Hello! I’m Sam and I’m from the United Kingdom. I’m learning guitar for the first time. I started last month by watching the first couple of videos from Justin’s beginner course. I had to stop it there for a little while because I had a holiday, but today I revised those videos and I played the D chord for the first time!
In the past, I’ve wanted to compose and make my own music, that’s the main goal I’ve got with music learning, and I’m hoping that learning an instrument (the guitar) will help me with that goal, but I’m also learning the guitar to play songs of course!
You’ve found a really great teacher in Justin!!! Stick to the lessons, practice daily & you’ll be strumming away, playing your favorite songs in no time!!!
Good Luck & always keep it FUN!!!
Hey Sam, welcome to the forum. For me, playing songs is what it’s all about. Nice thing with the guitar is the initial challenge isn’t super hard and the reward is huge.
Hi Sam
Welcome here and I wish you a lot of fun
And a steep learning curve, with a little bit of dedication you can achieve your goals quite quickly … but don’t put to much pressure on yourself and set healthy short-term goals and continue to enjoy them
Enjoy the journey and soon you’ll be getting closer to achieve your goals. Being creative and making own music can start quite soon and it will grow along with your growing skills, too. Have fun!
Hi Sam, welcome to the community forum. Follow Justin’s tutorials and practice a little each day and you will learn to play songs on the guitar. Justin also teaches how to write simple songs as you progress through the beginner lessons.Try to learn songs at each module level. I think that if you want to write songs, then you need to learn how to play many songs. It worked for the Beatles.
Hi Sam
You have selected guitar as you instrument if choice but you also mention you want to compose! I wonder if piano/keyboard would be a more suitable instrument for the long term goal!
Either way I hope you enjoy the journey, keep the motivation going which ever path you take and you’ll likely tackle both in time. Good luck!
Hi Sam, I wanted to add that I think that playing guitar, in my opinion is the most direct way to learn to play and write songs for popular music. Guitar is the most common instrument for popular music over the last 75 years. Justin will encourage you to start to learn to write songs in grade 2. But I will add that if you have access to a keyboard, then later, as you start to learn music theory in Justin’s lessons, a familiarity with playing on a piano or keyboard is useful. Justin uses a piano keyboard to illustrate some of the principles of music theory. But for now with just learning a few chords on the guitar, you will be able to play many popular songs and learn the chord progressions that are used in modern music. So have fun learning guitar and listening and playing along to music.
I kind of feel that composing on guitar would be more like how a painter creates an artwork. On a keyboard it seems to be natural to work out a theme with individual note and add the rest around it. With a guitar, just like a painter blocking in color before adding detail, it just seems more natural to work out a chord progression before adding a melody.
Though, I have to admit, I’ve learned about scales and mode much faster dabbling with a keyboard than I think I would on guitar.
Hi Sam, One last thing. I was wondering what type of music you like and what kind of music you wanted to make. If it is modern popular music of any type, then you would also be interested in the later lessons (grades 2 and 3) on home recording and introduction to Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) and GuitarPro TAB and sheet music software. But first you need to learn to play the guitar so you will have something to record so have fun learning songs in grade 1.3
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I’m interested in making the music that I like listening to, which tends to be more pop, electronic, rock, and psychedelic.
I’ve also got a student license for Ableton Live 11 but I don’t know how to use it for music production yet.
… but don’t put to much pressure on yourself and set healthy short-term goals and continue to enjoy them 