
It's Never Too Late to Learn Guitar - adamlovesgin
http://adamharkus.com/never-too-late-learn-guitar/#.WZGS85RAHzM.hackernews
======
beat
As someone who has been playing for 35 years or so, here are some
observations...

First and foremost, guitar is a pretty straightforward instrument for
beginners. There's a reason it's the most popular instrument in the world. If
you put in the effort, you can be playing something musical in a few months,
and proficient in basic folk/rock music in a couple of years. It doesn't take
"talent". It just takes effort.

Something that throws a lot of beginners is that we fret with our "weak" hand
and pick with our "strong" hand, which seems backwards. That's only because
they're beginners. Picking is _much_ harder than fretting. It doesn't seem
that way when you're struggling with cramped hands for your first few chords,
but good picking technique is the key to actually being good, and it's very
challenging.

Don't try to learn on a crap guitar! If it has high action and truly hurts to
play, or if it has bad tone, it'll drive you away. Learn on a good instrument.
Virtually any guitar that costs over $200-300 new these days is good. You
don't need to spend a fortune. And get it "set up" at a good guitar shop. It
makes a huge difference in tone and playability.

If you're playing rock guitar, there's a real temptation to use _way_ too much
distortion to get what you think is the sound on records. Most great rock
guitar tones are much cleaner than they sound. When in doubt, use less gain.

And finally, the guitar is an incredibly deep instrument. After 35 years, I
feel I know less now than I knew after three years. Approach with humility.

~~~
DanHulton
What is involved in getting your guitar "set up" anyway? I'm looking to get
back into learning the guitar I bought a few years ago, and I mean it sounded
fine to me when I brought it out to check on it, after a tuning, of course.

~~~
ralmeida
Basically: intonation and action. I'll explain.

Guitars are made of wood, an organic material, which is very susceptible to
environment changes (humidity and temperature). So, after time passes, the
wood may expand or contract, which changes the physical parameters of the
guitar.

There are two forces at play: when tuned, the strings exert force pulling the
fretboard "up". In most guitars, there's a long screw inside the fretboard,
which pulls it "down".

"Tuning" a guitar means that the strings produce the right frequencies when
plucked "open" (i.e. no fret pressed). Correct intonation means that the notes
are still "in tune" (producing the right frequencies) along the frets of a
same string. "Action" is the height between the string and the fret in
different places at the fretboard (so, if you want to be precise, you'd say
"6th string action at the 12th fret").

Action is mostly a matter of preference - lower means it's easier to fret the
notes, higher means the strings ring out more freely, and therefore the notes
sustain better. Can't go too low, or you'll start to experience "fretting" \-
the strings hit neighbor frets while vibrating for a note, producing an
unpleasant metallic buzz.

The actual physical parameters which influence intonation and action are
basically neck bow/relief and string length (via small metal pieces in the
bridge of the guitar which can be moved, if you guitar has them). This is what
the luthier (the professional who sets up instruments) interferes with.

This is a general view - some guitars may have additional factors to consider.
For example, in floating bridge electric guitars, you'd need to consider the
bridge springs tension as well, for they will influence both string action and
the whammy bar travel.

~~~
flavio81
Great post, just to add some info:

The 'screw' that counterbalances the pulling force on the neck exerted by the
strings is the "truss rod" which sits inside the neck (on an electric guitar
and some acoustics); this rod is adjustable.

This adjustment influences the 'action'. But the 'action' is also set by the
bridge saddles' height, which is adjustable. Most often this height is
adjustable independently for each string.

Each time the action is changed (raised or lowered), intonation should be
adjusted again, accordingly.

It sounds very complex but it isn't, it just takes a bit of patience and
experience (for making a good judgement of what an ideal action would be).

To be honest, much more laborious and difficult is to tune a drum set so it
sounds great. There are more adjustment points...

~~~
ralmeida
Good point, forgot to mention the name of the truss rod and the saddle height
- which is arguably the most influential parameter in overall action.

I also second the opinion that it's quite approachable if you're patient and
methodical.

Another tip (to _keep_ the setup working) would be to have the guitar
professionally set up, then carefully measuring and writing down the
parameters, so they can be reproduced later.

The hardest one is neck relief, but even this can be approached in a
reproducible way by pressing the first and last frets on a string and
measuring space left at the 12th fret with a "feeler gauge" or some other
width reference (credit cards, stacked sheets of paper, etc).

~~~
flavio81
Tip: Picks can work as a substitute feeler gauge. Pick thicknesses are often
indicated on the pick (i.e. "2mm")

------
cousin_it
Warning! If you're middle-aged and thinking of picking up the guitar, you
should realize that the public image of guitarists has shifted from "sexy
gods" to "annoying hobos" sometime in the last two decades. If you are at
least partly motivated by popularity (and who isn't), maybe pick another hobby
that actually helps people be popular now, not in your imagined past. So in a
sense, yes, it is sometimes too late :-(

~~~
StevePerkins
If you're middle-aged, and still all that "motivated by popularity", then
you're not doing middle-age right.

