Learning Guitar as an Adult: Where to Actually Start

Buy the type of guitar that plays the music you actually like, spend fifty dollars having it set up before you play it, and practise fifteen minutes daily rather than an hour at the weekend. Guitar is unusually sensitive to all three, and adults get all three wrong more often than they get the practising wrong.

Is guitar hard to learn for adults?

It is harder to start than piano and easier to continue. That is the honest comparison, and it is worth understanding before you buy anything.

Piano gives you a correct note the moment you press a key. Guitar asks you to press a steel string hard enough onto a fret with fingertips that are not ready for it, while your other hand does something completely different, before you get a clean note at all. The first three weeks genuinely are difficult, and they are difficult for everyone.

What makes guitar easier afterwards is that four chords gets you a startling amount of popular music, and the shapes move. Learn a barre chord shape and you have learned twelve chords, because sliding it up two frets gives you a different one. Very little in music is that generous.

So: hard for about a month, then it opens up quickly. The people who find guitar impossible are almost always the people who quit inside that month, usually while blaming their hands. We cover exactly where that happens in how long it takes an adult to learn guitar.

Acoustic or electric?

Buy the one that plays the music you want to play. This is the whole answer, and the widespread advice to "start on acoustic because it builds strength" costs more adults their guitar playing than any other piece of received wisdom.

The case for electric

Lighter strings, lower action, a thinner neck. It is physically easier to fret, which matters enormously in the weeks where difficulty is the reason people quit. It is also quieter unplugged than an acoustic is, which is a real consideration in an apartment, and you can play it through headphones.

The case for acoustic

No amp, no cable, no setup. Pick it up and play. If the music you love is singer songwriter, folk or anything you would play round a table, an acoustic is the instrument you actually want, and starting on an electric just delays getting there.

The rule

Name three songs you want to play. If they are mostly played on an electric, buy an electric. If they are mostly acoustic, buy an acoustic. Motivation is the scarce resource in adult learning, not finger strength, and playing music you like is what protects it.

The setup matters more than the guitar

This is the single most useful thing in this article and almost nobody tells beginners about it.

A guitar's action is the distance between the strings and the fretboard. When it is too high, fretting takes noticeably more force, chords buzz, barre chords become genuinely impossible, and your hand aches after ten minutes. Most inexpensive guitars leave the factory with the action too high, and every guitar shifts as the wood moves through a Boston winter.

A setup is a technician adjusting the neck relief, action and intonation. It costs somewhere around fifty to eighty dollars and takes a day. It will do more for how your guitar plays than spending three hundred dollars more on the instrument itself.

Adults who conclude they have weak hands or short fingers are, very often, adults with an unadjusted guitar. Before you accept that a chord is beyond you, get the instrument checked. It is the cheapest possible upgrade.

How to structure practice

Fifteen minutes, most days, beats an hour on Saturday. Doubly true for guitar, because calluses build with frequency rather than duration. Ten minutes daily gets you through the sore fingertip stage in two to three weeks. An hour once a week keeps you in it indefinitely, since the calluses soften between sessions.

A fifteen minute session that works:

Five minutes on chord changes. Two chords, back and forth, slowly, with a metronome. Not six chords once each. The change is the skill; the shapes are easy.

Five minutes on the strumming hand. Adults chronically under practise this, then wonder why their playing sounds stiff when every chord is correct. Strum one chord and work on the rhythm alone.

Five minutes on a song. A real one, that you like, even if you can only play half of it. This is what makes you pick the guitar up tomorrow.

What order to learn things in

Weeks one to four: four or five open chords, usually E minor, C, G, D and A minor, and the changes between them. Expect the changes to take the whole month. That is normal and not a sign of anything.

Months two and three: strumming patterns, then your first songs end to end. Around month three you meet barre chords, which are the second wall. Our guide to barre chords for adult guitarists exists because this is where the second wave of adults quits.

Months four to six: the pentatonic scale, basic lead playing, and the techniques that make single notes expressive. Bending, slides, hammer-ons and vibrato are what separate a player who knows shapes from one who sounds like a guitarist.

Months six to twelve: pick a direction. Rhythm playing and songs, or lead playing and solos. Both are real. Trying to do both at half speed is how the second six months goes quiet.

What adults get wrong

Buying an acoustic they did not want. Covered above, and worth repeating because it is the most common one.

Skipping the setup. Fighting an instrument and calling it a lack of talent.

Practising chords instead of changes. You can know six chords perfectly and still not be able to play a song.

Never playing with anyone. Guitar is a social instrument and adults practise it alone in a room for a year. Playing with other people exposes your timing immediately, which is unpleasant and the fastest way to fix it.

Do you need lessons?

Guitar is the most self taught instrument there is, and the internet is genuinely good for it. What video cannot do is look at your left hand and tell you your thumb is over the top of the neck, which is why your barre chord will never ring cleanly no matter how hard you squeeze.

That single class of problem, a physical habit you cannot see and a video cannot correct, is what a teacher is for. Ours are working Boston guitarists who teach guitar and nothing else, which matters more than it sounds: a guitarist notices a fretting hand problem in seconds.

The short version

Buy the guitar that plays your music, not the one you were told to start on. Get it set up before you decide it is too hard. Fifteen minutes most days, weighted toward chord changes and the strumming hand. Expect three difficult weeks and then a fast opening up.

When you want someone watching your hands, adult guitar lessons in Downtown Boston start with one hour, or you can drop into a group class of 3 to 6 people.