When you embark on learning how to play the guitar you need to have some goals. If you want to learn to play some of Eddy Van Halen’s solos, that’s fine. If you want to fill a spot in a local covers band, that’s alright, too. Maybe you are a surf guitar buff and would like to spend hours in your garage recreating the Dick Dale sound. These are all good goals. They give you a picture in your imagination of you setting your dream into practice

Let’s look at how you are going to learn to play guitar. A guitar teacher can put himself in your shoes and help you to find your way as a learner guitar player or as a potential professional musician. He has been a beginner, he has struggled to learn, and he has had ambitions of success, just like you. There are some great books and DVDs that can show you how to play the guitar, but they can’t stop you and show you if you are doing something wrong.

If you resolve to go ahead and learn guitar without a teacher, you will need a plan. Your plan will involve things like a timeframe to learn chords and tabs. You might set yourself a year to get a repertoire of your favorite songs. You also need a practice schedule

If you are determined to teach yourself to play the guitar, you need to resign yourself to paying for your new guitar skills with time and energy. A simple practice regime is a thirty minute practice session starting with five minutes warming up, practicing scales for five minutes, working on left hand techniques for ten minutes, and then working on a new song or instrumental piece for ten minutes. If you don’t understand what warming up or working on technique mean, you need to do some more research

It is not all that difficult to learn how to play the guitar, but it IS challenging. If you are already an adult with your school and college years behind you, taking on acquiring a new skill is going to be a big business. Making the decision to commence is going to be half the battle. When you start learning how to read music or guitar tablature you will find it’s not hard to do. Spending half an hour a day on guitar practice will be quite an enjoyable way to spend time after you come home from work. Maybe even better than drinking beer. Mmmm . . . guitar practice.

Reading through the practice routine and seeing how the time is allotted you will probably wonder why more time is not given to learning new material. The fact is, the whole process of learning to play the guitar is changing how your body, mind and feelings work. After a year or so playing the guitar you’re a different animal. So you might think the most important part is the song, but what’s important is the whole process and keeping it balanced. So learning to play the guitar is never really free.

Ricky Sharples

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