The answer to this question lies in who the “I” is.

Your personality and desire to play guitar will determine if you need a teacher or not.

If you want a guitar teacher, that’s great. Do whatever is best for you.

But if you are full of drive to play and you really want to learn the guitar, you don’t need a teacher. (Sorry, fellow Guitar Teachers. Many people don’t actually need us).

The internet is packed full of information — so much that you can learn almost anything.

So if you have a passion for playing the guitar, you can hop on YouTube or Google and look up how to play your favorite songs. Don’t forget about guitar learning apps!

Whether you teach yourself or hire a guitar teacher, the best way to begin and improve on guitar is to learn your favorite songs.

You learn the most common chords, new strumming patterns, and you’ll have fun.

Go to UltimateGuitar.com.

Look up a song you love and you’ll see what chords to play, how to play those chords, and when to play them.

Start by playing the song at a slow speed.

You probably won’t be able to play the song at normal speed at first. But you’ll get there.

Once you’ve gotten faster at switching chords, you can turn on the original recording of the song and play along to it.

Pay attention to the strumming pattern the artist uses.

If there isn’t a clear strumming pattern (like if it’s not guitar-based), find a strumming pattern that fits the rhythm of the song.

You you need a little help, look up a tutorial on YouTube.

Just search the song name along with “guitar strumming pattern,” or whatever you need help with.

I can almost guarantee you’ll find help.

Now that we’ve covered the general path to learning guitar on your own, let’s talk about some more specific tips you can use…

Guitar care is part of being a guitarist, so you’ll need to learn this stuff. If you don’t take care of your ax, it can make it more difficult to play, and you may end up totally ruining the guitar.

Acoustic guitars that aren’t laminated are sensitive to temperature and humidity changes. The wood shrinks and expands, so it’s important to use humidifying tools.

It’s also important to learn how to properly change the strings because doing it wrong can interfere with the tension on the guitar neck.

If your guitar sits in the closet, how likely are you to actually play it? Get yourself a guitar stand and keep your guitar out where you will see it when you walk into the room. The saying “out of sight, out of mind” is very true in this case.

Just make sure the guitar is safe from rambunctious pets or children, and make sure it won’t get hit by any doors.

The easiest way to remember the names (AKA the notes) of the strings is to use a mnemonic acronym. The notes of a guitar with standard tuning are E, A, D, G, B, and e (lowercase e because it’s the small string and you don’t want to confuse it with the bigger E string).

Some common acronyms for remembering these notes are:

• Every American Digs Good Breakfast Eggs
• Every Amateur Does Get Better Eventually
• Eddie Ate Dynamite Good Bye Eddie
• Elephants And Donkeys Grow Big Ears
• Every Apple Does Go Bad Eventually

I personally prefer to use my fingers to play guitar, but when you’re first starting out, you need to learn how to use a pick. Every guitarist needs to know how to use a pick.

Knowing how to hold and use a guitar pick will allow you to hit the exact notes you want to. And it will ensure you don’t drop it in the middle of playing.

This one sounds kind of funny, but here’s why I included it: when you first start learning guitar, you will sound bad. Every Guitarist starts here — Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, those guys from Dragon Force.

And you don’t want unsupportive people discouraging you.

When I was learning, I spent hours in my room every day, by myself, practicing until my fingers hurt. And I’m so glad there wasn’t anyone around to witness it, or else I might have given up.

This is the best way to learn basic chords and chord progressions. Most of the songs you love use simple chords and progressions. This also gives you a song to practice, allowing you to improve your ability to switch chords in time.

The best place to find the chords to songs is Ultimate Guitar.

Playing music with friends is one of the most fun things you can experience as a musician. And in order to get to the point where you can jam with your friends, you have to practice with them.

You’ll want to play guitar with other guitarists who are either at your level or better. When I was learning, my friends and I would teach each other things, bringing our own style to the table.

The first step to making progress is to admit that you need to make progress. So the first thing you need to do when learning the guitar is to realize you have weaknesses.

It could be your rhythm. It could be your hand size. Or maybe you don’t like the finger pain.

Whatever it is, do more of it. Focus on your weaknesses during your practice sessions. It probably won’t be fun, but you must do it to get better.