A 50-year old playing guitar is 1,000x cooler than a 50-year old mixing EDM
tracks on Ableton, because he thinks it'll help him score 20-year old chicks
or impress HN.

No matter what age you are, "adulthood" is pretty much another word for
finally having enough self-confidence to do your own thing. It's pretty much
always better than "childhood", which is the lack thereof.

~~~
ntumlin
>A 50-year old playing guitar is 1,000x cooler than a 50-year old mixing EDM
tracks on Ableton, because he thinks it'll help him score 20-year chicks.

Corollary: A 50 year old mixing EDM tracks on Ableton because he likes it is
just as cool as the first guy.

~~~
ams6110
A 50 year old mixing vinyl with turntables and an analog mixer is cooler.

------
marsrover
I'm 29 and have been playing guitar for at least half my life at this point.
It's a great stress reliever and just fun in general. I'm not good by any
stretch of the imagination, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying myself.

These are some of my personal recommendations for starting out:

\- Use an acoustic, you don't want to have to carry an amp around with you.

\- Learn to sing while you play early on. I think it's harder if you try to
learn later.

\- If you learn a song, make it your own. Throw notes and rhythms in that
don't necessarily belong. It's no fun being a robot.

\- Learn the pentatonic scale.

\- Don't be afraid to just try things. You're in the middle of a solo and
don't know where to go? Jump up the neck and hope you land on something that
sounds good.

\- Try to learn songs by ear. Even if you end up looking up the tabs, at least
try to play by ear first.

\- Most of all, don't try to be perfect. Just try to have fun.

~~~
fhood
So I agree, except that I think starting out on an acoustic teaches a lot of
bad habits, and can also be frustrating for beginners, because acoustics are
simply more difficult to play.

~~~
softawre
I think the trick is to start with a _good_ acoustic. One with good action and
one that stays in tune. Like a decent acoustic-electric from Ovation or
something like that.

~~~
adamlovesgin
I'd recommend starting on acoustic too. It's the quickest and cheapest route
to entry.

------
telekid
I decided to start teaching myself guitar about three years ago, at the age of
24. I had always wanted to learn to play an instrument, but before guitar,
nothing ever really stuck.

When I picked up the guitar, I approached it from a different angle. The key
for me was realizing that I could treat this like a 20 year project. I bought
myself a guitar book[0] and started working through it page by page. I stopped
worrying about whether I was good good or not – instead, I began to find great
satisfaction in simply getting better.

Three years later, I've made a ton of progress. Practicing has become a kind
of meditation for me; it helps clear my head, and keeps me from getting burnt
out with work.

[0] William Leavitt's "A Modern Method for Guitar." This book is a pedagogical
tour-de-force, though it helps to have a little bit of music theory under your
belt if you are going to learn from it without an instructor.

~~~
sp821543
Great job! Here are some other great books for you: J.S. Bach - Six Cello
Suites (transcribed for guitar) Jim Hall - Exploring Jazz Guitar Joe Pass -
Virtuoso (find transcription(s) or do it yourself) Gene Bertoncini -
Approaching the Guitar

~~~
telekid
Thanks! I'll be sure to look for these.

~~~
pcsanwald
There's also Mick Goodrick's masterpiece, "The Advancing Guitarist". which is
still probably the single most inspirational guitar specific book I've ever
read. I've had it for 25 years and still find it inspiring to look at.

------
cjjuice
As someone who learned guitar recently in my late 20s, I can say don't
overlook basic theory and the value of soloing/coming up with melodies.

For me, the creation aspect helped keep me interested. A lot of the beauty of
programming is creating new stuff. If that's what you love about programming,
try to create your own music as soon as possible.

You may want to start on ukulele first (4 strings/requires less pressure) to
get the concepts down and start creating your own music faster.

~~~
lightedman
I'd have to argue against starting with a ukulele. You miss out on the unusual
tuning quirk present 6-stringed instruments tuned to thirds, where every
string but one can match the tuning of the string above it by phrasing at the
5th fret, that string being the 3rd string (G) and the one above it (B,) you
have to phrase at the 4th fret of the 3rd string to get the matching B of the
string above instead of at the 5th fret.

I'd also say go with 6 strings because the typical chords can have more than 4
notes.

~~~
bench_soup
" _miss out on the unusual tuning quirk present 6-stringed instruments tuned
to thirds_ "

A ukulele is tuned to thirds as well. It is basically the same as a four
string guitar with a capo on 5th fret (with the typical quirk of having the
lowest string being an octave higher)

" _I 'd also say go with 6 strings because the typical chords can have more
than 4 notes._"

Typical chords for a beginner are minor and major chords which uses only 3
notes. And the augmented 7th have 4 notes which leaves you with quite some
chords to play.

