Any tips/advice for someone learning to play the guitar who's a little bit older?

Hey gang,

So, when I was a kid, like any kid, I wanted to play guitar. I played when I was like 17, for a few months, but didn't get good immediately, so I fobbed it off. I recently looked under my bed, and my guitar was still there. I got it restringed, I got a mini plug in amp, and I'm eager to learn.

However...there's so much stuff out there, I don't really know where to begin.

I have a piece of software that was rated REAL high growing up, it teaches chord progression/scales, and a few songs. I'm gonna start with that.

If anyone can help a guy out with learning guitar at 31, I'd be very VERY grateful. I worry starting at a little older might be tough, but I can put in at least 20/30 minutes a day.

So I had a pretty similar trajectory as you. Bought my guitar when I was around 25 but didn't have the discipline to stick with it. 3 years later, and I've been practicing pretty regularly for about 20-30 minutes a day for about 4 months. I'm still super green, but I've got a lot of the dexterity down and am learning some easier songs right now. My best advice, and this goes for learning ANY new skill, is to just have fun with it. Don't compare yourself to others. Don't get frustrated with the pace you are learning. Just be deliberate and dedicated to learning. The rest will come naturally, if you can master that.

As for actual, practical learning, I've been using JustinGuitar, which I highly recommend. It's free, although you can subscribe or donate money to support the site, and it is pretty damned thorough for just starting out. There are multiple beginner tracks, an intermediate track, and advanced track ,as well as further courses on music and string theory. For me, it's so far all I've really needed.

I learned off tabs before Youtube, and I was able to pick up a lot over time. But about two years in, I signed up for guitar lessons and turns out I was making some subtle mistakes.

So I would say either get a teacher to walk you through the basics, or find a structured plan of learning. It could be a book, it could be a Youtube series, but don't just mess around with no plan because you won't really improve without focus. I've been playing for 20 years, and I don't do steady practice all that often because I just like playing. But when I do focus on a certain style or technique or theory work, it helps me boost my fundamental knowledge. And a few years later I'll try learning something else (this year, instead of playing techniques it's about getting better at recording!)

Also, set short term goals. Early on it's easy to say "how do I solo" but there's an ocean of knowledge out there and you'll probably never master all of it. Maybe learn a song, or a scale, or a solo, then move onto something new. Just make sure you occasionally stop to play and enjoy the skills you're picking up.

I'm 34, and since you're 31 you might also have nostalgia for older game melodies. Try learning some, they're really fun!

Also, Guitar Hero III with a pick taught me to speed pick. But only that guitar works. Surprised how getting 5 stars in Knight of Cydonia and Misirlou conditioned my picking to stay in time at high speeds, but even the slower songs helped me build control.

Hi!

I actually have a degree in classical guitar. If I had to share a few tip they would be:

1. Practice slow...like really slow and accurately. Speed will come. The idea is if you make mistakes while you practice you are just training yourself to make those same mistakes.

2. Short and consistent practice everyday is better than practicing 8 hrs in one day once a week. Playing an instrument is like playing a sport only you just use your hands. If someone ran 8 hrs once a week in a day they probably would just overtrain, not become a better runner.

3. Don’t get bogged down with music theory...at first. Music theory will help you understand the “why” but does not necessarily make you a better performer. It does become useful later but might just burn you out at the beginning.

4. Learn to read music. There definitely is a learning curve to this so don’t stress too hard about it at first. However, not only will you be able to learn music more quickly you will also understand it better at an instinctual level. It’s like the difference between being illiterate and being able to read. Just an overall useful tool/skill.

5. HAVE FUN!!! Manage your expectations. You want to avoid burnout as much as possible. Unless you’re a genetic powerhouse, progress will be slow. Just enjoy the ride. You will eventually get better.

That’s all I can think of at the moment. Hope this helps!

I am 35 and just started taking guitar lessons this month after 17 years of owning a guitar without knowing how to play it for fear of picking up bad habits. Yeah, I could never get over the self inflicted paralysis of "How can I learn guitar without picking up bad habits?" and turn it into "Let's take guitar lessons to learn"

Man, it changed so much for me after just a handful of lessons. I knew a few chords but putting stuff together into a tune was beyond me and I had no focus. Getting lessons has helped me put my attention on one aspect of guitar playing and just work on that during my free time hereas before I'd pluck a few strings and call it a day.

I tried to learn guitar exclusively using Rocksmith and found it frustrating and ultimately gave up after about a month. The game has some good tutorials on the fundamentals but the pacing is all weird; the game seemed to want me to go from learning how to hold the guitar properly straight into songs where I was having to bounce back and forth between a whole bunch of chords - I'm sure that's super basic stuff but it really didn't have any middle ground or warm up and so I just ended up failing over and over without really learning why or what I should do to improve. Honestly not being able to ask questions or have someone explain things or point out mistakes made the whole thing seem kind of fruitless and I hit a wall with it extremely fast.

Kinda related but when learning a new language I often find that you can't rely on a single app or game - you need several ways to learn and practice and you need to combine them together, because each one will have strengths and weaknesses. So my advice is; don't rely on one way of learning, try to experiment with a bunch of different ways, and find a couple which are complimentary. I'm sure if you're regularly having lessons then Rocksmith is a great secondary way to practice, but as a standalone I found it pretty useless.

