is still finding a place for guitar and music in my daily life. Repertoire beats rote exercise and theory because I'm only trying to overcome some basic technical challenges and learning to enjoy the process. I'll worry about learning the musical and theoretical stuff later.
I would choose a few easy beginner projects at a time - maybe a couple riff based songs and a couple chord based songs - and find pertinent resources to learn them and play along with the track.
Learn how to listen critically to music
I would try to become a musician even when I didn't have my guitar in my hands.
Musicians have a whole language they use to describe and interact with music. Listening to guitarist's speak about what they're thinking and doing is invaluable for someone new to the world. Podcasts, interviews, or masterclasses are great ways to become acquainted with your favourite guitarist's ideas. Tip for hidden gems: musicians who post reaction videos for performances or tracks and tell you exactly what they like, don't like, and why.
Feedback is probably one of the most important things you buy when you take guitar lessons. It’s difficult to judge how you’re doing when you don’t have the knowledge to know what’s right and wrong. Record yourself with audio. Listen back and see how it sounds. It’s hard to have an accurate idea of what you sound like when you’re playing. Record yourself with video as well. Try to spot anything that looks weird in how your fingers are placed or how your body is positioned.
As a beginner guitarist, this would change the way I listen to music for the better.
Find people to play with or join an online community
The hardest part of teaching yourself guitar is doing it alone.
I know from experience the value of having a musical community to learn in. It doesn't seem like much, but having accountability, added motivation, and external reasons to learn guitar go a really long way. A lot of online courses offer a community component. There are forums for Tomo Fujita's Guitar Wisdom, for example. I would try to get involved there, on Reddit, or take the risk of putting myself out there by finding others to play with.
It's the easiest thing to put off: being new to the world of guitar and not involved in the culture of it. But if you actively find some communities and start talking shop, you'll find yourself identifying as a guitarist more quickly which will make everything else you do easier.
Key takeaways:
When you're first starting out, it's not just about learning guitar and music. You're also trying to develop a daily playing habit, an ear for music, and hopefully finding a community (either online or in person) that helps keep you motivated and accountable.
You're trying to integrate the guitar into your life. This means making a true commitment and being consistent by playing even just a little everyday.
Keep things simple. If you get stuck on something and feel like it’s dragging you down, just skip it. It’s more important to keep things light and try to create an enjoyable guitar playing experience.
Part 2
There are so many directions I can go. How do I know what will be best for me?
Now that you've been playing for a while, you're immersed in the world of guitar.
The next step is to think about developing taste and opinions. You decided to pick up the guitar for some reason and it’s important to really think about why. Most people miss this step. Without consciously thinking about what you’re doing and why, a sense of confusion and overwhelm will fill the vacuum.
You need to figure out what kind of guitarist you want to be, what kind of music you want to play, and why.
Here’s a quick example I wrote about in the Something to think about section of the newsletter.
Everyone says you need to know the major scale (and everyone says it needs to be taught). So you learn it, practice it, play it, but then wonder why it’s so important. Did you just waste your time and energy by learning it because someone said to? Finding the information to learn the major scale is easy - there’s no shortage of “how-to” - but knowing why that particular concept is important is the hard part.
And worse, it’s hard to tell if that concept is even relevant to you in your particular case.
In this essay, I wrote about the importance of aligning your specific goals with your general goals. But what if you don’t know what your general goals are?
Every guitarist needs a North Star - general goals that always guide you in the right direction.
The stronger your vision of your North Star, the better. It means you can safely take on certain concepts and ignore others because (shocker) you don’t need to know everything there is to know about guitar. If you want to play folk songs around a campfire, why does it matter if you can play major scales in all keys over 3 octaves across the entire fretboard?
It doesn’t.
So if you’re confused about what you should learn, which steps to take next, or what is actually worth doing, think about these questions:
Why do you want to play guitar?
What about this instrument makes it attractive to you? Why not piano instead? Do people in your network value someone who plays guitar? Are you looking for a creative outlet? Do you like the idea of it even if you’re not a huge fan of music in general?
Learning guitar is challenging. There must be some reason you decided to do it instead of something else.
What kind of music do you like?
This seems like a non-starter, but think about it and be specific.