You will be limited by extended dominant 9th,11th and 13th but I wouldn't call
those typical.

I think a ukulele can be fine to start as you'll get some very quick progress,
but its limitations will come very quick as well.

~~~
lightedman
"It is basically the same as a four string guitar with a capo on 5th fret
(with the typical quirk of having the lowest string being an octave higher)"

5th fret represents going up at most 3 whole notes, not 8.

"Typical chords for a beginner are minor and major chords which uses only 3
notes."

Those are 'power chords' and not your full basic A-G chords. Your basic base
E-chord is E-B-E-G#/Ab-B-E on a regular guitar and on a uke it's E-B-E-G#/Ab.
Not even a major or minor, just the basic full chord itself runs at least four
notes.

"I think a ukulele can be fine to start as you'll get some very quick
progress, but its limitations will come very quick as well."

The limitations become apparent around day two when you realize the E you're
playing on a uke doesn't sound as full or bright as an E played on a guitar. I
put mine down after a week and never looked back. That was... 23 years ago.

~~~
bench_soup
Powerchords are usually only fundamental + fifth. you can play those on 2
strings only.

As long as you have 3 notes available you can make a full major or minor chord
as it only involved a fundamental, third and fifth.

It will sound different on a ukulele especially because of the bourdon and
wont sound as rich as it will hold less harmonics (no additional higher/lower
strings to repeat the note) but that's still plenty of possibilities.

Too bad you had a bad experience with it but it still is a full fledged
instrument capable of playing decent music. Of course trying to play guitar
songs on it will sound disappointing most of the time.

------
francisofascii
I tried picking up a guitar this past week, and was overwhelmed. Just playing
a basic chord was a struggle. How do you get your figure to press down just
right on the string and not interfere with another. Amazed by people who can
play effortlessly. The post encouraged me to try again. 15 min a day sounds
like a reasonable practicing goal.

~~~
ashark
You can play a ton of songs with like 5-6 open chords. Find a song you don't
hate that just uses G, C, and D majors, and drill the hell out of it until
it's easy to transition between those. Way more fun to practice with a real
song. You may pick up A-minor or something on the bridge of that song, which
is nice. Pick up open A and E majors and E minor on top of that base and you
can play rhythm on like 50+% of all guitar-heavy popular music ever written
without going any farther. Then start working on barre and (relatedly) power
chords and you'll get that number up to 90%. Wait to do that because barre
chords require different hand muscles than open chords, so you'll hit trouble
again when you start on them and no sense in tackling all that difficulty at
the same time.

Take heart: once you get over the initial how-the-hell-can-my-fingers-even-do-
that hump, learning enough guitar that it's pleasant to listen to is _quick_.
You can hit that mark with casual practice inside 3 months, easily. By
contrast, I spent years playing Alto Sax and got way ( _way_ ) better at it
than I _ever_ was at guitar, but that was _never_ pleasant to listen to
solo—most instruments you've got to be really really good at them before
they're tolerable solo, but guitar's about as far the other direction as you
can get.

~~~
haskal
My experience with barre chords is that I thought I could never get them
right, but I kept trying them with very tiny variations, until one day I just
got them. Never thought that I could play them correctly till the day before I
got them right.

~~~
vkou
My realization with barre chords came from asking my instructor about how to
play a barre A major chord. Seeing his finger bent slightly upwards at the
last knuckle was the missing ingredient.

------
vparikh
As the late great Jimi Hendrix mused:

'Sometimes you want to give up the guitar, you’ll hate the guitar. But if you
stick with it, you’re gonna be rewarded.'

I have been playing for 6 years and am just now getting to the point where I
can confidently say that I "play" guitar. Its a long journey and at times
painful. But stick with it as the rewards are well worth it.

Here are some tips for the new guitar player from my experience:

1\. You don't need an expensive guitar - you just need a good guitar. I know
we walk into the guitar shop and dream of owning that Gibson Les Paul 59
Reissue or the Custom Shop Stratocaster or the PRS. But its not the guitar
that makes the music - its you!

2\. Patience. Give yourself some time to see progress. Practice everyday, even
if it is for 10 minutes. Pickup up the guitar and just do it for 10 minutes.

3\. Stick with it. The guitar will challenge you. It test your patience,
tenacity, discipline, will power and your determination before it will give
you anything back.

4\. To get the quickest path to start playing and having fun - Learn power
chords first, bar chords next. And the minor pentatonic.

5\. Learn the notes on the fretboard as soon as you can. In fact start
learning them form day one. Do one string at a time. Learn the root notes of
the minor pentatonic and where they are in relation to each other.

If you do these five things first, you will be surprised how far you are going
to get. These are the basic tools of most blues and rock guitarist and 90% of
music of that genre can be covered by that.

If you have started the journey of learning the guitar, remember its is a
journey that won't ever end. So enjoy it!

------
Tycho
Here's something I wish I'd realized when I first started playing. If you know
the right set of chords you can play them in basically any order and they'll
sound nice.

If you take scale like C major, there's a chord that goes with every note of
the scale. On a piano this would be mean playing three note chords on the
white keys only, all the way up. So for the key of C that gives you

C_major D_minor E_minor F_major G_major A_minor B_diminished C_major

Now here is the cool part: you can play those chords in virtually any order
and they are going to sound good (although probably better to skip the B
diminished chord, and also helps to start or end on C). It also works in the
relative minor key, in this case A minor (still just white keys on the piano,
essentially):

A_minor B_diminished C_major D_minor E_minor F_major G_major A_minor

Those chords are all easy to play on a guitar. It would also be easy to do
this in the key of G major (E minor) on the guitar. They key doesn't actually
matter, but those are easy for beginners. You can just number the chords 1 to
7, then pick any sequence of numbers, eg. 145623, or 4545261, and play it, and
it will sound good, and you can make up a melody or a finger-picking pattern
to go with it. For some sequences you might need to get a bit creative and
vary the timing (eg. some chords will work better if you move through them
faster than average, some you can linger on for longer than average), but you
could make lots of good music from that alone.

