My First Guitar Lesson – An Introduction

After 22 years of playing guitar I had my first guitar lesson today and I really, really enjoyed it.

I’ve wanted to get guitar lessons for a long time. There are a number of reasons for this:

I want to know what I don’t know about playing the guitar
I want to be more purposeful, strategic and disciplined in my guitar practise
I want to play better lead guitar
I want to sharpen up and test out my theoretical knowledge
I’m ready to go the next step with my guitar playing
I want to be challenged and inspired

However, wanting to learn guitar and doing it seemed to be a very challenging proposition. As soon as I made the decision to get lessons all of these questions and seeds of doubt started creeping into my head.

How am I going to find the time?

Did I really need to get lessons?

Was it worth me getting lessons?

Will guitar lessons destroy my creativity?

It was exhausting just trying to keep up with all of this chatter but as soon as I realised that it was coming from my inner critic and not from any sense of reality, I strengthened my resolve and went ahead anyway.

My lessons are every Tuesday morning at 10am. My tutor is a very good friend of mine and gifted guitarist and writer Cal Williams Jr.

For me, making the time for lessons used the same concept as making the time to write songs. If you want to do something badly enough you’ll move Heaven and Earth to accommodate your desire.

I made the time by not going to the office until midday which means I also get to sleep-in which is a bonus.

I generally rehearse on Tuesday nights so I stay at the office to compensate the late start and go to rehearsal from there rather than from home.

Simple really.

When I mentioned my desire to get guitar lessons to my friends they all said “Why?” I just said “Why not?”

What I’m saying here is that as soon as you start thinking that you’ve learnt all you need to learn about your craft whether it be songwriting, guitar playing or whatever, you stop progressing and start dying.

Knowledge is like a muscle. It starts to wither if you don’t use it.

I was starting to think that what I was playing on guitar was starting to sound the same and I didn’t want that for my self, my audience and for my songs.

Getting lessons is only going to enhance my songwriting and my ability to collaborate with others.

I’m going to start a guitar lesson journal as part of Songwriting Zen mainly so I can internalise what I’ve learnt and to also share some of my new found knowledge with all of you.

You’re going to hear a lot more about Cal Williams Jr in future posts but I will save that for another time.

Until next time, happy writing,

Corey Stewart
Singer/Songwriter/Musician

Keywords: songwriting and the guitar, songwriting, songwriter, songwriting tip, songwriting help, songwriting idea, songwriting resource, songwriting blog, corey stewart

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Tags: Corey Stewart, Creativity, lyrics, music, song, Songwriter, Songwriting, songwriting blog, songwriting tip, Songwriting Zen, writing, zen

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 Guitar Lesson

1 Comment to My First Guitar Lesson – An Introduction

Songwriting Zen» Blog Archive » Guitar Lesson - July 1st, 2008 says:

July 1, 2008 at 1:29 pm

[...] I mentioned last week in “My First Guitar Lesson – An Introduction” I’m getting lessons with my good friend and very talented guitarist and songwriter Cal [...]