Mastering Guitar — The Caster Way
by Alan Sheng | Grade 8 | Scholastic 2023 | Humor | Silver Key
Disclaimer: Every detail in this guide must be closely followed to ensure the utmost success. Any failure to do so will result in unavoidable DOOM.
What’s crackin’!? My name is Stratton Caster, and welcome to my exuberant and definitely helpful course on guitar! The guitar is an extremely hard instrument to play and you will definitely lose all ten of your fingers in the process. Haha, just kidding. (But not really.) Anyway, let’s get started!
Part 1: The Two-Fold Path of Suffering and Depression
Let’s begin with a cheerful word of encouragement! So you’ve picked up a fine-looking guitar, and have started listening to John Mayer and the Beatles and even Metallica, imagining the progressions, the harmonics, the chords that you’ll be able to play within a few weeks…
Well, boy, are you in for a surprise.
Look, everything you know about the guitar (or even think you know) is absolutely, profusely, horrendously WRONG! This is not Simply Guitar, which for those of you who don’t know, Simply Guitar is a “guitar” teaching app with terrible lessons and guides on how to play guitar. Unlike this course, Simply Guitar is a waste of time.
However, fear not brave soul, for I, Sir Caster will guide you through this harrowing journey of learning guitar. To prepare yourself for the coming days, you must do this. First, deplete your life savings to stock up on the extra five or six guitars you’ll need after hurling each one down the staircase. Yes, the guitar is frustrating and you might have to break a few before you actually learn a chord or two, but do not give up. You must suffer through those first weeks. They are a key part of the process. Most importantly, you must not use or listen to Simply Guitar. They will speak lies to your ear, telling you to put on lotion for your callused fingers and wear gloves while playing. And while this may provide you temporary relief, such comforts will inevitably weaken your resolve and ultimately your soul. So listen to me when I say you should want to develop calluses and harden your fingers against the strings. Your spirit must remain firm and steadfast if you wish to learn the guitar.
Good job! Now that you have physically and mentally prepared yourself, let’s continue. There are two paths you can choose: electric guitar or acoustic.
A brief synopsis of electric: If you’ve started out on acoustic, the electric will seem like a blessing. The strings are much easier to play! Oh look, all these pedals and sounds you can mess around with! What’s this? You can maximize the volume and blast at 5:00 AM on Christmas? How fun! But again, my friend, you are mistaken. The electric guitar is a Siren in disguise. Once you have stuck with this guitar for a while, the expectations of your band, your friends, and your family will inevitably begin to creep up. They’ll watch Hendrix, Halen, Mayer, and May, and then you will be asked, then cajoled, then forced to play insane bends as they do, blindingly fast solos, sharp, clean, slides, more, and more, and more, until you just. Can’t. Do it. The expectations of your companions will leave you bereft and disappointed. Your health will suffer from stress and pressure. You will collapse and weep as your black, six-stringed beast fall from your hands and clang onto the dull floor. You will despair in the Pit of Tartarus that you dragged yourself into.
A brief synopsis of acoustic: Acoustic guitar is, unlike electric, exactly what it’s supposed to be. There’s not too much to say. The strings are like solid metal wires. The songs require perfect coordination. Even when you finally learn the advanced Travis picking technique and understand how to split your concentration seven ways, you’ll be forced to do nothing but sing and strum campfire songs for dear old Great-Aunt Sally. Oh, and did I mention how nobody can even hear you play because the strings are so darn quiet? So, in short, both are pretty bad options — just pick your poison and get on with it.
Part 2 — The Inchworm
Welcome to the next stage of my course where things will start to get serious! Hopefully, by this point, you’ve learned to survive comfortably without your ears, fingers, and mental sanity. But at least you’ll have learned a handful of notes and four chords! While that’s technically enough to play over 1,000 songs, the bad news is that they’re all garbage pop songs. Like, who listens to “Watermelon Sugar” anyway? (Answer: Simply Guitar players.) You see, there is much progress to be made if you want to be a true rocker. You, my friend, have graduated from a maggot to an inchworm.
Section 1. Music Theory. To begin this topic, take a deep breath and while exhaling, increase your brain size by 400%. Then print out the next handout in this course, making sure to set the font size 5x larger so you don’t lose any more of your already diminishing eyesight. Then, study, study, and study some more… because if you don’t, you might find yourself wondering Why did I just play that lick in the completely wrong key of A Minor instead of Gb Major and embarrass myself in front of my entire extended family at Thanksgiving? Why did I attempt to play the A diminished chord but instead produce a dastardly screech and cause my entire rock band to proffer me with a stare rivaling Sauron’s gaze? The answer: because you didn’t know Music Theory!!! If you don’t understand it, that’s okay because no one does, and you won’t either. But you should still try to. You are an inchworm, and beauty lies in the struggle! Okay, time to move on.
Section 2. Memorization and Technique — There are 110 different types of scales in guitar including Dorian, pentatonic, Lydian, and 107 others. Each has twelve different keys. In addition, each key has 20 different ways to play, depending on how well you paid attention to the previous paragraph’s topic. That’s 26,400 scales. Learn them. Every possible chord combination adds up to 2,210 different chords. Learn them. Artificial Harmonics? Learn them. Barre chords? Learn them. The four successful bending techniques? Learn them. Pull-offs, hammer-ons, slides, ghost notes? Tapping, percussi, bell harmonics, dynamics? Tab, every clef, chord charts? Learn. Them. All.
Now, everyone knows that the best way to learn is through memorization, that mind-numbing process of implanting useless thoughts into your brain, a practice best achieved using repetitive and unnecessary motions. Learn the entire darn history of guitar starting from the Paleolithic Era and hunter-gatherers through repetition! It’s not hard, just difficult. Time to move on.
Step 3. Immersion — There is a saying that you must put yourself in others’ shoes to understand their perspective. Since the guitar is an inanimate object that cannot walk and therefore has no shoes, you must take the next best option: you must become the guitar. Once you discover that nothing but the guitar exists, you will escape worldly emotions such as fear, hate, and sadness. You must eat with your guitar. Sleep with your guitar. Cradle your guitar when you are lonely. Meditate in a cave, utterly naked, accompanied by no other presence but your guitar. Only when your nose knows nothing but the rich aroma of mahogany wood and your tongue knows nothing other than the rich metallic taste of the nylon strings, and your fingers have merged with the tuning pegs themselves in a strange, spiritual fusion, can you truly become good (at the guitar).
Conclusion: By the way, if you do somehow miraculously, magically, overcome all insurmountable obstacles and odds, and manage to produce a good song (or even a string of notes for 30 seconds; that’s good enough), don’t forget to like and share this guide! A little referral goes a long way. Our dream is to share the joy and fun of playing guitar just like we did with you! And of course, make sure to mention how we supported you and encouraged you every step of the way!
-Stratton Caster
PS. Make sure to click the link below to get a free preview of our limited edition lesson plan on learning bass, an instrument with two-thirds the strings, but two times the pain!
