I Wish I Started Guitar Lessons Earlier

Learning Through Self-Taught Stubbornness

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I did teach myself how to do this at one point. Photo by Alexandre St-Louis on Unsplash

Heed my warning and take this advice.

Get lessons.

I started learning guitar when I was 14. Roughly 20 years ago now.

At the time, websites like MXtabs, PowerTabs, GuitarPro, and Ultimate Guitar encouraged you to teach yourself. There was no need for an instructor when you could access thousands upon thousands of your favorite songs in tab format at your fingertips.

Every forum said not to bother with learning from an instructor. Teaching yourself is the way to go since there’s so much access to information now. I ate it up.

My favorite guitarist was Eddie Van Halen. If he could teach himself then I figured I could as well. Ignoring the fact that Mr. Van Halen was a classically trained pianist and that musical knowledge can give quite a boost in learning other instruments.

I could do this!

I love a good Explorer guitar. Photo by Alejandro Morelos on Unsplash

I used those tabs and taught myself various theme songs, using them as finger…