Picking the Guitar Back Up
My mostly off, and most recently on again journey with the guitar
What Not Playing Guitar Looks Like
When I was in high school, I had a couple guitars that I almost never played. The electric, a Fender Squire, sat in my room, propping up the door to my clothes dresser. The other one was a clunky acoustic in some case somewhere that didn’t see the light of day.
I could never really play the guitar all that well (mostly because I didn’t) and so these guitars sat and languished.
Then a few years ago my mom bought me a nice acoustic. It also sat in its pretty case, and went with me through a few moves, one across the country. These poor guitars.
What Changed?
When I was talking to a few coworkers about guitar playing, they mentioned a handful of songs they were trying and one talked about how he had a guitar in every room.
In every room?
OK well this guy could definitely play the guitar.
He said that having it somewhere where he could see it plain as day gave him that mental nudge to pick it up and play a song or two. It was the mental trick that he needed considering he was working full time and had little ones running around the house. If he wanted to play the guitar, it had to stare him in the face.
So when I got home, I got myself a simple guitar stand. And put the guitar out in the living room, in the open, so I’d see it every day.
The last thing that got me over the hump was having something to play. I’d memorized a small number of chords through my fiddling over the years, but I didn’t know more than a couple songs.
I had some song books but found that they didn’t contain any songs I could sing along to, which was my favorite part anyway of guitar playing. Or the songs were too hard (I puzzled over how I was going to make my hand make certain shapes).
I decided to pay for the Ultimate Guitar App, just so I didn’t have to deal with ads etc. on their website. The app has tons of user submitted tabs, that you can favorite and autoscroll through. Pretty sweet .It has playlists like “3 chord strummer,” which worked perfect for a 3 chord strummer like me.
Am I a guitar expert now?
No, hahaha. And I accept I never will be, since I’m not putting in hours at the studio. But I practice almost every day. I can strum and sing, and I have more than 2 songs memorized (it’s maybe 5?). I can also switch chords much better than I ever did. And pick up new ones!
Besides talking with my coworkers, the success of me picking the guitar back up came down to reading Atomic Habits. James Clear lays out a set of things you can do to create habits or get rid of them. I play the guitar now because I:
- Make It Obvious -> Can see the guitar every day
- Make It Easy -> Have an easy way to play songs
- Make It Satisfying -> Pair it with something I enjoy (singing songs that I know)
The last piece I’ll say about how I keep myself going is that if I want to play a song, I scan the chords first. If I don’t know 1 or 2 chords, it’s a perfect song to practice. If I don’t know 5–10 of the chords, then I say “maybe another day.”
Thanks for reading! Hopefully you can help bring music back into your life. It’s a nice break from the computer :)
