From Zero to Guitar Hero

Many people ask me how long it takes to become successful at guitar… They often ask how long does it take someone like me to progress and become a great player and although I can’t always give an exact time frame I can tell you a few things that I’ve learned over the years that will help ensure that you taking your guitar playing to its fullest and have a lot of fun in the process.

It starts like this

The first thing you need to identify before starting your guitar journey is exactly what is it that you want to accomplish! What kind of music do you want to play? Do you want to play and sing on the guitar. Do you want to learn mostly rhythmic based guitar songs or are you more interested in lead playing and coming up with you own melodies. What ever it is you want to do on guitar and with music it is extremely important that you clearly define what that looks like for you, whatever it is.

Me for example… Well, its changed for me over the years. Lets start with…

Phase 1 – Learn to Play

When I was first starting out I was obsessed with learning as many songs as I possibly could, and I wanted to learn them better than my friend, who later ended up being the lead singer of a band I was in… but that is another story. When I got my first guitar I was literally coming home from school and going on the internet to learn every song that I could think of that I liked listening to. I had no intention at that time of playing them from beginning to end, I just wanted to play the songs/licks so they were noticeable and could Jam.

Phase 2 – Learn to Create

After about a year or so playing guitar what I wanted slowly started to change. I was now able to play the licks and chord progressions that I wanted but I didn’t really have anybody to share them with. So at this point I decided to Pivot and change my intentions. What was I going to do.. I wanted to play in a band. I wanted to get up on stage and put myself out there. It sounded like fun.. I mean you get up on stage turn up you amplifier and Jam for 45-60 minutes, it doesn’t get much simpler than that.

Wrong! I now had to figure out how to create my own music from all this other music that I learned the last 1 year.. Lets just say this, our first songs were not the greatest. In fact, it was almost heartbreaking to me when I played something I came up to one of my friends and the first thing he said was “that sounds like another song” Another song! Are you serious? At this point I was starting to get a little worried if I was going to be able to pull this off, however, day after day, scales after scales I was eventually able to compose my self, literally, and write original music. And let me tell you this, If I can do it… Then so can you.