I have always wanted to learn how to play the guitar, but for some reason or another I simply never started. My wife knows this, and for my birthday, she bought me an Alvarez acoustic guitar and a year of guitar lessons! She also bought me a tuner, a new set of strings (not that I would know how to change them), and what seems like a metric ton of picks.
As excited as I am to start taking lessons next Tuesday, I am also a little bit intimidated. I took piano lessons for eight years, but my last piano lesson was almost twelve years ago! I have heard that it can be hard to learn an instrument as an adult, and I am afraid that I may not be able to pick it up very well.
So, have any of you tried to learn to play the guitar as an adult? How did it go? Any pointers or helpful words of advice that you would like to impart to me?
Tried and failed. But I have no musical talent whatsoever – only thing I can play well is the stereo. I would think that if you have a musical background, it shouldn’t be that bad. Just a lot of practice.
From my personal experience, the only problem with learning an instrument as an adult, at least for me, is that I do not have the passion nor drive that I had as a youth. I didn’t want it badly enough to spend the time that is required to do something like that well.
I took Beginning Folk Guitar at a community college. We never got much into picking (although we did do Stairway To Heaven of course, and A Soalin) but practiced chords and folk songs.
I remember the first songs were Rollin’ On The River, Rocka My Soul (In The Bosom Of Abraham), Down By The Riverside, and such. I picked up a couple of songbooks like The Police, New Wave Hits, and 100 Rock Classics (or something like that). Since then I’ve looked up songs on the Internet when I wanted to play them. No way am I any good, but I enjoy playing and singing in the privacy of my home. It’s a pleasant way to spend an hour.
My advice – have fun with it, and enjoy the experience for itself, and not in comparison to some external set of expectations. You probably won’t become proficient enough to turn pro – and you may well not become proficient enough that you want to start performing at open mike nights – but if you enjoy playing, what the hell, that’s the point.
I took up tap-dancing as an adult, and frankly I’m never going to be really good at it (though I have performed in a few recitals – no solos, though, and I prefer being in the back row if there are two rows of dancers ) – and I don’t pick up things as quickly as kids do, or retain them as well (though if you’ll refresh my memory, oh, right, yeah, that’s the combination we learned last week – no prob, we can learn the next chunk now) – but I enjoy the hell out of it, and I love doing something that is so completely different from anything else in my day-to-day life.
Not to highjack, but this is related. Can you learn to pick before you learn to strum chords? I mean, do you have to learn strumming or can you go right into picking?
I got my guitar for my 27th birthday and I must say that after a year and two months, I’m catching on quite nicely. I can’t pick to save my life, but I attribute this to stubbornly insisting on a right-handed guitar even though I’m not.
I agree with the previous poster who mentioned that the loss of passion and drive seems to be what makes learning as an adult so much harder. Once I came across a song from a friend that I really wanted to learn to play, it got alot easier to make myself practice on a consistent basis. Now I can play American Pie and Eagles tunes until my roommate is ready to claw her own ears off.
I’ve been “learning” to play guitar since I was 14. I’m 57 now, and still working at it. I realized at about 20 something that I wasn’t ever going to play in the big leagues, but it’s still been fun for the most part. I didn’t take lessons so it took a while longer for me.
The guy who owned the music store where I bought my first few guitars was a guitar player who had played professionally years before and told me he only played nowadays in his living room “for his own amusement and amazement.” I like the way he put it. If that’s all you ever do, it’s a lot further than most get.
Keep at it. Don’t give up after a few days when you find how hard all that “air guitar” stuff really is to play for real.
I will be 28 on Sunday. I think that I have the drive and passion to really stick to this, as I have really wanted to play the guitar for a long time. I hope that the lessons will help to keep me motivated, since I will have the opportunity to hopefully learn something new each week.
When I first took lessons in junior high, my instructor tried to teach me individual notes and scales before chords, the idea being that it was better for me to first learn to read music (I could, but not for the guitar) and understand some music theory about how notes, and correspondingly chords, went together. That’s all good and fine, but it was more than a little discouraging to a young not-particularly-patient kid who wanted to learn how to play some “Ratt” to have to practice scales and picking out the notes to “Go Tell Aunt Rosie” indefinitely. I eventually gave up on the lessons and began teaching myself from fake books and old albums.
