How hard is it to learn to play a Guitar?

[reganized]

It takes about 10,000 hours to master anything. That's 10,000 hours of hard work not being a stoner at a campfire. Look at Beethoven, Beatles, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs. It also takes a little luck!

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[hafilax]

The real question is, how many hours does it take to not suck. 1000?

[GiBo]

OP doesn't want to be a master. Just wants to play guitar. Shit if someone had told me I'd lose 10,000 hours of not being a stoner at a campfire I'd never would have touched a guitar!

[Alaskan Rover]

It takes about 10,000 hours to master anything. That's 10,000 hours of hard work not being a stoner at a campfire. Look at Beethoven, Beatles, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs. It also takes a little luck!

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I guess Mozart didn't really play by that '10,000 hour' rule....he was pretty fucking amazing even as a very young early teen composer. But how many Mozarts are we gifted with?

For the rest of us joes, you are exactly right...practice, practice and more practice!!!!

I think guitars are sort of like exercise machines, they only work if you use them. So many people buy treadmills and step-machines and after 2 weeks of attempts, they're relegated to the basement backwall or used as a clothes valet. Same with guitars. So many guitars have I seen, bought with the intention to play, that remain gathering dust in the corner. That's a sad fate for a guitar.

You got force yourself to play every day. Pick a time of day JUST for guitar. 1 hour or at least 45 minutes. Take some 1 on 1 lessons from a good instructor (not all players are good instructors) and learn your various basic chords...E, G, A, C, D, B etc, both major and minors. At these lessons you'll want to learn how to use the frets CORRECTLY...else you'll be learning bad habits from the start. And it will be very helpful to learn some basic music notation.

Once you get a good foundation of practice skills to learn from your lessons, practice those EVERY DAY! The hardest thing for beginners is to not hit others strings by accident while looking for a particular string...you naturally want to turn the guitar horizontal to see the strings...try and avoid this!! You want to be able to use your FINGER TIPS to find the strings, not your eyes! You'll need to be able to work your chords without even looking at the strings....this is what they call 'developing a finger memory'...and that takes PRACTICE.

Just work on simple chords first...work on them until you can play them without eyeing the strings...only then do you move on to practice the next set of chords.

Even if you have to cut it down to 30 minutes a day, make sure you play EVERY day...that is key.

Don't let your guitar gather dust.

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[iscariot]

Don't let your guitar gather dust.

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[skiballs]

Forget all this practice shit , go down to the crossroads .

[GoldMember]

Just do as the man says....

[GetAmped]

Unless you are exceptionally motivated, you will not succeed with a poorly constructed/setup instrument. A lot of beginner guitarists give up because they try to learn on a cheap acoustic with heavy steel strings whose neck is not set for the proper relief, has an action that is too high, and is not correctly intonated. It will be painful and difficult to play and sound like crap.

Which is not to say you need to blow a big wad on a Taylor to get a playable instrument. Get some local advice, shop around, and get some education on construction elements (truss rod, nut, bridge, scale length, frets, fretboard, neck attachment, tuners, wood used for top, back and sides, to name a few). The gauge of the strings, type of amplification (if any), body cut out (if any), strap posts, balance and weight are other considerations. Then, whatever you end up with, get it professionally set up the first time at a reputable guitar shop. It's well worth the $30-60 that should cost.

My favorite "grab and play" guitar is a vintage mid-70s Washburn acoustic electric with fairly light gauge strings and a nice, low action. It plays as easy as my Agile AL3000 electric (Les Paul clone) with slinkier strings. The advantage is that I don't have to plug it in to play, so there's zero barrier to practicing. But it sounds great when I do plug it in, so it's still a good option for open mikes or other amplified scenarios. I'm actually more inclined to play bass when I'm in a group but the guitar is generally better for solo activities.

Now, to answer your question. IMO, using an adequate instrument, it's easy to get started and learn some recognizable songs fairly quickly. Plenty of 3-4 chord rock and folk tunes to pick up and strum out. Learning music theory and being able to sight read standard musical notation requires a considerable effort. Applying that theory and working off of charts on the spot takes time and experience playing with others. And playing in a group is pretty much always better than playing alone.

Most importantly: have fun! If it's not fun, you aren't doing it right.

