Zen Ben Guitar Lessons

So many beginners quit or make very little progress even after years of playing. When I sit down with them, I start to realize a few reasons why this happens.

Firstly, they haven't developed their own taste in music so they're floating in the void of 'listening to everything.' (P.S no one in the history of music has ever listened to 'everything' even if they tried.)

Secondly, they're unable play an entire song all of the way through from intro to outro. And I don't even mean accurately or more importantly with conviction, I just mean play it all the way through, mistakes and all.

And lastly, they've lost curiosity in how the instrument works and how music itself works, so they don't experiment and make enough mistakes to ignite more creativity.

Overall there's a destructive amount of apathy brewing and due to its 'whatever' nature, it's leading to more and more confusion and complication.

The simplest solution to all this is to take a few minutes to sit down with a song you love and just absorb it. Reflect on what it is in the music that really connects with you. Even if it's the vocal melody, that's actually awesome! You can take that and translate it to guitar. If it's the drums, you can map out the rhythm -you see, guitar is just the tool. When you play guitar, what you're really playing is music.

We're into our autumn lessons now and I want to share some really important questions to ask yourself if you're a beginner and you're starting to play some parts of songs or exercises that I've shown you:

1) Am I in tune? This doesn't just mean that the tuner says I'm in tune but that it also sounds that way. If not, this could either mean our guitar has some quirks (extremely common,) we're accidentally bending the string with our fretting hand, or we need to work on our pitch recognition.

2) Aside from my finger tips being uncomfortable, do I feel any other discomfort or even pain?

3) When I'm fretting a note (holding down the string with the fingers on the left hand) is it buzzing? Or is it ringing out clear?

Most of all, am I relaxed?

Further in your development of playing or writing music you may want to tackle a song that requires speed and in order to do that, relaxation is key!

Hope everyone is enjoying their first toe dips into playing guitar.