Tips for Finding or Rekindling Your Love of the Guitar, Writing Songs and, Yes, Making an Album.
Learning guitar as an adult is different from the first time you might have tried it.
Probably like many of you, the first time I picked up a guitar it was to impress a girl. Nothing new about that. This was in my late teens. I took lessons for about nine months, which was six months longer than the relationship lasted. With her gone and ample free time on my hands, I put in what I thought was a decent amount of practice. Major and minor scales and chords, finger picking, strum patterns, I felt like I was making decent progress. Then one day a guitar-playing buddy of mine (let’s call him “Mile-long Fingers” or MILF) tried to teach me a riff by Eric Clapton. It didn’t go well.
Tip #1: Don’t let another player’s proficiency magnify your deficiency.
At the time I was either too accommodating or too inexperienced to realize there was no way I was going to master the Clapton riff at my playing level, especially in one afternoon sitting. If I took a month’s vacation maybe I could have nailed the first bar or two. It was way beyond my skill level, and so I became frustrated. (Dumb!) What I should have done was say “Bro, you do that and just tell me what chords you want me to play and I’ll back you.” Instead I resigned myself to the idea that I started too late (I was 20!) and playing guitar was never going to be for me.
After this cold realization I put the guitar back in its case where it remained unplayed for more than 30 years. Considering how much I love playing now that was a pretty dumb move—however, since I’ve always been a big believer in never looking back at what might have been, we move on. (Much like the old girlfriend.)
Tip #1a: If your guitar is uncomfortable to play, get another one.
Until I picked up that guitar again I had forgotten how much I disliked it back in my twenties. It was an okay beginner acoustic (probably with a shitty set-up, which I had no clue about) and had all the feel of a table saw requiring a grip like the Hulk to get a decent barre chord—and I’m 6’4” and 225 and back in the day had a grip like a vice.
One night I had some friends over and out came the guitar to accompany some (very) drunken vocalizing. I’m in the middle of belting out “I’m a Roadrunner” with no clue about any lyrics other than those three words when I do a double-take at my buddy, Mike, maniacally strumming away on the guitar. Blood from his fingers was flying all over the place, on the wall, on the carpet. The interior of the guitar looked like a murder scene with enough DNA inside to clone a metropolis of Mikes. (God forbid!) Of course, this had more to do with the strings than the guitar, and especially Mike’s uber-aggressive strumming. But when I sold the blood-speckled monster years later for $10 just to get it out of my sight, I did so without a hint of remorse even though I could have probably sold it for $150.
But getting back to the original point of this tip, after playing that beast of a guitar for a few months back in the day, one afternoon while visiting MILF at college he let me take a spin on his Les Paul. It was like air under my fingers. “Can I actually be playing this freely? This is wonderful!” I marveled. Being young and dopey and not having educated myself about guitars more broadly back then, I never made the connection between comfort and playability. If anything, I should have recognized that the comfort I felt playing the Les Paul only amplified the struggle it was to play my acoustic. As this article is meant for the older, newbie player, let’s assume that you have a bit more disposable cash on hand to buy yourself a decent guitar than you did as a teen. Do it. You’ll be glad you did.
Tip #1b: Don’t let guitar snobs at music stores get in the way of buying what you want.
One day I went into my local Guitar Center to check out some acoustics and was naturally drawn to the separate room where all of the Martin’s, Taylor’s, Gibson’s and other higher-end acoustics are displayed. I’m in there noodling around comparing a couple of guitars in the $1200-$1500 range. Not being that proficient on the instrument, the old rocker sales guy hears me dicking around playing some Red Hot Chili Peppers or something of that ilk, and not so subtly redirects me to the outer room where all of the lower-end guitars are on display. “Why don’t you come check out some of these?” he said, as if to move me away from the sweet-sounding acoustics before I did any serious damage. I wasn’t insulted but it was really dumb on his part to assume my playing level matched my paying level. So I wound up buying a Martin electric/acoustic on Ebay and got lucky because I love the guitar.
Note to Guitar Center guy: if a guy or gal comes into your store who is approaching or in middle age and they don’t play very well, don’t assume they don’t have the cash to buy whatever the fuck they want.
Tip #2: People (your spouse) will think you’ve lost your mind and are having a mid-life crisis. Damned straight you are!
If you’re going to have a mid-life crisis, picking up a guitar is not a bad way to confirm the existence of one. It’s not like dropping the annual domestic output of a banana republic on a shiny new Porsche. It’s a mid-life crisis on a budget, at least in the beginning. By that I mean, once I became reacquainted with the guitar all of a sudden other guitars started to catch my attention. One wasn’t good enough. Which leads me to:
Tip #3: Once you own one guitar you’ll want to own more.
There’s a slim margin that divides the worlds of collecting and hoarding. Consequently, once you have one guitar you will need the willpower of a cloistered nun not to want another one, and another one, and another … I now own six which is a mere pittance in the scheme of things. I know a couple of guys who each have dozens. Why do you need more than one acoustic and one electric? (Something my mother would have asked.) Part of the reason you’ll want more guitars is if you like to try alternate tunings it’s just easier to have more guitars on hand so you don’t have to retune every time you want to tune down a full step or try open tunings, etc.
If I find a song in a tuning I like I will search what other songs use that same tuning and decide that if there are enough of them that maybe I should find another guitar to accommodate them. Or I’ll try to write a song or arrangement in the tuning. You don’t have to spend a lot of money either.
Presently, my guitars are as follows:
- Martin 2012 OMCPA 4 – $800 used from ebay (New, this was retailing around $1200 when I bought it. I play this 80% of the time. Love it.)
- Epiphone Les Paul Ultra – $350 used from ebay (Heavy as lead. Want to buy it?)
- Danelectro electric 12-string – $325 from Craigslist (Super comfortable.)
- Harmony Rocket single pickup – $325 from ebay (Love this guitar. Light and jangly.)
- Harmony Sovereign H1203 w/o pickguard, which supposedly places it around late 50s/early 60s. $325 from ebay plus I spent $325 for a neck reset. I keep this guitar tuned one full step down. (I bought this after reading about Jimmy Page’s affinity for his Harmony Sovereign. I figured “what’s cooler than that!?” Real comfortable for finger picking.)
- Epiphone AJ220S – $140 barely used from Craigslist. I keep this in open G. (For $140 it’s pretty great.)
- I just sold a Washburn travel guitar which I found to be nearly impossible to play because it just didn’t sit right.
- I have a Kentucky mandolin (Bought on ebay for $10 from a shelter in San Fran. The headstock was cracked but I did a nice glue job on it and love messing with it.)
- Koana baritone ukulele (Gift. Fun to play because it shares the four high strings w/the standard tuned guitar.)
When I realized this about collecting, it became easier for me to understand why guys who are into guns like to collect more. Of course, a guitar isn’t likely to kill anyone unless you hit them over the head with it and then stab them with the remaining fretboard. Still, I get it. I trust the good guys and hope they’ll agree that we have to do more to keep guns out of the hands of those with bad intentions. I wish they’d also agree that assault weapons just don’t belong in society. It seems obvious that you don’t need an assault weapon to hunt for deer or fowl or whatever.