I have a couple of bits of advice I can think of which helped me and some of my friends. First, whatever method of learning you find suits you be prepared for the plateaus of not seeing progression. It can be the biggest psychological barrier to learning instruments, having a rush of getting to grips with new things and then not seeing further development for a while. It's totally normal, even in formal learning situations on instruments but can be disheartening if you're not aware of it.

Secondly, establish what level you are looking to learn to. I helped a friend who was looking to learn guitar and was getting so hung up on scales and the more 'classical' learning aspects when all they wanted to do was be able to pick up and acoustic guitar and bang out a few chordy sing-a-long songs. So we just picked up four or five chords first and some songs that they were into and focused on that. By them quickly getting to grips with that they started to find playing fun, which as Bob Ross says for painting, is so important to help you want to practice and do it more. So, if your goal is is to play lead or a riffy stuff, find a couple really easy ones to just nail down so you can have some things that you enjoy playing. This will also build coordination up as you play more and help to move onto more complex stuff naturally.

Lastly, if you can, play along with other people. If you can find some friendly, supportive (and patient) people to play along with it will give you more insight into bad habits, easy shortcuts and make your sound fit in to other people's. Filling out the sound of your guitar line or chords with other parts can really help give you playing context.

Hope this helps, there's so many approaches to this sort of thing - just keep trying until one clicks. There's some great advice above from other peeps here so one of them should get you going. Good luck duder, and if you can just try to enjoy it - picking up the guitar and plucking out a few nice chords it one of the few things I use to put me in that good place.

I found that Rocksmith is good for learning how to play specific songs, but not really good at giving you the tools to play those songs. +1 for Justinguitar. He's really good.

As An Old that started playing guitar in 1991/has never given lessons but has designed lessons in my head for years, here are some thoughts I have:

1. Have your guitar professionally set up. If you're like the rest of us, your first guitar is probably something affordable. This is the beginning of the end for a lot of would-be players, because affordable guitars are usually not held to the same standard of quality as a slightly more expensive one would be. Meaning the action is too high, the fret ends are sharp and the tonality hasn't been adjusted so it never quite sounds in tune, things like that. As for the action and the frets, it makes it actually hurt to play the guitar, and in the beginning, building up finger strength and callouses and so on already hurt. So the extra pain makes newcomers think that playing hurts more than it really does, it discourages them and they quit. But it doesn't have to be that way. The thing about more expensive guitars (and this is a generalization, by no means is it gospel), is that more care goes into the finished product. Fret ends are sanded down, action is adjusted at the the factory. Does that mean you should buy another guitar? No. If you take the one you have to your local guitar store, whether it be a mom and pop place or guitar center, ask if their luthier can give your guitar a basic setup. It won't be expensive and if they know what they're doing, they'll fix any issues the guitar may have left the factory with and when you get it back it'll play a lot better and you'll be more inclined to touch an instrument that doesn't punish you for doing so.

2. Spend some time in the beginning simply learning how to hold the guitar, how to sit with it, how to stand with it, where to put your thumb, how to hold a pick, where to fret the notes. And just do that for a few minutes a day for a week or so. Like others have said, there are several helpful youtubers out there. When people talk about developing bad habits, this step is where almost all of those bad habits are born. Also-don't slouch when you play sitting down.

3. Before learning chords and chord progressions or anything else, learn how to play one note at a time. just one. once you can successfully and effortlessly play the little E string openly, then fret the first fret of the B string and play them together until it's effortless. Then throw the next string in and do the same. Eventually you'll have a whole C chord, and when you can do that effortlessly, then you can start thinking about whatever the next thing is. But it's important to remember, you're learning one note at a time at first.

There are more, but I think those are the three I would tell any newcomer in the beginning. Everybody else has offered solid advice as well, I hope we've helped!

@sombre: I’m 31 too. The title of this thread makes me feel old. I tried picking up the acoustical guitar about 4 years ago, but my essential hand tremor robbed me of the dexterity I needed to play it. Anyway, There are great guitar lessons taught by Harry Chapin on Itunes (they used to be on vinyl) from circa 1972.

I'm 31 and prefer to say "i'm a hobby guitarist" rather than "i can play guitar", been doing it for 15 years and the only advice i'd give is play songs you love, songs you know off the back of your hand, i started by plinking around on the strings until i became familiar with the sounds they make, then linked those sounds together to make songs :P, anything i couldn't figure out i got through tabs.
It's probably an extremely poor way to learn guitar but it works for me.

Green bass player here. Started a few years back taking lessons from a friend. While I have way less useful info than most folks on here have already given, I’ll simply say to play with your fingers when you aren’t practicing. Both hands. If you have a song you want to learn (or have even begun learning), listen on headphones while you air guitar even if it’s just the parts you know. I had real difficulty figuring out how to stop the sound of one string still going after I moved on to the next string. Multitasking your strumming hand to both strum a string and holding another one from being hit or to silence it after its been struck can be real difficult at first. And then there’s your hand on the frets, which can (and should) also be delegated with similar multitasking purpose. All of this can feel pretty overwhelming, which i feel links back to what someone posted earlier: play slowly.