It really is easy to start playing guitar. Here’s the part I usually leave out.
It’s fall, and as the leaves begin to turn color my thoughts return again to a similar chill in the air in Kendrick, Idaho. Football was important in my little town, and fall Friday nights found me crouched and ready, intently staring at the opposing quarterback before the snap and ready to spring into action. I am proud that I led my team in tackles my senior year, although recently it has occurred to me that the reason might have been that opposing teams realized they should always run the ball in my direction. In fact, I now suspect that my stellar stats likely came from being run over enough times that occasionally I stopped the opposing ball carrier by being underfoot.
My sense memories don’t just include the chill in the air, the helmet on my head, and the occasional concussion. They also include the relentless cries and chants of the cheer squad. “Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar, all for Kendrick stand up and holler” and “You can do it!”
Leaving aside the question of “what does “two bits” mean and why is it a cheer?”, the next year my best friend Ted and I went to the University of Idaho. I walked on to the football team to begin impersonating defensive backs from Weber State and Montana State to give the first team offense someone to practice against, while Ted traded his helmet in for the sweater of a college cheerleader.
I loved football, almost as much as playing guitar–but in my actual career I’ve also ended up as more of a cheerleader. Much of my career as a guitar teacher and as a guitar school entrepreneur has been spent saying versions of
“Rah! Rah! Sis-coom-bahr! You can do it! Play guitar!”
Again and again I’ve worked hard to lower the perceived threat that people feel when they try something new. You think getting run over by a 240 pound pulling guard is scary? That’s nothing compared to confronting the risk of reaching for your dreams — and facing failure. So I’ve tried to break it down, and say “It’s easy! It’s easy to get started playing guitar!”
We even have a special party trick: when a beginner comes in for their first class at NYC Guitar School, they can expect to leave after their first hour with a couple of rudimentary chords and the ability to actually play along with a real song. Albeit in a simple fashion, in a way we are saying: it’s easy to learn how to play guitar.
The longer I teach guitar, though, the more I realize it’s important to highlight the countervailing truth: it may be easy to get started (it’s true that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and that step might not be particularly difficult) but the actual journey to playing guitar even moderately well is not only long. It’s hard.
I like to say that guitar is one of the easiest instruments in the world to not totally suck at (as opposed to, for example, the famous violin practiced by the kid in the apartment next door)–but it remains incredibly difficult to master.
And that takes work. More and more, as the guy in charge of marketing for the guitar school, I’ve come to realize how important it is to tell people the whole truth.
Yes it is easy to take the first step. And yes you can play guitar if you follow the path that millions of others have followed. And yet … it will not be easy.
I increasingly understand how important it is to be straight up with potential students about this truth, and to ask questions like: Are you sure you want to play guitar? Are you ready to not be very good at guitar for many months (or years, or decades, depending on your standards)? Are you sure you can come to class, and can you really maintain practice over time?
I’m really proud of our curriculum at NYC Guitar School — it’s one of the best in the world. A comprehensive, zero-to-hero program for adult beginners who want to play rock or pop. It doesn’t try to be everything–no classical or jazz, no reading– but there’s lots of rhythm work and lots of real songs. After each level students complete a graduation video demonstrating their skills, so that after our nine-level beginner program, students can objectively play barre chords, basic scales, mixed rhythms, single note lines and more, and are ready to go into ensembles or rock bands, and enjoy playing at a high hobby level for the rest of their lives.
But it takes a lot of work–it usually takes about two years for students to finish the program.
But there’s more. This month my business partner and rock band director Jen shared some insights with me. She did some research and realized that something like 80% of the students who graduate are coming to class at least twice a week. Or to reverse the stat, students who come to class more than once a week are four or five times more likely to complete the course than students who come once a week.
Wow!
I’m embarrassed to say that I–the guy who talks about practice all the time–did not realize how significant, and in retrospect obvious, the impact of commitment and practice time are on success.
Not easy. But worth it.
That isn’t just for music–it’s for all of life. For me, relationships come immediately to mind–being a husband, dad, and brother, being a friend–and then of course there’s staying in shape, getting consistent sleep, running a guitar school, saving money and on and on.
It’s a little daunting when I consider how full life is of things that are not easy but are worth it. So how’s this for a wrap-up: learning guitar is like living–sometimes it’s hard to hang in there, but it’s worth it.
Heck, even cheerleading can be hard. I remember meeting Ted at our dorm room after our respective practices. He’d be exhausted after hours and hours of throwing beautiful women into the air, when all I’d needed to do was be run over by pulling guards. Ahhh, this beautiful fall air makes me want to run outside and run into a telephone pole a couple times to get that old feeling back! And then… I’ll play some guitar, because I have a lot of room for improvement!
On to greatness!
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