The Best Way to Learn Guitar - Unconventional Tactics

The best way to learn guitar can sometimes be more unconventional than you would expect. If you want to learn to play a musical instrument, you can go a long way by following the rulebook, but eventually you will run into a wall. That wall will appear at different places for different people, but it can completely stifle your progress. Mastery of the guitar develops when people reach beyond the basic blueprint and start doing things in a unique way.

If you look in any artistic or professional field, there are two tiers of people. On the one hand, you have people who followed conventional wisdom and became competent. These people are solid and they’ll get the job done. Then you have other people who have achieved a higher level of success. When you study those people, you often find that their approach defies conventional wisdom. Sometimes it may even seem like they’re doing everything wrong but they still get better results than everybody else.

The bottom line: When you follow conventional wisdom, you’re living in the box and you're limited by it. The best people are thinking outside the box a good portion of the time.

Have you ever listen to Eddie Van Halen? Almost half the things he does could be considered mistakes if they came from another guitarist, but he’s working on a different level than other guitar players. Jeff Beck is another good example. He does everything in a totally bizarre way, but his results are often even more astonishing because he’s pushing the envelope so much. If you do more research, you’ll find that almost every famous guitarist breaks numerous cardinal rules of proper technique or lacks some knowledge that experts say you absolutely must possess. These people are the living proof that the best way to learn guitar is to think outside the box. You’ll find a few guys here and there who are technically “perfect” among the top-tiered guitarists, but they are vastly outnumbered by quirkier styles.

• If there’s something strange in your guitar playing style, don’t try to eradicate it. You should embrace it and find a way to make it work for you. If you don’t like to alternate pick all the time, then don’t. If you have a weird tendency to pick certain notes with your fingers, keep doing it. If you hold the pick in a weird way, embrace it. You’ll never stand out if you conform to the accepted norms on everything.
• Look for unconventional musical influences. Listen to music from different cultures or different musical styles and think about how their methods could fit with what you already listen to.
• Learn as much as you can by yourself. Eventually you'll probably need to seek out educational materials of some kind, and you should, but the process of self-teaching will also make you a better guitarist. By figuring things out yourself, you can find alternate ways to accomplish the same things that other players accomplish. This is what makes you unique
• Make up your own technical exercises. Every guitarist has to do a certain amount of technical work to develop the necessary skills, and this often involves repetitive exercises. Some of these exercises are going to seep into your playing style. This is a natural part of the learning process and it can be either a curse or a blessing. If you come up with your own exercises, you can make it work in your favor. If you don’t, you may end up sounding like a carbon copy of somebody else.
• If you have a weakness as a player, you should find a way to compensate, but don’t devote all your energy trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. For example, if you want to be a shred guitarist, but you can’t sweep-pick well and nothing seems to change that, learn some other skill that helps you compensate for that weakness. Maybe you could learn some fancy two-handed legato licks for wider intervals, or you could learn to use the whammy bar better. There are many options, and your weaknesses define you just as much as your strengths.

Below are some instructional materials from guitarists who don’t necessarily follow all the conventional rules. I’ve had personal experience with each of these DVDs, and you can see some pretty strange quirks on display. The guitarists teach you some new licks, but they’re more interested in opening up your mind to new possibilities. They teach you about the instrument without making you into a clone.