I stayed with it, but I didn’t take lessons again until college, when my brother introduced me to a friend who was a classical guitar major. We had three formal lessons, and then became friends and just hung out playing guitar and drinking beer. I eventually started a band with him and three other guys, in which I sang and did not play guitar. I was okay, but the guitarists were much, much better guitar players than me. I learned a great deal from all of them.
Anyway, my point is: it’s great to learn to read music and music theory, but it’s also good while you’re doing so to learn to play a few songs to rock a party to keep yourself from getting discouraged. Learn your “cowboy chords” and basic barre chords and learn to strum out and maybe sing a few simple songs by bands you like. That’s what mildly perturbs me about the whole “Guitar Hero” video game commercial: if instead of playing an air guitar game and pretending to play “You Really Got Me” they followed the time-honored tradition of locking themselves in their bedrooms and plunking away on a real guitar, they could in a short amount of time learn to play a actual recognizable version of “You Really Got Me” they could use to win friends and influence people. I guess I shouldn’t complain, I could actually have been out stealing cars during the many hours I wasted on GTA: San Andreas. So good on you and keep with it, O Unkempt one!
Wanting to play is half the battle. I also agree with pravnik. Learn G C D and you’ll be surprised how many country songs you suddenly know. Add A and Em and BAM! You’re practically Greenday.
And if you ever need easy songs (3-5 chords, no barre chords**), just email/IM me. I’m building quite the collection.
***A type of guitar chord where one or more fingers are used to press several or all of the strings across the guitar fingerboard in order to play a chord. Owie owie.
*
You utterly and completely can do this. I know, I did it. I’m not great and don’t have much time for it anymore. But I did it.
It’s trite, I know, but you get out of it what you put into it. Practice and you’ll be astonished at how quickly you advance. Don’t and, while you’ll likely still gain ground, it’ll be slower.
The biggest problem I found, as others have told, is that adults have more demands on their time than teens do. For me with business and kids and house and such finding time to practice/play was the biggest challenge.
The more you pick it up at home, the better off you’ll be. When I started learning in High School, the baseball coach did lessons once a week. Some people had obvious progress while others…didn’t. The main thing is to learn A, C, D, E, F, G and two or three minors and then practice until you can change from A to F seamlessy. The smoother you are able to switch chords, the better you will be at playing songs.
We always played with CDs of whatever songs our coach had given us the chords to. Many songs are only 3 or 4 chords, but it is IMHO better to play with a CD to get the feel for the strum pattern, etc. Some songs do need a capo (an instrument that clamps on to the neck of the guitar that changes the key of said guitar) to be played as it is on the disc. The site I use for tabs and chords is www.ultimate-guitar.com . That site contains almost any song you could want to play.
So stick with it. Play for at least 15 minutes every day, even if it is just practicing switching chords. Playing the guitar is a great hobby. Good luck!
I ttok it up in my early 20’s, put it aside after a few years and am now back at it again. Ditto all those who have counseled patience and having fun. one of the cool things about the guitar is that it’s faily easy to get started on, but hard to get finished . A few open chords and a few bob dylan and neil young songs and you’re off, but you can take it to bach and solo jazz improv if you want.
you’ll find all kinds of new things for your hands to do, and your brain has to learn it too, that’s why it’s better to practive 15 min every day than 2 hours once a week, you have to create strength and flexibility in your hand by a consistent load, you also have to develope new neuron connections for fine motor control. this will all happen automatically, but it can only happen so fast, good luck. If you’re near me, we’ll jam!
) – and I don’t pick up things as quickly as kids do, or retain them as well (though if you’ll refresh my memory, oh, right, yeah, that’s the combination we learned last week – no prob, we can learn the next chunk now) – but I enjoy the hell out of it, and I love doing something that is so completely different from anything else in my day-to-day life.
I learned a great deal from all of them.