I’m an advocate for being practical and using what works, often over what’s expected or considered “the norm”; which is why I say that most music programs are not how to learn the guitar in my opinion.
They start with repetitive and often boring focus on the technical, mechanical and theory fundamentals which are very important, but tend to lose the student’s interest in a hurry.
Let’s face it, most kids or even adults who decide they want to learn an instrument aren’t excited over spending countless hours with scales, they’re excited about strumming some strings, playing something close to music and having fun.
And here’s the thing that traditional instruction seems to overlook, when someone is having fun right from the start there’s an increased chance that they’ll stick with the instrument and over time build a desire to go beyond the fun to actually learn to be competent musicians. Why shouldn’t this be the standard model for how to learn the guitar?
This is why I’m such a big fan of teach yourself the guitar courses, because they often start by teaching you how to actually play several familiar and easy to learn guitar tunes within a few hours, which leads to the student having fun as well as feeling successful and encouraged.
Then they build on that sense of accomplishment and progress through learning slightly harder songs in gradual steps.
In a matter of days the student is playing well known and fairly complex songs reasonably well, having fun doing it and typically without realizing it getting a good education in various strands of music theory.
I’ve known a lot of people who used a teach yourself the guitar course and all of them enjoyed the learning process then went on to learn the fundamentals on their own because they wanted to take their “fun playing” to competent playing.
I don’t mean this to sound like an attack on music teachers, I just don’t understand the continued use of methods that encourage as many students to grow bored or give up as they do to succeed and actually learn an instrument.
Just because that’s the way it’s always been done doesn’t mean that’s the way it should be done.
In my opinion, how to learn the guitar is to simply get your hands on a teach yourself the guitar course that seems to actually teach you songs right from the start, and once you complete it decide if learning on your own is working and fun, or if you need traditional lessons to play guitar.
