How to Learn Guitar Without A Teacher
So you’d like to learn guitar? But can’t afford lessons, or as the case might be as you’re visiting this publication, you don’t have time for lessons. Is it possible? The truth is…(no matter how much I’d like to admit it, as a guitar teacher, yes you can. It’s more than possible, in fact I’m living proof of it. Almost everything I’ve learned up until now has come from figuring it out, on my own! The joy of the internet means that you can learn anything anywhere, at any time…however there are some important tips I’ve learned over the years that really do make learning guitar without a teacher easier on you, and to save you hours and hours of work!
Know What You Want
For goodness sake, I wish I took this advice when I first started. As someone who is the most all over the place person I know, who changes his mind like the wind. KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO LEARN! Take the time to think about what you want to achieve, where you want to take you learning of the guitar, as guitar is such a wide subject, and there are many areas you can study in! Take the time to think about the following questions:
- What Music do you Love?
- What Music do you want to play?
- Why do you want to play? ← — REALLY IMPORTANT!
If you don’t know the answers to these questions, then I’d highly suggest trying out as many styles as possible, learn to play along with some popular songs from the radio (As of writing this Ed Sheeran is a great one to start with!) and just figure things out!
Ask Yourself Why?
You need to have a lot of motivation to learn the guitar. Knowing why you want to learn, will help keep you motivated in the times when you’re screwing up over and over again (more on that shortly…) and you want to throw you guitar against a wall! You need to find you motivation, you drive for learning! The most effective way to learn something is to make it matter:
Learning is strong when it matters, when the abstract is made personal and clear — Make It Stick by Peter C Brown, Henry L Roediger III, Mark A McDaniel
Fall In Love with Mistakes
You need to be okay with mistakes, and I mean really okay with mistakes, because you’ve got a long journey of mistakes, and the sad fact is, they’re the most important part of the journey. If you don’t love mistakes then you can’t progress. If you sit there and get annoyed at a sign telling you that you’ve got more to learn you really can’t learn! Also, that horrific myth that “if you only make mistakes, that’s all you learn….” total and utter crap. In fact, it’s the art of making and correcting mistakes that actually improves you learning, you’ll gain more from figuring out how to do things yourself then learning how to do it right first time:
Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results! I know several thousand things that won’t work. — Thomas Edison quote from His Life and Inventions by Frank Lewis Dyer
Practice Daily
I know, this is a blog about people with limited time, so why the hell do I mention practicing daily, because 10 minutes a day is still daily, and still makes a world of difference done right! If you’re playing every day you get used to playing quicker! It’s far better to practice every day for only 10–15 minutes to spend 1 day a week cramming in the equivalent of a days’ practice.
There is always Someone Better — Accept it & Enjoy Yourself!
You will reach points in your playing where you will want to give up, no matter how motivated you might be, or how much you love mistakes or practice daily there will be one day where you sit there and go…screw this I am not good enough to learn this look at that 8 year old kid who’s absolutely shredding to the next century and is being used as branding for a popular guitar brand whilst I’m sitting here still learning how to play open chords! First things first, realize that this is part of learning, some people will have more free time and can use that free time. Especially younger children, but the cool thing about music, is it doesn’t really matter how good someone is at one thing. They’re always terrible at other things! Try getting a kid who can shred until the sun goes down to play a half diminished seventh chord they’ll sit there and ask the same question I did when I wrote that:
WHAT THE HELL IS THAT! It’s fine to not know something, you’ll always be missing some aspect of knowledge, and it’s not possible to know everything there is about guitar! Believe me I’ve been teaching and playing for over 15 years (4 years of teaching) and I still don’t know everything! which segways quite nicely into this next point:
You Don’t Need To Know Everything — Why So Serious!
Even the greatest teachers and players don’t know everything! It’s part and parcel of learning an instrument as vast as the guitarist! There are just some things you don’t know and will find hard to understand! So it’s important to not take yourself so seriously! Music is fun. Music is about expression so enjoy yourself and stop being so serious!
You Aren’t As Good As You Think!
Wow, that hurt didn’t it? There is a well know psychological bias known as the Dunning–Kruger effect in which when people start learning something they believe they know more than they actually do! I’ve experienced this multiple times in my years of playing, the sooner you realize you aren’t actually that good and you’ve got more to learn, the more you learn! Always be sure to check what you know, test yourself and rely less on the resources you currently use to help yourself, and use retrieval techniques to help you further your knowledge! Also, when you realize you’ve hit this point in your learning, go easy on yourself! It’s not something you can control — it’s part of your bias’ and all we can do is learn from them, instead of being overly hard on yourself and then giving up…which brings me to my final point:
Don’t Give Up!
Teaching yourself guitar is really damn hard. It’s a tough slog and the moment you feel like you’ve got somewhere you realize you’ve got a flipping long way to go! Be kind to yourself when you’re learning! Learning guitar is a lifetime skill and although some people choose to spend 24/7 working on improving your skills, doesn’t mean you have to! If you remember that this process is a journey you’ll come a long way! You’ll progress so much faster, if you just go easy on yourself!
Challange Corner — 10mins
You thought this was just a motivational blog post…sure it was sorta, but it doesn’t mean you can’t use the resources here to improve your skills. Isn’t that why you found this blog post? So you can feel more confident to learn more! So here’s your challenge for today:
What Music Do You Love & Why Do You Want To Learn Guitar
Take 10 minutes to write down, what music you love listening to and why you want to learn guitar. Write it down somewhere, as it’ll really help you when you continue to learn! If you feel like sharing I’d love to know what it is, by writing it in the comments below! Also, tell me what YOU struggle with!
Originally Written on The Busy Guitarist