[rideit]

FWIW, i have a Seagull cutaway acoustic, with pickups /eq. etc, for sale. Great intermediate guitar, nice low action. Perfect intonation and tuning. Really great shape. I want to upgrade...

[Ski to Be]

It is never too late too try and learn anything new. No matter what your age. Also some people are naturally gifted at different things so the variability of practice time and talent make it too difficult to assess. Guitars are relatively cheap as well as lessons. Why not?

[grrrr]

My wife picked up the guitar a few months ago, and kicks ass on it already. Some of that probably due to years of mastering the pianer, some due top having a good ear, possibly some due to coming from a family where everyone plays about 6 other instruments. I, on the other hand, suck and am fine with that. That 10,000 hours is a nice little theme, but not very accurate. Some of us will take that much time, if we put it in, some will master the guitar without much effort.

[stfu&gbtw]

Like anything itn life, it's not hard if you want to do it.

Figure out if you want to play electric or acoustic. Don't buy the one you don't want - you can always play your electric without the amp to practice, but an acoustic will never give you that feel of playing an electric. Similarly, if you imagine yourself to be a singer/songwriter type, don't buy electric. Those Agile electrics are great guitars for the money. Stay away from the cheap Fender/Squire or Gibson/Epiphone crap. They're trading on the name and you'll get less guitar for your money. Those Agiles are really well put together and will arrive with a reasonable setup for <$300. An $800 Gibson will arrive with a garbage setup and no attention to detail. If you go electric, buy this amp:

[GetAmped]

Of course, if you get sucked into it, you will develop GAS (Guitar Acquisition Syndrome) and it will become not a question of acoustic vs electric, but how many of each and in what configurations. I should probably not get too confessional and just say that I've been quite restrained...recently.

I love my Agile. Picked it up as a floor model when Rondo Music was still located in NJ and I was regularly going down there for business. They have since moved operations to NH and are pretty much an Internet shop, either direct or through e-bay. Everyone who has ever played my AL-3000 just can't believe that it plays so well and sounds so good. Basically everything that you would expect (and maybe more) from a $2,500 guitar with "Gibson" and "Les Paul" on the headstock for 10% of the price. I play it through a Kustom DFX-100 with dual Celestions that is a very flexible scream machine.

An alternative to buying a full-powered gigging amp is to invest in a multi-effects pedal that will let you do some amp modeling, effects and play through a headphone jack. That Epi Valve Jr. mini stack has excellent tone but it would need to be close miked into a PA for anything other practice (if you can find one, I don't think they are available new any more). And you can drop a lot of coin on a more powerful amp, especially good tube models. But the same principle holds for buying an amp as the guitar since it's really part of your instrument: don't get cheap crap that will get in the way of making music.

[stfu&gbtw]

Of course, if you get sucked into it, you will develop GAS (Guitar Acquisition Syndrome) and it will become not a question of acoustic vs electric, but how many of each and in what configurations. I should probably not get too confessional and just say that I've been quite restrained...recently.

I love my Agile. Picked it up as a floor model when Rondo Music was still located in NJ and I was regularly going down there for business. They have since moved operations to NH and are pretty much an Internet shop, either direct or through e-bay. Everyone who has ever played my AL-3000 just can't believe that it plays so well and sounds so good. Basically everything that you would expect (and maybe more) from a $2,500 guitar with "Gibson" and "Les Paul" on the headstock for 10% of the price. I play it through a Kustom DFX-100 with dual Celestions that is a very flexible scream machine.

An alternative to buying a full-powered gigging amp is to invest in a multi-effects pedal that will let you do some amp modeling, effects and play through a headphone jack. That Epi Valve Jr. mini stack has excellent tone but it would need to be close miked into a PA for anything other practice (if you can find one, I don't think they are available new any more). And you can drop a lot of coin on a more powerful amp, especially good tube models. But the same principle holds for buying an amp as the guitar since it's really part of your instrument: don't get cheap crap that will get in the way of making music.

Are you a member at the MLP forum? I know they love the Agiles over there.

I was lucky enough to get off the GAS train when a friend bought me out of several guitars - just have three now. An LP, a 335 and a nice acoustic. Those, and a Blues Jr. and a Bassman RI and that's it. Don't own a single pedal.

