Short Summary: The key to getting started easily is to maximise and encourage regular goal-directed engagement with the instrument as soon as possible. Start with tuning the guitar every day and then move onto learning teacher-recommended material in 4-7 short practice sessions per week. If this is happening, trust that progress is happening. If this is not happening, then go back to tuning the instrument every day and build up from there. In all my years of asking incoming students about their desire to start guitar lessons, I have never had someone reply with "I know exactly what I want to achieve and how to do it, but I really just want to pay you to keep me company while I practice." Never! We seek out lessons with a teacher because we don't like the feelings of doubt and uncertainty that arise when contemplating learning something new by ourselves. This uncertainty speaks up as we take our first steps, and it says things like "But what if I learn bad habits? Should I really trust this person on YouTube? Am I doing it wrong? What if there's a faster way? Is it meant to feel this awkward?". The sheer quantity of information available on the internet is enough to make anyone doubt their process, because for every ostensibly helpful video or article there is another one that gives different advice.
Before long, we wish there was just one definitive process that would save us the cognitive effort of choosing between endlessly proliferating options. We yearn for clarity, guidance and structure. This is the point at which we revert to the age-old method of finding another human being who can just tell us what to do. We hope that our chosen person can be a filter, distilling all the available information into clear step-by-step instructions.
The benefit of such clarity and structure is that it enables us to get moving, to progress towards a goal, and to get that behaviour reinforced. Clear and accessible targets enable us to run trials that lead to errors, which in turn lead to more informed trials. This is the essence of the practice process, which is a cycle of making attempts at a target action, receiving feedback, and trying again. Practice cannot happen if there is no target, no feedback, or no trying again. One of the many beautiful things about the human brain is that it is neurochemically wired for this process. When we attempt something and just miss the mark, we feel a little tension, and that spurs us on to have another go. When we succeed, we feel rewarded.
When starting to learn an instrument, it is important to get this wonderful process working in your favour as soon as possible. Start with a clear and accessible goal, like tuning the strings of the guitar with a tuner, and focus on doing that every day. The tuner provides instant feedback as to whether you are playing the right string, and whether you have tightened or loosened the string to the right tension. Doing it every day ensures that you retain and improve on the progress made in previous days, which would otherwise be forgotten. This may sound like a trivial thing, but I have spent a lot of lesson time re-teaching students how to tune their guitar because they didn't practice it and therefore struggled to retain the information I showed them in the previous lesson. The target of tuning every day also provides a higher-level goal, one that helps us develop the keystone habit for all effective instrumental development - consistent playing! Picking up the guitar and doing something on a regular basis is a fantastic habit to develop. It consolidates and refines the motor skills required to play the guitar. It solidifies guitar playing as a normal part of daily life. Keeping track of the increasing number of practice days also helps us feel like we are winning and progressing during the phase when instrumental improvement might not seem as noticeable.
Now that we are is picking up the instrument regularly, know the string names, know how to tune and feel like we are progressing, we are perfectly prepared for learning the notes of a simple and recognisable melody. Reading basic notation or guitar tab involves the new skills of identifying frets and pressing down with the left hand. Once we are shown the fret positions for a familiar melody, the new practice goal is to play the notes in the correct sequence and with the correct rhythm. The new target is to replicate the sound stored in our aural memory using our hands and fret knowledge. With this target established, the practice feedback loop starts again, and we are on the path to learning more and more intricate material.
Sounds simple, doesn't it? This process is simple, but the complexities of life often disrupt our attempts to start something new. The first steps of learning an instrument are never going to be completely smooth, but we can make them as smooth as possible by focusing on the next clear step, celebrating the wins each time we play, and trusting the process of regular practice.
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