The Biggest Myths About Learning Guitar

The best time to learn a new skill is yesterday, the next best time is today!

I played guitar for about 14 years before I learned music theory. Once I began diving into this new way of looking at music, it just completely blew my mind and opened up the floodgates to endless creativity.

I'm 62 and taking up guitar to keep my fingers nimble and to keep my brain from turning into mush.

A myth I believed was I’d get girls if I knew how to play Its been 6 years…

I started learning to play at 38 yrs old. 19 months later, I have 3 guitars, 4 amps and 13 pedals lol. I absolutely LOVE my guitars and love playing them. I'll be playing until the day I can't play anymore. I can guarantee that. 🙏❤️🎸

Yeah, kids might not need music lessons but I need a drummer. They'll live.

I spent a week or two learning to read music before I realized tablature is where it's at for guitar. I don't regret it, but if you want to start playing right away, most of the theory can come along the way

There's one benefital thing about on the acoustic is the portability. I remember during my teen years carry my acoustic guitar everywhere (school, camping, etc). It was cool to play with my friends no matter where and a great way to jam with random people.

Could not agree more about starting on acoustic and on online teaching! Great video 🥳👍

Start writing right away. Create. It'll force you to improve. Even if you only know one chord, write a song with it. It'll be awful but it'll be yours and most importantly it'll motivate you to learn more.

A great list, SammyG, and of course nearly all your points apply to all instruments, not just guitar. Reinforcing what you said in myth #6 ("you can learn everything online") ... I was a long time bedroom bass player. As someone who picked up bass in his 50s (see myth #1), I didn't have the time to be in a band. When the kids got older and I had more flexibility in my time, I found some other old guys who were at a similar skill level on their instruments to make music for fun. And what I found was: playing with live people is an entirely new skill that needs to be developed. Although everyone swore they could flawlessly play along to the mp3s back at home when practicing our playlist, put us all in a room and we would collapse like a bike that lost 80% of its spokes. When practicing along to a jam track or spotify or whatever, it may seem like you are locked in. But really, there are moments where your timing is off a bit, maybe you hesitate in remembering if this is the 2nd or 3rd time through the chorus, but because the mp3 you are playing to is rock solid, it masks your flaws and uncertainty. When playing with other inexperienced people, each person's wobbliness affects the timing and confidence of all the other players, and it feeds on itself. The singer might rush the next line and half the band stays true to what it should have been, and half follow the singer, and the wheels fall off. Unfortunately, covid put a stop to playing with other organisms just when I was starting to develop the skill of playing with confidence and learning to trust the other musicians (or not!). One thing you can do at home to work on some of that aspect is to record yourself playing to a song, then isolate your track and listen how your timing is. Ideally you can find backing tracks that are minus your instrument so you can't lean on playing along with your part. I mostly use karaoke-version.com, but I'm sure there are other sources too. Another thing you can do to test if you really are confident you know the song: put on a metronome and play the song all the way through, just you, no other accompaniment. If you can do that with confidence, the only thing left is to test it out in a live music situation.

5:54 😂🤣

Congrats on the 1,000,000 subscribers!

The best guitar teachers are the ones who help their students discover their own style rather than force the"traditional ways" on them. My philosophy on this is for a student to be exposed to everything, old and new, and find the things they love the most.

I used to play guitar since childhood and then I moved to another country, more than 10 years ago, and as result abandoned it. The reason for me to return and take practic a bit more seriously was an injury I got. I’ve lost almost any sensibility in left middle finger and somehow decided that practicing guitar will help me relearn how to use my hand anew and it kinda helped. But man, was it a harsh experience to start over as I couldn’t do even the easiest things due not only to the lack of practice but also to the fact I couldn’t rely on previous muscle memory anymore as I receive virtually no tactile feedback from one finger on fretting hand. Now I already surpassed my previous self (a lower intermediate I’d say, I’ve been playing in a soft rock band even) and started learning advanced techniques like sweep picking. That comeback happened thanks to you, Sammy G, and whole YouTube guitar playing and building (I was dreaming of building a guitar since being child and now at last finished my first one and it’s gorgeous) community. Keep doing what you are doing, you are a good man. Best luck ❤️.

Great points!

Well said Boss, thanks for the info!!

Great video!

LOVE the background Sammy G! Great vid 👌

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