The question I want to ask for the following poll of forum members is what is the main method you’ve used to learn guitar?
0 voters
You need another option for the old timers - Learn from magazines and books. Guitar World was always good but Guitar for the Practicing Musician was the best!
I’ve already created the poll and since voting has begun, I’n not use il will let me add another category - magazines and books - but if it does allow it I’ll do it. If not, then consider learning from magazines to fit in the answer “On your own, primarily learning songs and licks by ear” since it doesn’t say “exclusively learning songs and licks by ear” and so it fits that answer better than the others.
You’re right about Guitar For The Practicing Musician to be the best guitar magazine there ever was! It was truly a great magazine of high quality and a good selection of transcribed songs for us to learn. I loved that magazine and was disappointed when they took away the “For The Practicing Musician” part of their name. That was disappointing to me because it meant that they had decided to go after the market of people who dabbled in guitar playing but weren’t serious about it. What made the magazine so great to begin with is that it clearly was designed for and aimed at an audience of serious guitarists!
Edit: Allowing new categories to choose from after the poll has existed for more than 5 minutes is forbidden. Sorry.
Started with lessons, now mainly learning from the CTC team & the rest of you here 
Dating myself here to a very specific era, but learning songs from tabs online. That eventually turned into transcribing stuff on my own, as well, but that’s where I gathered most of what I know. i was a theory minor in college and have taken lessons here and there, but am mostly self-taught.
I learned back in the late 70s from a friend who had a guitar, he first gave me a pick to use, then later showed me hand/finger positioning for classical. He showed me a few chords, then showed me how to read a chord chart. I learned to play (not clean or very well, hadn’t learned muting) that way and could strum a number of songs, and worked on finger style. I couldn’t afford lessons, but improved over time Today I can flat pick reasonably well, play fingerstyle and finger pick well, and after getting abrasions on my thumb from the steel strings, I learned to use a thumb pick.
Once I asked an instructor whether I should use a pick, play finger style, or use a thumb pick, and he suggested to do what leading players do in the musical genre in which I want to play. I like a lot of genres, but blues is probably my favorite, so I thought I’d see what the 3 Kings of the blues did. BB King uses a pick (maybe hybrid picks?), Freddie King used a thumb pick and a metal finger pick, while Albert King played finger style without any pick. Take that advice with a grain of salt.
Today I recommend to those looking to learn to sign up for either free/pay beginner video lesson series, which are quite affordable (about what it costs for a single lesson for an instructor) or free, and that if they get stuck or can’t find songs they enjoy at their skill level to play, that’s when an instructor can help.
Today with the internet, I’ve improved immensely.
I think it’s a mix, you learn from everything, but ultimately it comes from your own drive to create. I’ve watched more educational videos than I can count, Tho what I do without inspiration or being told to is my own nonsense, just messing around, fiddling around on guitar, what comes natural is the only thing I’ll ever do. Like talking, I talk the way I do as it’s the way that comes natural. Same for guitar, what works and is natural is what I’m doing, and to try to change that is like trying to change your accent, it’s not you.
This was me. I had hundreds of guitar books and thousands of guitar magazines. Going to MI in the late 90s meant you’d study with people from all over the country and world and when a lot of them would move on or move back, they’d need to figure out what to do with their old magazines. I was the recipient of pretty much everyone that did that, lol.
This one was my favorite as well. I still vividly remember some of the covers. Guitar School had a ton of amazing issues too, but not nearly as consistent. I think they were an offshoot of Guitar World. BUT, GFTPM wasn’t the best ever. It was Young Guitar from Japan. They had a years worth of all of the major US magazines combined in 1 issue. They’d do profile issues often as well that were very sought after. I had about 30-40 issues and when I was selling stuff to move cross country (which didn’t happen) I made well over $2k for just those in '02.
I never bothered to learn by ear, which I do regret. My ear was good enough that I could tell a wrong note, even in super fast phrases, but that didn’t mean I could say what the right one was. Part of that was because when I was coming up, I never learned scales or the names of the chords. I didn’t know anything about progressions or even how to recognize them. I asked my musical mentor for some lessons once and it didn’t last long. “How can play all of these shreddy songs and not know the major scale?” It never occurred to me to learn it. My exercises were pretty much all chromatic and based on Steve Vai’s 10-hour workout, at least the 4nps and 3nps and so on. I’d just run those up and down the neck all day every day. It didn’t teach me music, but it ingrained the various finger combinations so that I got to the point where I could read tab almost as well as people read actual books. Aside from the crazier licks, I could damn near follow note for note like a well seasoned orchestra member.
My first 2 weeks at GIT was almost all that I needed, instead of the 15-18 months I spent in that program. It’s like… I knew everything, but I didn’t know anything, in a way. I honestly just needed the lesson material. I had played for 11 years before I’d ever played in front of anyone that wasn’t a friend or family member. Reading through the lessons (I’d gotten a copy of the rest of the quarter’s stuff and some from level 2) and everything clicked. I already knew how to play all of those things in some way, just not why or when or what they were.
Now I’m old and I don’t remember any of it, hahaha. Songs and solos, sure. But it would take me awhile to tap into that part of brain that knew that stuff and actually use it.
I probably had figured out more than hundred songs (sans solos) before I started taking lessons. I started to take lessons to work on lead playing and theory because Mel Bay books were objectively crap to me. I had Randy Rhoads Star Licks tape+book from Wolf Marshall that I first started to learn some licks from. Guitar for the Practicing Musician was amazing, I miss that magazine so much, I learned so much from it. I bought one of Troy Stetina’s early books on Metal guitar, and … the examples were meh and didn’t sound good so I quickly dropped that.
