Dear guitar fellows,
I am an older learner, got a used classical guitar for christmas 2019, and started to learn roughly a month later, after my nephew ( who had also offered me the guitar), gave me a few starter lessons. I was 52 years old already.
Rewind something like 25 years from then, I had tried to start the guitar (my father had one lying around) but I rather quickly put it aside!
Too many strings - my fingers wouln’t stretch to do some basic chords and it felt like they never would be able to!
Also had learned to play the piano self taught for a year or so, it went ok, but meanwhile, I got more and more into the DAW world and prefered to record simple tracks, rather using my right hand recording a pattern, then some new track on top of it, drums, bass, and so on, but was too lazy to continue learning! Stupid me!
Forward 20 years or so, I had a little son and we - my wife and me - thought about how to let him get into the world of music and instruments. I always had a weak spot for the guitar - because it has the amazing capacity of reproducing very low and also high notes, can be pretty loud, so great players can reproduce quite complex music with it, but contrary to the piano - while still being portable! I can’t stress that enough - what a great instrument this is!
Back to my son - so I thought about the guitar and read someone’s advice in some forum that the Ukulele would be an easy introduction into the world of guitar, also size-wise great for kids. Something like a first step - Level one…
I bought one , (and then more, but that’s another story). So I bought it for the family and started to learn. My belief was that my son would pick it up every now and then and be incepted to while seeing me practicing.
My son had some interest, but it was limited, unfortunately. I got him to strum a few chords with the years, at least, but that was it. (At least, he now takes, drumming lessons)
I had learned a few Beatles songs and still love the Ukulele today.
Then, after my nephew gave me the first guitar lesson, even if those six strings were still a bit intimidating, it was all much easier than 25 years before and I was confident that I could improve rather quickly from here! The Uke was a great preparation to take the hurdle!
Well, my journey -
So I searched for guitar lessons in the internet, song lessons, finger workouts and more and got on quite well for a year or so.
After one year approximately, I found that Justin, whom I knew from Song lessons at Youtube had got a whole, well structured guitar course - and for free - wow!
I wasn’t at Zero, of course, but I was sure I would miss any - pobssibly important - bits if I had not started back at the very first lesson.
After one more year, I found finger picking more and more intriguing and was more often away than here, but still slowly continued the course.
Since then, I advance slowly in the course, but I also really want to understand and engage with every thing Justin teaches. So I sometimes search for concrete stuff and jump forward and try more advanced lessons or songs and see if I can manage them, but come back afterwards, because I don’t want to leave out any important stuff.
In all the time, I greatly appreciated Justin’s view on learning, guitar playing, and many more things…While many people try and struggle to add something meaningful to the world - me, certainly I do struggle to! - Justin clearly has made the world a little better! Thank you!
Hopefully see you all around here for a long time to come,
Dominique from Berlin, Germany
PS. Sorry for the length!
Oh yes, smaller ones can still have some surpriusingly nice bass… it depends on the model.