The Most Important Guitar Lesson: Learn to Listen

If I could only give you one lesson, what would it be? It’s a tough question to think about, and I’d absolutely hate to only have one lesson with you, not because I need the work, but one of the greatest things about my job is getting to watch someone’s progress and journey as a guitarist, I absolutely love it. When you see a big penny drop and a new concept that appeared at first, daunting – become part of a student’s skill set and understanding, brilliant!

But alas let me answer the question, which is really tough, I’ll have to look past your individual skill levels and style interests etc…

I’d advise you to listen.

• Expand Your Musical Horizon: Listen to as much music as possible, different genres, styles as you can. Try and listen to guitar being played live as much as you can, whoever – no matter how good they are. You can learn a lot from listening to a bad guitar player, nearly as much as from a good player. Stop and listen to a busker, go watch live music, go support the live music industry and see some local bands.

• Listen to Yourself: Have you been thinking about learning the guitar for a while now, listen to that dusty guitar in the spare bedroom, it wants you to pick it up and strum it. If you keep hearing that voice that nags you about getting back into guitar, well, that voice knows that you enjoy it, and it makes you feel good when you play. Record yourself playing, do it a lot. Every phone these days has a voice recorder, use it. Listening back to yourself play is a great way to improve.

• Play with Others: If you get the chance to play with someone else, and I can’t recommend this enough, but when you do listen, listen to the other musicians as much as possible. This is the true secret to playing music with others, is to listen.

• Focus on Technique: Listen to your right hand, this is the money maker, it produces the sounds. Listen to your left hand, when you’re learning a new chord, play each string and listen – the note rings out clear and clean, in case another finger is touching, or you’re not fretting the string correctly. Listen to the tuning and pitch of your guitar. Really listen when you are tuning. If you’re playing an electric guitar through an amp, experiment with every control you have available.