Hey, so you want to learn how to play the guitar?
I can’t blame you.
The guitar is one of the most popular musical instruments around, probably due to, I’m just guessing here, its high visibility in rock music. A lot of novice guitar players start out playing guitar because they want to be like and play like their guitar hero!
Well, I did and still do!
And this illusion is the drug that’s feeds this craving to learn more and play even more! That’s part of the magic that comes with playing this amazing instrument.
But mind you, it’s not all fun and games. You should have lots and lots of patience and discipline in order to reach to level of playing that exceptional guitar players, such as Eddie Van Halen, Joe Satriani, Dimebag Darrell, Steve Vai, or whoever it is that you look up to when it comes to playing the guitar.
Let me emphasize that those guys I mentioned are absolute practice freaks! Their penchant for spending long hours with the guitar, practicing their chops, is the kind of stuff legends are made of.
In a Guitar World interview, when asked about how he went from playing his first open A-chord to “Eruption”, Eddie Van Halen said, “Practice. I used to sit on the edge of my bed with a six-pack of Schlitz Malt talls. My brother would go out at 7 p.m. to party and get laid, and when he’d come back at 3 a.m., I would still be sitting in the same place, playing guitar. I did that for years — I still do that.
Steve Vai is generally known to practice 10-12 hours a day! He even devised a 30-hour Guitar Workout for really serious guitar players to follow.
This is the real SECRET!
What these guitar heroes realized early on is that, as with all things in this world, PRACTICE makes skills and actions look easy after several, countless tries. That’s why if you’re not willing to put in the mileage on those fingers of yours then you’re not going to get far, I’m telling you now.
I’m not discouraging you. In fact, I AM encouraging you to set this kind of mentality into your mind right from the start in order to fully enjoy the instrument that we love and begin this lifelong journey of music and guitar-playing!
Now that we’ve established the importance of practice, we now face the next question: What kind of stuff should we be practicing?
Well, that calls for another post!
Guitar Lessons For Beginners! 