Any musician will tell you how important an objective set of ears is. But when you’re learning guitar on your own, you only have your ears.

That’s why you should record yourself. Pull out your phone and use your voice recorder app to record yourself playing a song you’re learning. After a couple of days, come back and listen to it with fresh ears.

You’ll be able to hear what you can do better.

Strumming seems to be the most difficult aspect of guitar playing for beginners. But it’s the thing that separates okay Guitarists from great Guitarists.

The trick with strumming is to use finesse. I see a lot of new players play each strum like it’s the last one of the song. But it’s okay, you can loosen up a little. In the words of Ned Schneebly¹, “Loosey goosey, baby. Loosey goosey.”

Playing in time and with variations of velocity (soft/hard) are the most important things.

What the heck is chunking? This is when you learn small actions or tiny bites of knowledge at a time.

So instead of learning one big thing all at once, you can break that thing into smaller tasks. Then your brain can connect the dots, building a skillset with all of the chunks.

Just take baby steps. One little thing a day will lead to a lot of great things over time.

There’s a thing that every Guitarist faces: the hump. Ask any guitar player about “the hump” is and they’ll know what I mean.

The hump is when you start to feel your guitar playing plateau. Maybe you know some chords, you’re feeling good about your strumming, and you know some songs.

But then you get stuck. Maybe it’s a chord progression you can’t quite get or a strumming pattern that you’re not jiving with.

And remember: every single Guitarist has experienced the hump, some longer than others. This is the ultimate test to see if you really want to play the guitar. If you have a true drive to play, you’ll be able to push through it with consistent, intentional practice.

Check out our guide to Luthier school and decide if you should go!

When it comes to learning the guitar, the most important thing is not how long you practice each day. It’s that you practice every day. Consistently practicing the guitar, even if it’s just 5-10 minutes a day, is the best way to make progress. You just have to stick with it. Then once you see yourself getting better, that will encourage you to keep going.

I’m not going to lie, learning to play guitar is super frustrating. It hurts your fingers. Your hands don’t do what you’re telling them to do. And progress can be slow in the beginning.

So you have to stay patient with yourself. Remember that all of the best guitarists started out with zero skills, and they probably got just as frustrated as you are. So go easy on yourself. Practice a little bit every day and don’t quit. It will be worth it.

I’d like to share a few tools I used when I was learning guitar. These things, in a sense, were my guitar teachers.

Sometimes I still use ChordFind, usually when I’m looking for a complicated chord or one that I’ve “made up.” It’s simple and perfect for beginners.

You can either enter in the chord you need to know, or you can do a reverse lookup where you enter in the finger placements and see what that chord is called.

It was a central tool in my learning, so it’s worth checking out.

I just finished telling you about a chord-finding website — why would you need a physical chord chart?

You need one hanging on your wall for quick reference.

When you’re just starting out, it can take a while to learn all the basic major and minor chords. And you don’t want to waste time taking your hands off the guitar to pull up a website.

Instead, if you’re practicing and you can’t remember how to play a chord, you simply lift your head and look at your chord chart on the wall.

It will make things so much easier and you’ll learn faster.

Ultimate-Guitar.com is the place to go if you want accurate chords progressions for your favorite songs. They’re not the official chords, but Guitarists with good ears tab the chords, then people vote on the best ones. So the most accurate tabs rise to the top.

This website was central to learning guitar on my own. I would just search for the song I wanted, find the highest rated version, and play the song until I got it down.

Because of the internet, you can learn how to do anything. The best example is YouTube. If you want to learn it, there’s probably a video for it.

So if you think you’d do better with a teacher — by seeing someone do what you’re supposed to do — go to YouTube.

The only thing to keep in mind is from whom you’re getting these virtual lessons. Make sure the YouTuber knows what they’re talking about. You don’t want to learn bad techniques that become habits.

Here are a few ways to tell if the YouTube guitar teacher is legit:

• How many subscribers do they have?
• How many views, likes, and dislikes does the video have?
• What are people saying in the comments (generally in agreement/disagreement)?

In order to play your favorite songs, you’ll need to, at some point, play along with them. So you’ll need some way to listen to them.

You can use either headphones or speakers, but I recommend speakers or your phone. You want to be able to hear your guitar clearly as well as the music.