~~~
lambdas
Tycho as in the Scott Hansen Tycho? If it is then I would like to say four
years ago I listened to your music in a depressed slump, a week later I picked
up the guitar and never looked back.

Either which way, that's some good advice and as a beginner it's hard to
realise these things if you're self learning. Scales can feel like a practice
routine rather than a palette.

~~~
Tycho
Not Scott Hansen Tycho, although I'll need to check out his music now that you
mention it.

Theory can be very dry and confusing and frankly off-putting, but the above I
think is something anyone can absorb and then start using. If you play chords
from that set you can sing and make up a tune with the comfort that any of
those chords is going to be a good option to play next, so it's very
liberating and you can quickly try different things.

------
baby
Can't you ditch all of that and use one of these cool new programs where they
show you where to play on the guitar, you play in there, and the mic detects
if you played correctly then proceeding with the next note?

I think RockSmith is one:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaHsqGSetVo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaHsqGSetVo)

I think there are others that might look more pedagogical.

~~~
acomjean
Rocksmith works with Bass and Guitar and is a lot of fun. Its basically rock
band with real instruments.

It has some basic video lessons too.

The guitar <-> usb cable works with other programs too, though the reverse is
not true (you needed to use the rocksmith adapter cable with the program).

melodics is the software to learn finger drumming (though they're adding real
drums to the software).

~~~
JustinAiken
> you needed to use the rocksmith adapter cable with the program

There's a nocable patch for PC, and for Mac you can create an aggregate audio
interface named "Rocksmith USB Cable" so you can use any interface you like -
it's much funner with Apogee gear than the toy cable!

------
pcsanwald
I've been a professional guitarist since I was a teenager, and switched to
upright bass about 3 years ago (I'm 40).

The biggest advantages to learning as an adult is on average you are going to
have money to pay for lessons and a decent instrument, and are probably going
to be more organized in terms of practicing and all that.

The disadvantages are that it's harder to network and find others at your
level to play with. And, to be clear, the way to get good at, and enjoy music,
is to play with other people. Even one-on-one lessons are a form of playing
with others, and many adults use lessons as a proxy for playing with others.

Playing with other people was a very easy thing for me to do when I was coming
up, and I'd imagine it would be significantly harder for an adult. But, I
believe it's critical to enjoyment and success in music.

~~~
fenwick67
Yeah it's been a real struggle for me to find people to play with as an adult.
It's hard to find adults who aren't either

A. really good, B. really bad, or C. too busy

~~~
pcsanwald
I honestly think the best thing to do is to take lessons, and ask your teacher
if they have other students who'd like to play with you.

You can also go to jam sessions if you live in an area that has a good music
scene; I live in SF and there are regular jam sessions for
bluegrass/jazz/folk/country/blues nearby. But, the thing about jam sessions is
that you have to be able to play at a certain level to really enjoy them.

I think honestly the best solution is one that almost no one takes: hire
really good musicians to play with you. When I was in music school, I had a
professor that would literally say: "For all the money y'all pay in tuition,
you would play better if you took that money and hired $famous_drummer and
$famous_bassist to come play trio with you at your house".

Obviously if you are a beginner you don't need to hire the best people in
town, but most professional musicians in this day and age are going to be
happy for a gig like this.

------
H1Supreme
Here's my $0.02: Learn barre chords straight away. Don't waste your time
learning all the open chord songs you can before you jump in. Jump right into
it. Open chords will be easy down the road.

Training your hand to barre strings with one finger, while moving the rest
independently, is the most challenging, and the most rewarding thing to learn.
It opens up so many doors to your playing.

