A question that I get every so often from students is: How long does it take to learn the guitar… or more specifically, how long does it take to learn the acoustic guitar?
Or even MORE specifically: How long will it take before I become a famous rockstar in the style of John Mayer or Taylor Swift?
All of these are great questions… and they all have a very disappointing answer: “It depends…”
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When should you change your guitar strings? I don’t really care.
Frequently, folks ask me how often they should change or replace their guitar strings. As with most of my guitar-related questions, my answer is an obnoxious: “It depends…” (see: this, and this, and this)
Michael Scott holds to key to music perfection. Read on…
I’ve written about practice a bunch of times. If you haven’t, I totally recommend going back and reading those articles… or you can just get the bullet points…
My last post about how much guitar lessons costhas proven to be pretty popular… So I thought I should do a follow-up with a little more detail (for all of you informed consumers).
Last time we gave an overview based on certain criteria (e.g. lesson length, in-studio vs in-home). This time we’ll try to break it down by, “what you get for the money”…
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School is winding down. It’s getting nice outside.
You know what that means…SUMMER VACATION BABY!!! Oh yeah.
But not for grown ups.
That means the kids are home for the next 3 months. Naturally, you’ll sign them up for summer camps, swimming lessons, swim teams, camping activities, vacations, etc. There’s no shortage of stuff to do. The weather is nice and it’s great to spend as much time outside as possible.
But… what about those rainy days when the kids are all stuck inside?
But… what about when the humidity hits 100% and even the pool doesn’t provide respite?
But… what about when those summer storms strike and the power is knocked out for 24 hours with no TV, no phone, no video games, NO INTERNET!!???!?
Guitar cases… I own two. Both of them are gig bags (which are essentially soft/padded guitar cases made for gigging – or hauling your guitar to various gigs). They offer little protection – really just like a backpack for your guitar. I should also mention, that at any given time, I probably have about 4-6 guitars hanging around.
So why am I so against guitar cases?
First – the good thing about cases:
1. They protect your instrument. Hard cases especially.
2. If you get a humidifier – they can prolong your instrument’s life (and actually make it sound better).
There you go – two reasons. Now those are two BIG reasons. But there is another big reason that I hate cases…
…they make it so you NEVER PLAY and NEVER PRACTICE!!!!!!!!!!!
Ok. Well, they make it so **I** never play or practice.
The thing is… when I lock my guitar in a case (or zip it up in a gig back) I tend to forget about it (which is seriously bad since I have a guitar lesson blog and am a guitar teacher). Having a guitar in a case gives me one more step in the practicing process (which, since I am extremely lazy, is kind of a big deal). I have to make it so practicing is as easy and convenient as possible.
Cases DO NOT EQUAL Convenience.
So really – it’s about weighing what is important to you. If you have a really really expensive/nice guitar – yeah, you probably want to stow that bad boy in humidity controlled area in a nice hard cases. If you have a cheap(er) guitar, maybe leaving it out on the guitar stand in the living room isn’t such a bad idea.
Those are my thoughts – feel free to correct me if I’m wrong – in the comments below.
(Note: the guitar case pictured above looks so sweet. Mostly because of the leather, and the pockets. I like having a lot of pockets for stuff. I don’t personally have this case, because I don’t personally have $900 to spend on a guitar case).
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Should I learn to play the acoustic guitar or electric guitar? Which is better for a child to learn? Which is easier to learn – acoustic or electric? Where can I buy a good child sized guitar?
We get these questions fairly frequently. They’re good questions… with annoying answers…
Ok. Obviously, you should choose an instrument that suits your son or daughter’s style. For example: If your child wants to play heavy metal, a nylon stringed-classical-instrument probably isn’t the way to go… or is it?
No. Probably not.
So – all musical tastes aside – let’s break this down…
