Hello, I’m Matt, 50 and I’m beginning (again). I’ve tried and given up a number of times over the past 10+ years, probably largely due to a mixture of impatience and lacking structure. I think my attitude has shifted to where I’m more able to be happy with anything I achieve rather than being constantly irritated by the many mistakes and lack of progress.
Rock and metal are my thing. I’ve had the Gibson SG for a while. I had cheaper guitars but even as a beginner it was immediately obvious that the SG was easier to play. For anyone thinking that a beginner shouldn’t have a Gibson, it is an entry level model! I started again (this time around) a few weeks ago, and decided to buy an acoustic guitar, maybe help me dial back my aspirations and learn some solid fundamentals, and then maybe the call up to AC/DC can come in a few years time! The acoustic is a Taylor Academy 10. I deliberately chose something with no electronics to get distracted by.
I’m working through the beginner levels from the start, and practicing with Justin doing his left-handed stuff (I’m playing right-handed to be clear). It’s really useful to hear what another beginner sounds like, and knowing that it’s not just me that sounds pretty rough! Hope to hear from some of you and chat some more in the coming weeks.
This is the winning mindset…aknowledge and appreciate the tiniest progress, slow and steady…you’ll be suprised how much progress you can make! Happy guitar hours!
Hey Matt, welcome to the community. I started playing 10 years ago at the age of 53 and I can only rave about how the perseverance was so very worth it. For me, the thing that made the difference was learning to play a song all the way through. Keep working at it and you’ll find the thing that makes the difference for you.
Thanks everyone. I think acceptance and learning to pat yourself on the back for the little victories are lessons in themselves. I’ve always been a perfectionist and it’s only relatively recently that I’ve seen what a bad trait that actually is and have been learning to let go of it. Certainly perfectionism and learning a musical instrument do not go well together. It’s easy to believe that it makes you strive to be better but in reality it mostly makes you give up because you’ll never reach that standard. If you play a song with 1000 notes and hit 999 of them, you’ll remember the 1 that you got wrong rather than being pleased with how far you’ve come.
Wanting to learn to play an instrument very well certainly requires perfectionism,…and being self-critical is an indispensable thing we teach here in the lessons,…but stop at the point where you start to hate yourself or make yourself sick…In Justin’s red strat is a dent because he got angry with himself once, and has deliberately left it in place to remind himself to stay calm when making mistakes…
There are a lot of perfectionists here…and we suffer daily ,…but don’t give up
Hello Matt, welcome to the community and so nice that you’ve found Justins course and this forum .
It’s the perfect place to start/continue your guitar journey .
Enjoy it .
Hi Matt, welcome to the community. You’ve already got a couple of fine guitars to begin again. Your story will be familiar to many who have stop-start histories with guitar. We have many beginner-agains and many mature folk around here so you’ll feel right at home I’m sure.
Hi Matt, welcome. Those future AC/DC songs will for you sure benefit from taking your time now to learn the basics. Justin lessons for AC/DC songs are marked Level 3 to 5 so can be well ahead of you, but Justin often indicates alternate ways to play the songs that can be within the reach of less advanced students.
Hello Matt and welcome to the community! JustinGuitar will definitely give you the structure you were lacking so you’ll just need to add the patience. If you enjoy the journey and don’t worry about the duration, you’ll be making steady progress and having fun.
Regards
Greg
It’s going really well thanks. I’m practicing every day and it still feels like something I want to do rather than something I should do!
I’m using Justin’s songs app and happy with my progress. I’d say the biggest challenge right now is holding a steady rhythm right throughout a song but I know that’s just more practice required. As far as the practice modules go I’m up to number 6 working on C and G. I can play them both but they’re still a bit scruffy for my liking so not ready to move on yet. I’m working on a few alternate strumming patterns, not easy but improving. It’s going to be a while until my first sell-out stadium gig but I’m closer to it than I was a month ago
for me, i found the best way to keep a rhythm was to start really slow. painfully slow. so slow in fact it almost became comical!
playing along to the song is worth a go, but take note; i do a reasonable ‘somebody to love’ (queen) but to play along does make me puff a bit. but i’m old(er) so…
…I wish you lots of fun 
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