~~~
otterpro
Wow, I wish I had known before I started learning. Moving up and down the fret
with barre chord is cool and easy once it is mastered. However, Barre chord is
also the hard to learn to play, requiring a lot of finger contortion, and also
probably most painful for players as the finger presses down on all 6 strings.
A lot of beginners either skip or avoid barre like the plague. I've found that
it is easier to do barre on either light string and/or electric guitar.

~~~
beat
I hardly ever play full barre chords. I _can_ , but I don't. (I was subjected
to practicing all the CAGED chord shapes as barres in circle of fifths up the
neck, which is great for the hands and the brain.) I don't like the sound of
six-string chords generally. So I mostly chord two or three strings at a time,
and move what's getting picked from strum to strum to mix the low and high
notes. It's much more dynamic and interesting, and sounds a lot less
cluttered. But that's me.

The result is that my barres are lazy. Since I'm only trying to get three
notes at most to ring clearly at once, I'm just muting the rest, which is a
lot less effort. Muting technique is everything!

------
ff7f00
The "What Musicians Can Learn about Practicing from Current Brain Research"
article[1] linked to in the practice section was interesting. The Mental
Practice experiment mentioned is pretty amazing. I'm curious, what do people's
practice schedules look like? I've been trying to regiment my practice
schedule but it's not easy and the only resource I've used is Justin
Sandercoe's intermediate practice routine[2] but it tends to lean toward a
longer 1-hour workout. Has anyone found an effective method for 15-30 minute
practice schedules?

[1]: [http://www.cti-home.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/01/Practice-...](http://www.cti-home.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/01/Practice-Current-Brain-Research.pdf)

[2]:
[https://www.justinguitar.com/en/PC-502-IntermediatePractice....](https://www.justinguitar.com/en/PC-502-IntermediatePractice.php)

------
mattparlane
If you are interested in learning /music/ and not just learning the /guitar/,
I would strongly encourage you to start on the piano.

I started on the piano and moved to the guitar later, and I've now realised
that the piano gives you such a good musical grounding, so much better than
the guitar can. There's nothing quite like having it all laid out in front of
you. It's the only way that things like sharps and flats make sense, it
doesn't make much sense on a guitar and that makes musical theory difficult to
learn.

~~~
amelius
I find the piano quite illogical. Playing a chromatic scale requires to jump
from white to black keys. The guitar with its "basic" strings is actually much
closer to the underlying physics (and thus mathematics), imho.

~~~
snarfy
This might be true from a physics standpoint, but it's not from a musical
standpoint. The vast majority of all western music was composed on a piano
first. It really does help to know it when learning any western music. Even
the chromatic scale on a guitar doesn't accurate represent the physics. It's
still based on sqrt 2^12 mathematics, not natural waves. If you want true
temperament it looks more like this:

[http://www.truetemperament.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/03/sl...](http://www.truetemperament.com/wp-
content/uploads/2014/03/slider2-GTR8.png)

------
OhHeyItsE
Glad to see this on here. Really, it's never too late to learn _anything_ ,
but I can offer context here as I have been playing for 25+ years.

I can say without a doubt that picking up a guitar is one of the best things
I've ever done in my life. It is just so rewarding. There are no barriers to
your level of achievement. Want to get better? Just play more. In fact, the
first thing I do after a bad day at work is pick up my guitar. I know that I
have at least something in my day that I can do better at than I could have
the day before.

It's also tremendously rewarding to be able to kind of level-up to your
heroes. I can play things now that I only dreamed of when I was a kid. Iconic
solos and riffs that I thought required some kind of superhuman level of
skill. Turns out it just takes a lot of practice. The difference being that
those heroes _wrote_ those solos in their early twenties, while I'm merely
_mimicking_ them in my late thirties. But I still get to hear those sounds
coming out of my amp, created by my fingers.

What other hobby or activity could offer that? Most of us could spend 12 hrs a
day in the driveway shooting hoops but could never even dream being the worst
player in the NBA.

------
probably_wrong
Since there are so many guitar players in this thread, I'll go ahead and ask
The One Question that pushed me away from playing (and keeps me away):

How do you know what to do with your _right_ hand?

Most books I've (admittedly, casually) read and most tabs on the internet are
surprisingly silent about this.

~~~
pcsanwald
The jazz guitar form of bikeshedding is discussing right hand picking
technique. There is endless amounts of discussion on consecutive picking,
alternate picking, sweep picking, gypsy picking, benson picking, etc.