Do you like Metal? Why? Is it the heavy tones, fast solos, or the sound of sweep picking? Do you like this type of music because of the culture and lifestyle associated with it?
Do you like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers? Why? Is it the songwriting? Is it the riffs they play? The memories from a younger version of yourself? Is it what all your friends like?
These two people will have a totally different guitar playing experience. Defining what kind of music you like and why is an essential step toward establishing your North Star.
What kind of guitarist do you want to be?
Some people are casual players who pick it up every now and then as a hobby. Others have the guitar so ingrained in their life it becomes the biggest part of their identity.
You can be any kind of guitarist you want. Knowing ahead of time gives you an idea of how much time you should spend learning to play the thing. If you want to pick it up casually to play with friends every once in a while, that drastically cuts down on the amount of material you’ll need to know.
If you can answer this question, you will more easily filter out what isn’t going to help you in your particular case.
What will happen if you fail to learn guitar?
Answering this question makes you automatically more accountable.
Are there consequences if you fail to learn guitar? Do people rely on you to show up and play? Are you planning on just playing alone in your bedroom for your own personal satisfaction, so it doesn’t matter? Will you be hard on yourself if you quit for the 3rd time?
Just by clearly identifying what happens if you don’t learn guitar shifts the whole thing for you. All the sudden you didn’t just “not pick up the guitar today.” You decided not to pick it up. Think about why.
Spend a few minutes writing out answers to these questions.
A great way to know if you’ve thought about these questions deeply enough is to write out your answers. You might learn something about yourself you didn’t realize before.
With this clarity of your North Star, you’ll find yourself happier with your guitar playing experience and better able to sift through the tons of information to find what’s most helpful for you.
If you answer these questions and still can’t figure out specifically what you should do next, email me and I will try to respond with some advice.
Key takeaways:
Confusion and overwhelm comes from walking around in the dark without any particular direction.
Reflection is an important (and often missing) point of learning guitar. Repeat the process of asking these questions regularly.
There are no right or wrong answers. It’s okay to be any kind of guitar player.
Part 3
Where do I go from here? I don't know all the details in music. How do I organize everything to learn effectively and efficiently?
Now that you know what you want to learn and why, you’ve cut down 95% of the content you’ll need to take in. But what about the other 5%?
See if you relate to these comments I’ve received on previous writing:
“There are so many different lessons, it just leaves me confused.”
“I've struggled to stick with a solid (and consistent) practice routine for a long time, I just get so overwhelmed by all the different things I want to work on and don't know where to start.”
“I mostly have a hard time figuring out what to practice since I’m self taught […]”
The theme: floundering guitarists struggle to sift through all the content out there and figure out how to apply it. Chances are they know all kinds of bits and pieces, but don’t have a great understanding of how it all fits together. I get it — it’s not obvious at all until things start to click. I remember when I started playing and different concepts started clicking together. It was just epiphany after epiphany.
It turns out everything in music and guitar playing is deeply connected, it’s just a matter of noticing the patterns.
In fact, ALL guitar playing breaks down into 3 categories:
One note by itself (melodies)
Notes played together (harmony)
Notes played in time (rhythm)
That’s it.
Side note: I’m using notes here because, mostly, guitarists play notes on the fretboard. Sure, they may also play percussive sounds (muted notes, slapping the strings) or effects (pick scraping, feedback). But any sound from the guitar falls into these categories.
Everything is some combination of these 3 categories.
So now, think about what you can currently play and how it fits into this framework.
For example, the solo in Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” falls into the first category — Kurt Cobain plays single notes, one after the other. The opening chord progression falls into the second category — he plays power chords. And the whole song falls into the third category — there is a meter and steady pulse throughout the whole song.
If you do this with a few different things you can play, something interesting might happen.
You might start to think about all the single note material (like solos or riffs) you can play and, by thinking about it in these terms, find some connections in there you hadn’t realized before. Maybe the solo to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is actually kind of similar to the solo in The Beatles’ “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
Now you might wonder, as a thriving guitarist, “What made me think these two solos are similar? Well, neither are played super fast, the finger patterns are kind of similar, and they both have bends. Huh.”
By finding connections in what you already know, you are creating a foundation for new material.
When you’re feeling overwhelmed and confused, take stock of what you know, categorize it, and find some patterns.