To the OP - don't get GAS. When you decide you love playing guitar, figure out which guitars you want and buy them and only them. There are lots of nice guitars... If you get into buying $500 guitars, you'll own a hundred of them and love none of them. I know it's hard to imagine how buying $2,500 guitars instead of $500 guitars will save you money, but trust me - it will.

[Alaskan Rover]

FWIW, i have a Seagull cutaway acoustic, with pickups /eq. etc, for sale. Great intermediate guitar, nice low action. Perfect intonation and tuning. Really great shape. I want to upgrade...

Seagulls, especially the S6, is probably my favorite guitar maker out there. Great, well-made guitars, great company. A small Quebec-based maker if I remember right. They build their guitars with the same attention to detail as a custom shop, and it shows in their instruments....both in sound and in build quality! IMO, I think their cedar-tops sound better than their spruce-tops, but depends what kind of brightness of sound you're into.

Seagulls are prolly the best deal out there for a solid (non-laminated) guitar at an affordable price.
I'd put them up against a Martin D-28, for 1/7 the cost.



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[GetAmped]

Are you a member at the MLP forum? I know they love the Agiles over there.

I was lucky enough to get off the GAS train when a friend bought me out of several guitars - just have three now. An LP, a 335 and a nice acoustic. Those, and a Blues Jr. and a Bassman RI and that's it. Don't own a single pedal.

To the OP - don't get GAS. When you decide you love playing guitar, figure out which guitars you want and buy them and only them. There are lots of nice guitars... If you get into buying $500 guitars, you'll own a hundred of them and love none of them. I know it's hard to imagine how buying $2,500 guitars instead of $500 guitars will save you money, but trust me - it will.

No, don't know what MLP is. No doubt Agile has a fan base though.

I'm down to 4 guitars: the Agile, the Washburn, a 1961 Epiphone 12 string, and a Vagabond Travel guitar. And 2 basses: a Washburn Force 4 ABT and a Hohner acoustic/electric. In addition to the Kustom, I have a couple of practice amps and an Ashdown C210T 300 bass combo. All things equal, I want to play the Force 4 through the Ashdown. My avatar is the retro VU meter on that amp. At this point I'm not jonesin' for any other guitar gear.

krp8128, avoiding GAS is excellent advice, but it does take a while to figure out what the right fit is and, as with many other types of gear, there is a tendency for a "trade up" progression that happens with improvements in ability and/or appreciation of features/performance. Maybe that can be avoided with a good dose of try before you buy, but availability of demo models may be rather limited depending on where you live. Hopefully you have a friend with some real experience to provide some guidance. Otherwise it seems unlikely you will stumble upon the instrument that really suits you just by chance. And the big box stores like Guitar Center or Sam Goody will likely push you towards whatever is expensive or they are trying to unload.

Good luck. It's definitely worth doing. Rock on!

[skiballs]

FWIW, i have a Seagull cutaway acoustic, with pickups /eq. etc, for sale. Great intermediate guitar, nice low action. Perfect intonation and tuning. Really great shape. I want to upgrade...

Throw in a six pack of tacos and a clock , then we'll talk .

[Snowcat77]

Whats cool about guitar is you can do it almost any time. No matter the weather, dont need a lift ticket, just as long as you have the guitar an at most 10 bucks for a pack of strings and a few pics youre fine.

Last winter when my house didnt have heat it was tough and depressing, but usually you can do it whenever you want.

i guess if you have roomates/apartment neighbors that dont like hearing music it could suck but thats not the case for me

[rideit]

Throw in a six pack of tacos and a clock , then we'll talk .

Done deal.
You want me to put the tacos inside the guitar?
I take PayPal.

[axebiker]

I like playing...even though I still pretty much suck. I should become a dentist.

[GetAmped]

^^^^ 4 Gibson LPs = GAS

[rideit]

No shit!
That's Ace Frehley territory....
Sweet setup for a hack, I'm jealous.
But my neighbors aren't.

[axebiker]

^^^^ 4 Gibson LPs = GAS

...And half a lifetime of selling/trading. I only have 2 left now, and might have an offer to sell another. We'll see.

[GetAmped]

...And half a lifetime of selling/trading. I only have 2 left now, and might have an offer to sell another. We'll see.

So which one will you keep?

[axebiker]

The Gold Top.