Have a look at Tuck Andress' take on this to get a flavor:
[https://www.tuckandpatti.com/pick-
finger_tech.shtml](https://www.tuckandpatti.com/pick-finger_tech.shtml)

------
squozzer
I say do it for fun. There are plenty of hobbies available to the middle-aged,
and let's face it, one can spend a lot of money being mediocre (i.e., not
dominating) at any of them - e.g. racing cars.

Those who have sore backs from time to time might want to avoid "traditional"
Les Pauls.

~~~
lightedman
Les Pauls are light. Here, hold my Steinberger Spirit headless 5-string bass.
Let's see if you can even remain upright!

~~~
lightedman
Guess nobody here knows the weights of either guitar. Here: Les Paul weighs
generally 9 pounds. Steinberger XT-25 (the model I'm talking about) is 13
pounds. It will give you back problems playing it standing up for too long,
this is why it comes with a built-in lap bar.

------
ClayM
I played the piano growing up, but pretty much stopped when I was 16 - i
discovered sports, computers, girls

When I was 30, I decided to pick up the guitar.

Knowing how to read music was certainly a jump start, but it's certainly
doable.

JustinGuitar.com is a fantastic resource, but finding a teacher is the best.

------
nnd
What do experienced guitar players think about apps like Youcisian (which are
basically interactive tabs with timing assistance and learning feedback)? Do
they actually help in understanding the instrument and music composition?

~~~
EADGBE
Whatever helps you get over that initial hump of pain and frustration is a
great asset to use.

I've found when learning guitar (and therefore music), that any holes you
encounter seem to get filled in later; at one point or another.

Surrounding yourself with enough resources to close these holes is only good
for you.

------
hobbyguitarist
I have been playing guitar on and off since college and it is one of my
biggest joys and a great way to relax. I am self-taught so am missing a few
key ingredients to really master the instrument but it remains one of my
favorite hobbies.

I was put off learning to play guitar in high school by more experienced
guitar playing classmates (as well as an actual clerk at a music store) who
scoffed and sneered that someone would have the audacity to learn guitar so
'late'. The refrain was "you'll never be good, what's the point?"

(Of course, these were high schoolers and I shouldn't have been so easily
swayed, but as a shy teenager hearing these types of things make you crawl
back into your shell very quickly.)

I bring this up on this site because in many instances this "don't bother, the
playing guitar club is FULL" attitude was prevalent when I began to learn
programming around 5 years ago with the hope of changing careers (I'm
mid-30s).

While seeking out guidance in various forums online it became clear to me that
to many experienced programmers it was inconceivable that I'd ever be
successful as a programmer while starting so 'late' and I shouldn't even
bother.

The reasons were plenty: I didn't have a CS degree, I wasn't much interested
in low-level programming (at the time), I didn't have an interest at getting a
job at the big 4 and just wanted to write small web and mobile apps to start
(the horror!), I didn't much care for committing to memory every sort
algorithm in existence, etc. In short, how dare I knock on the door of their
prestigious club?

Fortunately I ditched the learning online route and took the bootcamp plunge
while it was just kicking off, where I found a similar community of people and
some really awesome instructors who were extremely patient and encouraging. I
can't speak for all bootcamp students but for me at least it remains, years
later, one of the best decisions I've made and has transformed my career and
life for the better.

Will I ever be a virtuoso, Carnegie Hall-playing guitarist or a "rock star"
engineer at Google working on the most cutting edge AI? No, probably not, and
I'm OK with that. Maybe in my next life.

But what I'm doing is making me happy and is a constant source of new
knowledge and discovery. I would just hope that in the future, whatever our
expertise(s) we are more careful not to be so quick to dismiss new learners as
well as other interested people in other industries and walks of life.

------
Jasonbe
ok, so i have guitar but never use the thing, what are some resources to
learn?

~~~
dylanfw
Justin Guitar[1] is a great place to start!

1: [https://www.justinguitar.com/](https://www.justinguitar.com/)

~~~
mrkgnao
Edit: ignore this, it's false. Proof:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Guitar/comments/1cgrdq/ama_this_is_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Guitar/comments/1cgrdq/ama_this_is_justin_from_justinguitarcom_ask_me/c9gc0dj/)

I don't know how this stuck with me for so long, I've practically known it to
be true for as long as I've been playing. Huh.

\---

Interesting bit of trivia I learned long after I stopped using his resources:
Tommy Emmanuel is his father.

