Myths about guitar playing:

There are myths about guitar playing that you should not believe in:

Myth #1:  You have to have a high degree of natural talent to be able to play the guitar well.

-- This simply is not true.  Many of the best guitarists you'll ever hear struggled with some very common obstacles at different stages in their development as guitar players.  Almost everyone feels like they're the only one that has ever had to deal with whatever their current obstacles are.  But the truth is that almost every obstacle that a developing guitar player faces has been a struggling point for hundreds or thousands of other guitar players at some point.  A good guitar teacher will help you work through these struggles.  A great guitar teacher has a series of lessons that are specifically designed, as part of a strategic approach, to help you overcome your guitar playing struggles faster, without ignoring further development of skills you have already built up.

Myth #2:  Guitar lessons are all the same, no matter who the teacher is.

-- Guitar lessons are not "one size fits all."  Each guitar student has different strengths and weaknesses, and that means each guitar student needs to have a tailored strategy.  Although it is true that there are certain fundamental skills that need to be taught to all beginning guitar students, regardless of genre, the focus needs to be directed be a guitar teacher who knows what to focus on, and when to focus on it.

Myth #3:  Guitar lessons that are free on the internet are good enough to teach you what you need to know.

-- Guitar lessons that you can find on YouTube or on so many websites are not customized to your individual guitar playing skills and goals.  These can be good for gaining small tidbits of guitar playing knowledge, but unless the person providing the lessons is an experienced guitar teacher, who is choosing just the right information, and delivering it in just the right order, your progress will be extremely slow at best.  Consider how many of these sites and YouTube videos exist and consider this.  If that is such great way to learn how to play the guitar, how come you don't know very many guitar players who learned everything they know in this way and have now become successful musicians?

Myth #4:  I can learn everything I need to know from the popular guitar teaching method books that can be bought in stores.

-- Again, consider how many of those books are available, and then try to think of how many successful musicians learned everything from any of those books.  Thousands of those kinds of books have been sold through the years.  If they are such a great way to learn how to play the guitar well, then why aren't there thousands of really good guitar players walking around?  This is because, to be really good at playing guitar, your development needs guidance.  Great guitar teachers not only provide this necessary guidance, but they also provide increased motivation and direction for your private practice time.

Myth #5:  Practice has to be long and boring in order to learn what I need to know to be a good guitar player.

-- Practice can, and should, be fun.  Sometimes there are things that have to be learned that are boring by themselves, this is true.  But just because the skill or technique is boring, that doesn't mean that your practice time has to be boring.  At the same time, although some guitar playing skills and techniques can take a significant amount of time to master, that doesn't mean that you should try to cram all of that time into one or two practices.  If you spend six hours practicing something, and you stop progressing after only two hours at it, you're going to get burned out.  Then you don't practice for four or five days, and by then all the benefit from the first two hours of that marathon practice session will have been lost.  But if you practiced 15 or 20 minutes, and repeated that for four or five days, your progress will be much greater, you'll enjoy the practice sessions more, and you'll be able to keep your motivation up.  The key to progressing as a guitar player is to practice frequently (at least every other day, if not every day), and to make sure that your practice focus is on the right things.  If you spend all of your guitar practice time on only one or two things, your progress on other skills and techniques will often suffer.  This can be hugely de-motivating, and that is very bad for your long-term progress as a guitar player.  Great teachers also provide a method for measuring your progress in such a way that you can gain your own satisfaction and motivation from it.

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But, can't I take guitar lessons from any guitar teacher and learn all of the skills I need?

With "regular" guitar lessons, the kind you get from most guitar teachers, you will often get a "hobbyist" who is not dedicated to giving you the best guitar instruction possible.  He or she might be a really good guitar player, but that doesn't mean they can teach others how to play the guitar very well.  They usually teach you how to play what they think you should learn, instead of teaching you what you want to learn.  Most guitar students aren't interested in learning a bunch of lame nursery rhyme songs.  And just because some music is timeless, that's no excuse for teaching dusty old songs that were popular 40 years ago, but just don't appeal to the student on any level at all.

But, at the same time, if your guitar teacher is just showing you how to play a bunch of songs, even if they are songs you want to learn, they are shorting you on your music education.  Being able to play your favorite songs is really cool, but that doesn't make you a guitar player.  If all you can do is play songs that someone else taught you, how long do you think that will continue to feel good?  You can learn songs on your own.  You don't need a teacher for that.  What you need a teacher for is learning the skills that are required to play those songs, how to apply those skills within the musical context of those songs, and, more importantly, how to integrate those skills together so that you can apply to any musical context.

What do better guitar teachers do?

The best guitar teachers are not only learning and improving their own playing skills, but they are also continually learning about new ways to teach their students better.  Some guitar teachers pay a lot of money for a course of study that teaches them how to teach others.  And that's great, if the course if any good.  But if they just take a course or two, and then stop learning new teaching skills and methods, then they are not continuing to improve on those skills and methods in the best ways.

Learning from other experienced guitar teachers, and applying those experiences to current lessons with students is a much better approach.  Trial and error will sometimes improve a guitar teacher's teaching skills quite a bit, eventually.  But in the meantime, the students that are being "experimented on" are not getting the best guitar instruction that they should be getting.  Why would you want to be the one being "experimented on?"  It's better to find a guitar teacher who is currently involved in actively improving and constantly learning new and better guitar teaching skills and methods.

So, where can I find a guitar teacher that does all of this?

If you live in southern Utah, and especially the Cedar City area, then you already have access to one of the best guitar teachers you can find.  At Kolob Music Instruction, Ken Rhodes is involved with a group of guitar teachers from all around the world, with a combined experience of several decades.  This group of guitar teachers is dedicated to sharing their best practices with each other in order to make guitar lessons for their students better.  These students have more fun with their guitar teachers, the get a higher level of benefit from both guitar lessons and practice sessions, and they progress faster than students who take guitar lessons from other guitar teachers.

You can find out what it's like to take a guitar lesson from one of these teachers for free by clicking the link below and filling out the secure registration form.  This gets your name on the list for a free trial guitar lesson with Ken.

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