Hello, I was wondering if there was a guitar thread on Era and sure enough there is one! so I thought I'd post a little message here.
I have picked up guitar a few months ago, last September to be more precise - still very much a beginner but it has been a very enjoyable ride so far.
My little story is probably similar to many others, I have had a guitar laying around for years, which I bought from a friend almost fifteen years ago with the intention of learning alongside him, but I never really cared enough to play it much. My friend sadly passed away back in August, and a few days later, while going through my things, I found his old guitar, decided to pick it up and started strumming a bit, and it just felt good in my hands and I thought why not give learning the instrument a go, both as a fun experiment and as a way of remembering my buddy.
I must say the first few weeks were a pain, apart from being quite a bit into listening music, I had no idea about what went into making it, so it was a whole new & difficult learning experience! The guitar itself was - which I learned a bit later, a bit shoddy: It was probably made for nylon strings but had steel strings on it, the action was extremely high, the neck not as quite straight as it should be, and the bridge was starting to lift off the body. Still, it had six functioning strings and I wasn't sure about how much I actually would like learning the instrument, so I stuck with it and gave myself the objective of getting good enough to learn the very basics and playing/singing a full song without shortcuts, with the reward if I was able to do that being getting a brand new guitar.
After a few months of fingers hurting, struggling to move my fingers around the neck, finding chord shapes impossible to make and chord transitions even more difficult, and then learning about strumming techniques, rhythm and basic singing knowledge, I finally managed to reach my first objective as you probably have guessed from my image. My learning song was "For what it's worth" by Buffalo Springfield, which in restrospect I think was fantastic for a complete beginner. I recorded myself playing it, and even though it's a far cry from being even good, I was really proud of it at the time!
From there, I found that guitar learning was actually extremely fun, and being able to play parts of the song I've grown up listening to was already pretty amazing so I went ahead and ordered my second guitar online. I looked up a few reviews and went for the one that felt like it would suit me, landed on a Gretsch Acoustic Rancher Jr. which I instantly fell in love with. (on the left in the picture). I also got myself a pick - I have been fingerpicking through all my early months of learning so now I'm currently in the process of getting used to playing with a pick, and a capo while I was at it.
I have progressed quite a bit more since, I have been trying to learn new techniques and incrementally increasing the difficulty of what I was going for. I'm still very much a beginner but a very happy one at this stage. You'll hate me for this one, but I'm currently trying to learn wonderwall, which has been quite interesting on a few fronts from a new guitar learner perspective!
I have been recording myself a lot which I think helps a lot in tracking mistakes and progress, I have a couple more songs I wanted to share (and a few others I can play fully as well), nothing fancy obviously:
I like birds - Eels:
Knockin' on Heaven's door - Bob Dylan (obviously):
And this one which is very much a work in progress but which I really like a lot, I already love the song but I like it even more now that I learned it without using a tab, by putting in the effort of watching a couple of guys play it on youtube and trying to replicate my own simple version:
I wanna be your Dog - Uncle Tupelo:
That's it for now, the early guitar learning journey of a 30 year old, still on that road of improving my chord transitions, playing cleaner music, and trying to integrate new chords, new strumming styles, new techniques and play new songs bit by bit every day. It's a very slow process but it's a fun one which is all that matters. I have a huge list of songs I still want to learn :D
For anyone also just starting guitar as an adult, I can also talk about the method I have used: Most important of all is regular sessions, I try to do at least 20 minutes every day, sometimes I go on for much longer when life responsibilities don't get into the way and I am feeling it. The first few weeks are definitely the most difficult, and I think I would not have stuck with it if I did not start trying to play basic songs from the beginning. Fingers hurt a lot early, and it's perfectly normal, it gets better once calluses have formed, no need to force oneself if it hurts too much! I relied mostly on youtube for the early lessons, Andy Guitar's 10 days starter course is what got me through most of the basics (and it took me months to complete!), I thought it was really good and super helpful. I did branch away every time I felt like it though once I thought I had enough knowledge to work on a particular song I really wanted to play - by looking up the appropriate tutorials for the songs on youtube or on the net.
So there it is, the full story until now, short term objective now is playing wonderwall - while working on a lot of aspects of my technique, mid term objective is to get all common open chords, and power chords down, including clean sound and good transition, the long term objective is playing a bunch of songs I have on my list. Eventually, I would also like to fix my old guitar, it'll probably be pricey but it'll be worth it in my mind, at which point I might pass it to some other guitar learner, it will be a good way of keeping my friend's memory alive.
I'll besure to post updates if all goes well!