~~~
mullr
I can find no reference to this; it appears he may have three daughters but
they all share his surname. Source?

~~~
mrkgnao
You're right, thanks for catching this. See my edit.

------
k__
Like with many things, to get really good you need to put in the time.

I'm playing for 14 years now, started with 18, and I'm a pretty mediocre
player.

I know people who also started with 18 and got really good in under 4 years.

------
tarr11
I learned to play guitar as a kid, played some classical and jazz as a
teenager and in my twenties, then put it down. I have a nice classical guitar
sitting in my closet for a decade.

My problem is that although I can read music, understand some theory, can play
chords and even some can play a little bit of complex music like Villa Lobos,
I have absolutely no "ear". I can't even tune the guitar without help.

So this means I basically need to memorize or play from sheet music, which
kind of got boring after a while.

~~~
mabub24
You don't really need a good ear for tuning. Pick up a tuner, they're pennies
nowadays.

When you're tuning by "ear", though, the trick is, on an acoustic guitar at
least, to feel the body resonating. It's much more a feeling than a particular
sound. I think very few people can just pluck an E note out of nowhere. That
takes years of practice.

A general "ear" for melody and harmony comes from practice, exposure to
different music styles, and playing with other people. Some stuff that sounds
awful by yourself sounds much better with accompanying instruments.

------
criddell
The last time I thought about getting serious about practicing was after I had
read Anders Ericsson's book _Peak_. I was trying to come up with a practice
routine that fit the deliberate practice model.

If you've gone down the same path and worked on optimizing your practice time,
what did you come up with? I bought my first guitar in the mid-90s and have
worked at it off-and-on since then and still can't play a single real song.

------
EADGBE
As much as I love guitar, these principles can apply to any instrument, so
don't think you're pegged into learning guitar because you started late.

You can pick up the bassoon or piano just as well.

------
zwieback
Isn't that a guittaron (fretless guitar/bass combo) in the image at the top of
the post. I've been wanting to get one of those but have too many instruments
already...

------
adamlovesgin
Thanks for the comments everyone, and glad you enjoyed the article!