The stuff I wanted to learn, like Metallica and Slayer back in 86 and 87 was a do it yourself thing. There was no books yet, or I couldn’t afford them, or when I looked at them I immediately spotted that they were often terribly inaccurate. Especially Ozzy/Rhoads books, most of them are pretty atrocious and finger things in ways that Randy just didn’t do, or is silly and stupidly difficult or doesn’t sound tonally right.
I still remember figuring out every song on Speak of The Devil, We Sold our Souls for Rock and Roll, Kill 'em All, British Steel, Unleashed in the East and many other albums. While I wasn’t always perfect I was pretty close most of the time, and I still remember a lot of those songs and I’ve been checking how accurate I was lately and most of them are pretty bang on, and the stuff that isn’t is easy enough to correct.
Lessons definitely gave me more focus on my playing and theory, but I also lost some of my creativity in the process. I should have spent another year or two figuring stuff out myself and writing my own music and I think I would have been much happier. I use to have an endless stream of ideas and lessons kind of stifled that for me.
I wish I could’ve found a good “coach” when I was coming up. That’s the thing I needed the most. Teachers as a whole never really worked for me with anything.
I tried a couple of different “teachers” and the first one attempted to show me a couple things but I did those better than they did and the lesson didn’t last. “Here’s the intro riff to Holy Wars” and my response was “and here’s the solo…” The 2nd one did introduce me to Extreme and Nuno, so that was damn sure worth it. He showed me some of the riffs in Pornograffiti (the track itself) and I came back the next week having learned all of Decadence Dance. Didn’t have a 3rd lesson.
I learned songs so damn fast but I didn’t learn anything FROM them until things clicked in GIT. A real coach would’ve pushed me and pulled things out of me, regardless of how well they could play.
I had this exact thing happen when I got GIT. When I didn’t know anything, nothing was off limits. When all the things I was doing finally clicked, I was ecstatic.
But there were still classes to go to. It was all so beginner’y and I ended up telling a couple of the instructors my situation and that if I stayed in those classes, I’ll become bored and boring. They let me just take the tests at the end and skip some of the classes. Level 2 was closer to where I was knowledge wise, so that was much better.
Level 3 kicked my ass. I had to work a lot to afford LA, CA and couldn’t practice as much as I needed to. But even without that, some of those classes is where the PLAYERS!! were. Guitarist with a voice on the instrument who could express it, and express it well! I couldn’t do that lol The worst was a fusion song I busted my ass to learn and the instructor swapped the chords over the solo section at the last second to push us, and I stood there dumbfounded. The soloists was killing it and I’m standing there like an idiot. Thankfully there was a keyboardist. After class, I had to re-evaluate what I was doing and went back to my metal and shreddy roots with my tail between my legs hahah.
I didnt go to GIT, I wanted to, but I realize that that music isn’t a competition. I’d rather compete with myself, no one can beat you at your own game. I enjoy playing with other musicians, not trying to outplay them or “blow them off the stage”. That’s just egotistical bs to me, and they should go play football instead or something. Haha.
That was GIT before the late 90s, or so I’ve heard. It became more of a “musical performance” school by the time I got there. Musicians Institute… The goal was more or less to train studio and live musicians, which is fine. But not long after I got there, the idea of “the vocalist is the true star” became the thing. Hell, half of the people in my very first class had just started playing and half of that half were former VIT students that wanted to stay there and needed an instrument to play. That’s all well and good but you can only go as fast as the slowest student. So many of the students didn’t seem to take it seriously. Except for the drummers. It was inspiring to see how much work they put in. Bass players, too.
I learned back in the old days (80’s) . I took lessons a la Mel Bay book 1, then bought TAB books then I learned to play along with recorded songs etc. I wont ever forget the first time I realized a song was detuned when you run out of frets on the low E LOL! But I learned it playing along by ear. These days Ill go right after the TAB, then play along to the recording than try a backing track, this is in doing covers. Oh yes, I want to also say, get playing in a band ASAP playing covers helps you learn, dont get into saying “Im not good enough to be in a band” too much. Im not the best guitarist out there but am competent enough to play in a band. My issue with local bands at my age is, most Bar band guys are set in playing the same songs for the last 30-40 yers and trying something new is difficult if they dont already know the song. I once tried Highway Star in a band and the drummer wanted to bail it was too much for him etc, This is why most local scenes consist of bands comprised of teh same guys playing the same sets ,sometimes the line ups in the band get mixed but its the same rotation of players. I recently saw 2 different bands, one on Friday, and one on Saturday night. The wife picked out tha tthe bass player in the Sat band was the same as the night before…but I digress…
Amen! They always had more transcriptions and useful stuff. I’ve still got all mine in the garage Guitar School was also great, for their short run.
All of the above? LOL
Where’s the UG tabs and Tab books option?
I’ve certainly spent more years “learning on my own”, noodling around and trying to learn from tabs, from I was 15 years to nearly 40. Six years ago I took lessons with a local teacher and while that didn’t last very long (they moved) it unlocked something in me and I finally started improving, and I’ve spent more time playing & practicing in these last 6 years than I did in the first 25. I don’t have regular in-person lessons any more, but I’ve been member of Paul Gilbert’s Rock School on ArtistWorks a few years. And I’m working my way through CtC, of course