3 Reasons Why You May Have Tried And Failed To Learn To Play Guitar In The Past

By Maurice Richard

Many people have tried to learn how to play guitar and failed.

It is not the easiest instrument to learn. Period. And if you do not approach it the right way you can struggle and quit.

If that is you don’t beat yourself up. You were probably not the problem. Most of the people I talk to on a regular basis about why they quit earlier in life can usually be traced to other things, not them.

Listen, I've been there, I have been frustrated with learning to play guitar and I have quit. But I got back up and figured it out and you can too. If you find the right approach.

Here are 3 reasons why you may have tried to learn to play guitar and failed in the past.

  1. Not Fully Committed

This one is mostly on you. If you approach learning to play guitar hoping to do it, with the attitude you are going to give it a try, then as soon as you run into difficulty it is much easier to stop and quit.

It is critical for you to fully commit to learning to play. As soon as you do this you start a process in your brain that will change how you approach your learning.

When something is difficult, you will attack it and try to solve it instead of shrink and stop learning. When your schedule gets busier for whatever reason you will find a way to keep learning, you will give it priority.

However, sometimes it may not all be your fault if you did not fully commit to learning.

I discuss the reasons this could happen to you next.

  1. Teaching Yourself

This is the method most people start to learn to play with.

There are so many options available today. There are free resources, free instruction, YouTube videos, free apps, video games, etc that all claim to be able to teach you how to play guitar.

The price is usually free or very low, you can do it when you want and have time available so the flexibility is high. You can also do it right from your own home or just about anywhere with an internet connection so super convenient.

With all of that material available to so many people we should be seeing a huge amount of people successfully learn to play guitar, right? Strangely enough that is not happening.

And from my experience talking to people and helping them to learn to play guitar I am finding out these materials are actually more detrimental then helpful in a lot of cases.

Most of the people I talk to have tried these methods and failed. They promise a lot but do not deliver most of the time.

  1. Bad Teacher

Not all guitar teachers are the same.

It's like anything else in life. Some people are better at their craft than others and definitely this applies to guitar teachers. And when it comes to teaching guitar there are no standards so anything goes.

Because of that anyone can put up an ad to advertise that they will teach you to play guitar. They could literally have been playing guitar and taught themselves to play and offer to teach people guitar. No training, no experience, nothing.

You have to be very careful when choosing a guitar teacher.

Maybe you tried to learn to play guitar before and realizing it was not easy to do alone you sought out a guitar teacher. Great decision. You gave it your best shot and for whatever reason you were not able to keep up and really learn how to do what you were bring taught.

You ended up overwhelmed, frustrated and believing you must not have what it takes. The guitar teacher can play so he should know what he is doing right?

I went through this as did many of my students. Fortunately, the problem was not us. It was the teacher and we had success when we found the right one.

Find The Right Guitar Teacher

The best way to learn to play guitar by far is to get a teacher to show you the ropes. This will save you a lot of time, energy and frustration.

But as I said above, not all guitar teachers are the same and some are just not very good at what they do and can lead you to just as frustrating an experience as teaching yourself.

That's because most guitar teachers are not trained how to teach and many of them only do it part-time so can’t really dedicate the time to learn.

Your best is to find a trained teacher. Someone who has learned how to teach and even better if they are trained to on how to teach guitar specifically.

Theses teachers are rare but if you seek one out you will find them.

About The Author:

Maurice Richard is a professional guitar teacher that operates out of the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He has been a member of an elite guitar teaching mentorship program since 2007 and has taught many people how to learn to play guitar. Go to his website to see why you can learn to play guitar even if you were unsuccessful before.