I am still a beginner, just making a tentative start on Grade 3. I have a cheap electric guitar I bought on the internet and I’m good enough now to notice the flaws in it (but still enjoy playing it). I’ve been planning, at some point, to go to a store and pick out an acoustic guitar with a slightly bigger budget than I used for the electric.
These plans, in my head, involved me learning something I could play in the store so it wouldn’t be embarassing. You know the sort of thing: Stairway to Heaven Or at least to have one of my memorised songs rehearsed enough that I could play it confidently all the way through.
Saturday I was in town, had some spare time, popped into the music shop completely unplanned, had not prepped anything to play, but the little devil on my shoulder said “ask to play a guitar”, so I did.
So I’m writing this down in case it helps anyone else who was considering going into a guitar shop to buy a guitar but was worried they couldn’t play anything impressive, or that they needed to rehearse before they went in:
Even though I can play a whole song (badly!) from memory, I didn’t find I needed or wanted to. I found I played little snatches of songs on each guitar. Some loud bits, some quiet bits, a chord sequence, a bit of fingerstyle, playing with a pick, playing that F chord. That, to me, felt like it was plenty to feel if I liked it in my hands and liked the noise it made. The guy in the shop was helpful but left me alone as much as he could and never once commented on my playing.
And yes, I bought a lovely guitar, and I think we’re going to be very happy together