Video Transcript:
Hey everybody, what I want to talk about in this video is beginner’s frustration to learn guitar. I myself was given a guitar for Christmas when I was 16, but I didn’t start playing it more than once a week until 2 years after I had it. What a regret! I could have 2 more years of guitar playing under my belt right now and much more skill than I have now if I only started when I got it.
The problem was, that every time I picked it up I couldn’t stand that I sounded terrible, that I didn’t really know what to do, and that my fingers hurt after 5 minutes of playing.
One day I remember very clearly, though, around the time when I started to play more regularly. I heard the acoustic version of Layla by Eric Clapton play on the radio and I heard his intro solo. Immediately I looked up the tab and tried to learn it. I slowly started to play it, and over the course of a few days I knew all the notes, though my playing wasn’t great, of course. But in any case, I was pretty hooked – it sounded great to me. And I think that is what ultimately hooks all guitarists to the instrument. Just the sounds that you can be capable of producing. Playing the guitar can be comforting and exhilarating at the same time when you find the right music for yourself to play.
So the first tip – find something that you really want to play. For me it was the melody of Eric Clapton’s solo (in fact, I kept learning mostly solos when I started playing a lot – I didn’t know a full song for months and months after I started!) but for you, you might want to learn a song that you really love.
That solves the problem of sounding terrible.
For the problem of your fingers hurting, a great idea to form calluses quickly is to soak your hands in salt water for a while, then play a guitar hard. Lots of string bends and slides on an acoustic guitar will definitely build em fast. When your hands start to hurt, do not play any more. Let them heal. Otherwise, you risk getting blisters and you won’t be able to play for a long time.
As for the problem of not really knowing what to do, some good advice would be to get a guitar course that shows to the correct way to play. The only course that I ever used is at this link if you’d like to try it. You won’t have to pay tons of money for a private teacher which might cost you 20$/hour or so and you’ll be proud that you taught yourself – after all, you don’t need somebody else to teach you when you’re the only one learning. I’ll put the link in the description, as well. In the next video, which has a link at the top of the description, I talk a little more about it and also give you many more important tips like this. It is a longer video with many more important tips you should know so that you can learn guitar faster.
Hope you enjoyed the video and cheers!