You’ll notice all sorts of things: certain strumming patterns are very similar, a G chord goes to a C chord pretty often, certain scales show up a lot, or even if you don’t know scales, certain finger patterns on the fretboard show up a lot. This is how you start to develop your own mental model of guitar playing. It is piecing it all together through your own personal experience.
When you find a new song or video lesson you’d like to learn, break it down into these categories and see if it fits into some other pieces you’ve already connected.
You learn more efficiently because what’s helpful for one thing in a category is likely helpful with another.
Now let’s take this a step further.
We are going to break down those three categories (melodies, harmonies, and rhythms) into three subcomponents:
Technical: how to play it
Theoretical: how to understand it
Musical: how to use it
So, in “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” both solos are in the melody category: single notes, played after one another. By breaking down the solos into these 3 subcomponents, you’ll get more mileage out of your practice. By putting in the effort to learn the solo to “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” you’re on the very same road to learning the solo to “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” So why not learn both at the same time?
Here’s how you do it:
“Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” have these things in common:
Technical: There are bends, mostly pentatonic shapes, and both are played loud. Whatever exercises you’re working on to help your technical ability with these 3 concepts will be helpful for both songs. Once you work on all the bends in the Beatles song, it will make the bends in the Nirvana song a cakewalk.
Theoretical: The pentatonic scale is movable to different areas of the neck. Figuring out different areas of the neck to play pentatonic scales for one solo will be helpful for the other. Hearing how the root note of each scale sounds over the chords solidifies your understanding of soloing.
Musical: The phrasing is simple and catchy, playable with feel, and there are overdrive tone options. Playing both solos like you mean it back-to-back will come from the same place.
This goes against a lot of conventional wisdom: typically you might think you should only work on one thing at a time.
But it’s better for long-term learning to interleave what you’re working on. Work a little on Nirvana, then a little on The Beatles, then Nirvana again. Because these 3 subcomponents are similar, you’re not jarringly switching from one thing to another, but you’re also avoiding massed practice.
Even beyond the neuroscience, the paradox still exists. It seems like you’re not improving that much at either song compared to just working on one at a time. But you’re mapping it into your long-term memory so much more effectively by interleaving.
And finally, you’re avoiding boredom with this little framework. Once all the sections of your projects are divided into chunks, you can pick up any of the 3 subcomponents (based on your mood) knowing you will be making progress toward your musical goals.
Key takeaways:
Music breaks down into just a few fundamental pieces and knowing how to recognize them helps you keep things clear.
Making your own decisions and coming to your own conclusions is an important step toward developing your own mental model of guitar playing.
A little organizing up front prevents procrastination later. Sometimes it feels like you pick up your guitar to practice for an hour and, by the end of it, you've gotten nothing done. A process like this helps you always have something relevant to work at on hand.
Part 4
Summary and step-by-step to becoming a thriving guitarist
Following the steps in the first three parts of this essay will give you more clarity than you had before.
After going through a beginner’s course from start to finish, you’ll still have unanswered questions. The instructor may make assumptions about what you already know and some of the techniques and concepts presented may not connect for you. What you get is an archipelago of islands rather than what you want: an anthill of interconnectedness. A complete course is going to be the most clear and most structured curriculum you'll find as a floundering guitarist, but now add in all the one-off random YouTube lessons, tabs, articles or how-tos and you'll find yourself overwhelmed with no clear path forward.
After you’ve gone through a program and are starting to feel comfortable, know what you want to learn, have some projects organized by the process in Part 3, you can now take in all the random content out there and be confident you’ll know what to do with it.
Here is a summary and step-by-step plan to get to this point of clarity: a system to place all these lessons, tips, techniques, and concepts.
Step 1: Choose a course or program and get comfortable without distraction
If you’re just beginning or stuck without a path forward, the easiest and most reliable thing to do is choose a program and stick with it.
A big piece of becoming a thriving guitarist is to slash away all the crap and focus only on the most relevant concepts, exercises, and projects for you personally. A foundational course offers everything you need to get comfortable playing guitar and some background knowledge to "learn the language" of musicianship.
Step 2: Slowly integrate your guitar playing into your daily life
It will be very hard to decide to "just play an hour a day" out of nowhere.