------
texteller
This is an timely write up, bought a brand guitar way back 1 years back and
still thinking if this is the right age to learn. This write up changed my
prescriptive.

~~~
adamlovesgin
Thanks a lot. Start. Now!

------
mikesickler
Instead of a private lessons, I use ArtistWorks.com. I am enrolled in the
banjo course and have found the video lessons really effective.

------
osteele
I started guitar in my mid forties.

Four years later, I've reached the point where (some) non-musicians are
envious, and actual musicians categorize my sounds as “music” more often than
not.

There's lot of great advice on this thread. (Especially about deliberate
practice; and about avoiding instruments so cheap they'll just increase the
difficulty while making you sound worse than you are.) I'll fill in a few
notes from my own journey. YMMV.

Choosing a guitar:

* Steel string is hell on the fingers for a beginner. It is effective altitude training for nylon and electric. I love the tone and I'm really glad I started with steel string. However, had I known how hard it would be, I don't know that I'd have advised myself to start with it.

* Electric is easy-peasy (callus- and finger-strength-wise). I think a decent electric is cheaper than a decent acoustic too. Con: (1) you're less likely to pick up the instrument for two minutes of spontaneous practice when you walk past it on its stand. (I've probably got a lot of practice in from two minutes that turned into fifteen that turned into fifty.) (2) If you're a unmusical nerd like me, it's easy to get distracted from the hard work of making cleaning notes, by the comfort zone of playing with electronics.

* Nylon (classical) is easier on the fingers than steel but more difficult than electric. It might represent a happy medium between beginner fingers and practice activation energy, even if you don't play classical. Beware: new nylon needs to be tuned again every five minutes. After a month, it finishes stretching out, and holds its tuning about as well as steel.

* You can play any style of music on any guitar, __except __: (1) you can 't really bend (a blues staple technique) a nylon string; (2) electric guitars have much greater sustain than any acoustic guitar: if the music you want to play sounds more like a violin or voice (sustained, tonal) than like a piano (percussive), you need an electric; (3) let's not talk about slide.

* What everyone else says about too cheap a guitar (or, “guitar-shaped instruments”, such as acoustics available for <$150-200). Specifically, you're looking for (1) “low action” (don't have to press a string too far for it to reach the fret), (2) good intonation (fifth fret low E is the same pitch as the open A, etc.), (3) stays in tune. Depending on your tolerance, you may also require (4) good tone (timbre). Cheap instruments are generally deficient on all of these, and this can really kill your motivation.

Decide whether you want to strum (harmony) or play individual notes (melody,
or “lead”; also most of classical). These are almost different instruments.
(For the beginner. A lot of melody is playing off of chord shape hand
posiitons; and, coming from the other direction, embellished chords get to
sound a lot like lead.) If accompanying (you sing or play harmonica, or can
play with in a band), strumming is a valuable contribution. If you're playing
solo, you probably need to play lead in order to have music that can stand its
own.

Decide whether you want to play with a pick or finger style. It's easier to be
loud with a pick, and it's especially easy to be loud strumming with a pick.
If you're playing acoustic with a band, this may matter to you. Classical, on
the other hand, is always finger style. Otherwise, don't make too much of this
decision – there's a fair bit of technique to each, but most of what you need
learn as a beginner applies to both, and if you continue with guitar you'll
probably want both under your belt anyway. Just find some musicians or music
that you want to sound like, and do what they do.

Choosing a learning style. Try each of the following; see which one(s) seem
effective for you.

* Learn from an instructor. If this is how you learn best and you have funds and access, find someone you can trust, and then ignore everything else I've written.

* Play by ear. Listen to something, try to make your guitar sound like that. Many of today's older guitarists wore out vinyl records this way. Man I wish I could learn this way.

* Jam with friends. This may work if you're musically talented (I'm not), and/or coming from another instrument. Ditto.

* Learn by watching. Watch people's fingers, do what they do. If this is your learning style, YouTube is the golden age. My pseudo-science theory is that if you're good at learning from watching (e.g. sports, dance, watching people's hand motions when they sew, cook, juggle, drive, etc.), maybe you have a well-functioning mirror neuron system and this will work well for you. Yet another style I aspire to but suck at.

* Play from tab. Learn to play tab, and get some pieces under your belt. I kind of feel like this is the least-musician-y thing to do, but it matches my strengths so much better than the others that I went with this. At this point the road forks: (1) Classical: now learn the (newer!) standard staff, and leave tab behind – that was your starting wheels. (2) Folk/pop/rock/etc.

* Play from standard notation. This is really only used in classical repertoire. Even for classical, tab (which is the older notation) is still easier as a stepping stone, and has the advantage of building in performance notes about fingering, but if you're working with an instructor or you're not going to be put off by learning several hard things at once, then skipping tab gets you to the endpoint more directly.

* Play from chord diagrams or lead sheets. This is good for strumming (harmony). I'm not a strummer; don't have much to say here.

Practice:

* “What you do is what you do every day.” 15 minutes / day beats two hours once a week

* “The journey is the reward.” Find a way to enjoy the practice itself.

* Allocate some time each day for (1) skills, (2) repertoire, (3) noodling around. When you're starting, you won't have any repertoire (2), and there may not be much distinction between (1) and (3) (“I'm just trying to get _any single note_ to sound clean.)

* At any particular point, have one or more skills you're working on. I've iterated through: play without fret buzz, use each finger without fret buzz, finger adjacent strings, finger non-adjacent strings, chromatic scales, blues scales, various chords, various chord alternations, making a barre, hammer-ons and pull-offs with various fingers, flat picking at tempo, flat picking alternate strings at tempo, finger picking a chord, bending a note, banjo rolls. Spend fifteen minutes a day on each active skill. (Exception: when you're starting, you may only have strength or callus for five minutes. “It's a marathon not a sprint.”) I probably spent fifteen minutes a day on barre for a week or two before hearing anything that even vaguely resembled success; eventually, it locked in.

* Learn to play at higher tempo by (1) playing as fast as you can with __zero __errors. Drop the pace until you can do this. There 's a theory that you can learn even faster by (2) playing even faster, with errors, so long as you also do (1). This has worked for me.

* Some great musicians swear by practicing with metronomes; some advocate doing without them so that you develop your own sense of rhythm. If the latter, record yourself and play it back against a metronome, so you can tell if your tempo is as good as you think is is.

* Isolate and repeat difficult sections. Spend a minute, or five, or fifteen, on the smallest problematic section (maybe a single chord, or chord alternation, or four notes from a melody); don't play the whole piece and only hit the problem spot every few minutes.

------
gooseyard
that's a guitarron in the picture which, coincidentally, is the instrument I
am trying whether to decide I am too late in my musical career to bother
learning :)

------
davidreiss
If I ever win the lottery, I'd love to learn to play the guitar, learn a few
foreign languages, contribute to open source software, make a bonsai tree,
read all the books I have in my apartment that are collecting dust, [a long
list of other stuff I'd like to do].

I don't want a big house or an expensive car or "bling". I just wish I had the
money to buy time.

~~~
monster_group
You don't need to win a lottery to have the time to learn to play guitar
(multiple foreign languages - yes you do). It is actually quite difficult to
practice more than 15 minutes every day because of sore fingers and
frustration. Lottery or no lottery - if you really want to do it you will be
able to find 15 minutes in a day.

~~~
omtose
>because of sore fingers

Maybe in the beginning, but after having developed calluses you can basically
practice for an undefinite period of time.

~~~
bluGill
You need some skill as well, and that takes longer to develop than calluses. 8
hours of "twinkle twinkle little star" will drive anyone insane.

------
yahna
> The best guitarists practice for hours every day

This is why I suck at guitar after 15 years (although I stopped for several).
I just don't stick with it enough.

