Untruthful: Playing guitar and self-expression.

Playing guitar and self-expression.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007

I feel that everyone should play an instrument. That doesn't mean taking lessons, or even devoting much time to it. Music is a fun hobby for me. I took piano lessons, and have spent probably a total of 5-10 hours in my life being professionally taught how to play guitar. I have been self-teaching myself guitar for about 5-6 years now.

I guess the secret to being self-taught isn't anything like practicing EVERY DAY until you're good, its enjoying it. How can you develop a hobby if you aren't enjoying yourself. The reason so many people get hooked on things like videogames is because they're fun... immediately. You don't have to learn to play a videogame, you just pick it up and within 5 minutes, you're shooting, slashing, or passing the football, whatever. However, with an instrument, there are pitfalls. Especially with guitar. For one, before developing callouses on my fingers, it hurt like hell. Thats about the only part that required determination for me.

But the secret, really to teaching yourself guitar: have fun. Don't try to play some hard fucking song and fail horribly, then just look yourself in the mirror and say "WOW I suck." What I did was fucking rock out. It didn't sound to great at first, but I really got to know the instrument by playing whatever I wanted. I hummed tunes, then sounded them out on the guitar. I looked up chords and dicked around with them, even if it was some simple little song that went something like E A E A E A E A A A A A EEEEE (One of my all-time greats).

I feel sort of bad, because I have a few friends that have tried to pick up guitar as a hobby rather than go get lessons. And being slightly better than them, I almost feel like a hindrance, because since I'm self-taught, if they don't pick it up quick they feel like "I'll never be that good" or something like that. Well, maybe that isn't true, or maybe it is. The fact is, it took me like 5 years to get this good lol. Yes, I was once strumming out Smoke on the Water just like you.

Another misconception is that some people have "more musical talent" I don't think this is true at all. Its all just a matter of how you view music. I have a very open-ended view of all music, and all genres, therefore, its easy for me to relate to and understand the sound and structure. If you start really listening to what makes up the music you listen to (the drums, the bass, the guitar, the vocals) individually, I guarantee your "musical talent" will increase.

Anyway, for all you aspiring players, heres a few links that I found useful:
Ultimate Guitar Tabs
Chords Charts
Guitar Tips

Happy playing. Hopefully you'll be shredding in no time.

By the way, if you enjoyed reading this, let me know with a comment :D