If you’re a beginner guitarist or just starting out and want to get real good… you don’t need to spend a lot of money on learning how to play guitar at all. In this day and age of technology, it seems like all the pros wanna make lots of money by teaching people to play guitar. Before the internet came around, we had to look for guitar teachers by looking up in the advertisements through your local newspapers. Now that the internet is so huge, there are tons of online courses that are being owned by pros which I’m sure will costs hundreds or thousands of dollars in order to join their course. Before the age of the internet, I admittedly learned by working with two different guitar instructors. Then I gave up guitar lessons so I can become self-taught.

To be good at guitar, you don’t really need to spend any money at all. I’ve learned by taking a few guitar lessons with two different instructors then I stopped so I can get my own style of playing. I’ve also learned by reading guitar magazines like Guitar World for example. I’ve also learned by watching other guitarists play. I’ve also learned by playing my favorite songs by ear… I’ve done that a lot and still try to play songs by ear sometimes but need to do it more.

To get good at guitar, you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars at college. You don’t need to do all of these online courses either.

All you need to do is play along with your favorite songs and just watch other guitarists. That’s how I’ve learned mostly. I never took guitar lessons too much. With those two instructors that I worked with, I only had a few lessons with them and that was it. I’ve spent the last 20 years teaching myself.

I feel I’m an okay guitar player now but still got a lot of work and learning to do. I don’t really want to learn from other guitarists. I prefer to be self-taught for a lot of reasons. If you have someone else teach you, you’re going to get their style and their vision. I’ve always been worried about that and that’s why I refuse to be taught by other people. You learn to play guitar by listening to your favorite music and jamming along to your favorite songs which is what I used to do all the time.

As a guitarist you don’t really need to play by the rules either. In my opinion, all the guitar masters are the ones who don’t play by the rules… they just play by feel. That’s how Hendrix and Jimmy Page played… they played by feeling… not worrying about all of this music theory and scales stuff. They just played from the heart. That’s how the guitar should be played. Playing by the rules is lame and I never did that. Just play from your gut and play whatever makes you feel good. You don’t need to be a “perfectionist” as a guitarist so you can forget taking expensive lessons. You can quickly become a guitar genius or a guitar god without any of that shit. Just be yourself and be real… that’s who the real guitar masters are.

I am studying music theory and stuff but I’m just learning the basics so I can figure out how to stay in key when I’m soloing but I’m still not gonna play by the rules, though.

If you want to play guitar and can’t find a teacher, you don’t fuckin’ need one. Just sit there with your guitar in front of your stereo, put on your favorite CD and play along. That’s how most of the guitar gods got so good like Page, Hendrix, Clapton, etc. All they did was sit there in front of their record players trying to figure out songs note by note. If they can do it, you can too. It won’t really cost you anything either.

I love being a self-taught guitar player. I’ve learned so much about guitar playing and I didn’t pay a whole lot to learn that stuff. Most online courses just wanna make a quick buck, they don’t care about you at all.

Kev