That goal is probably too big for you to be successful. Instead, you should try to let your guitar playing sneak its way into your life. Just doing a little each day helps to solidify your identity as a guitarist and makes it into your system of habits and routines. Eventually, you might get to the point where you want to practice for an hour a day, but not right off the bat.
There's no rush. Besides, it's faster to slowly integrate the guitar into your life than to try it all at once, get frustrated, and quit for another year.
Step 3: Figure out what kind of guitarist you want to be and think deeply about what kind of music you like
Don't leave out this step.
Reflection has a reputation as a woo-woo practice for mindful folks, but it's beyond helpful. Chances are you think you know what you want, but you haven't really thought it through. Trying to verbalize (or better yet, write) your thoughts about what you want to learn, why you want to learn it, and the stakes if you don't will focus your attention. Maybe you'll discover you're not that interested in learning guitar after all. That's fine. It will save you the time and energy of beating your head against the wall for no gain.
It's more likely, though, you'll have a clearer vision of what you want music to do in your life.
Step 4: Choose only a few pieces of music to act as projects
In this video, Rick Beato talks about the amount of music available to guitarists in the internet age.
All music is one click away. This presents a problem: there's too much music and not enough attention. The second you find yourself getting the least bit bored, you can just move on to the next thing.
If you want to be a thriving guitarist, this won't work. You need to commit to just a few songs to focus on in your guitar practice and listen to them until you know them really well.
Listen to all the music you want, but to bring some clarity to your guitar playing experience, choose no more than 5 of your absolute favourite guitar-related songs that you'd like to learn and put them in a playlist. These songs will act as texts and projects to anchor all the lesson content you find.
Step 5: Find lessons on just those songs
Once you've decided on a few projects, start scouring for lessons.
There are video lessons for pretty much any song, and if there's no video lesson, there are sure to be some tabs out there. Collect these resources into one accessible spot (playlist, document with links, note-taking system, etc.). As you're watching, does the instructor say, "this riff uses the pentatonic scale" or "this minor chord progression is ..."? These can be hints toward what other types of resources you could find to be useful in this specific project.
As you go through this process multiple times, you might find the resources for one project apply to another and you can use the same concepts, techniques, and lessons multiple times. The better you keep track of what you've found, the more useful it will be in the future. You've gone through an online course and know the basics and this background knowledge will help you organize one-off video lessons or quick tips. Eventually, you'll develop your own library of the most relevant guitar education out there for your own personal use.
The goal is to get more leverage out of the time and attention you've put into finding resources in the first place.
Step 6: Break down the songs into smaller, achievable pieces
Now you can break down the songs into small sections.
For example, the intro riff might be different than the chorus. The chords in the verse might be different than the chords in the chorus. Keep notes (timestamps in videos, or keep a notebook with this information) with all the resources you'll need to practice any given small, achievable piece of the song. Once you've broken down the pieces, you'll have a series of smaller exercises you can work on. Some will be easier than others. Some will take more time than others.
But this is the point - you'll have a variety of things to work on, all of which lead toward the goals you've set out for yourself, and other resources to reference if you get stuck.
Step 7: Take these small pieces and contextualize them
Once you've broken down the pieces of your projects, categorize them as described in Part 3.
You're trying to streamline your learning. Having each small piece of your projects grouped by category and subcomponent is less jarring on your brain, yet still gives you the benefits of the neuroscience of learning.
To take things a step further, you can organize the groups you created at this step into this X Y graph below. Your whole guitar life falls broadly into four categories: building, exploring, maintaining, and performing. Place each group of categories into one of these categories:
This quadrant adds clarity around what you're learning. Each part is important, but knowing which concept, technique, or skill fits where makes it easier to know how to approach it.
Step 8: Choose what to do based on your mood
You'll pick up your guitar in all different states of mind and it's helpful to be aware of how this affects your progress.
Building time will require a lot of energy and focus. Interpreting time will be more relaxing and casual. Maintaining time requires focus. Performing time will be your most free-playing self.
Now that everything is organized, you can choose what you want to work on based on your current mood and energy level. This idea is used in modern productivity systems and translates well to guitar.
Everything that's made it to this step has come from the bottom up. Now that everything is organized, you're free to just pick up your guitar and practice without having to worry about finding something to learn, getting bored and moving onto something else, or never using the technique you just worked on.