All right, I got a question right now from John. He has a question right now, it says “Walt, I just want to learn what are some good songs—any songs to learn on guitar?” Now, I get this question all the time. Now John, here is the thing man, the best songs to learn on guitar are the ones that you feel the most passionate about. The ones that you love the most. Now, why would I say that?
So, the thing is that, you might love blues music, but you hate country music. I do not know. I am just making something up. So what type of music should you learn then? You should learn the blues because when you enjoy your practices, when you are playing guitar and you enjoy practicing, learn this piece of music. It is going to show it through in several things. One of the things that it is going to show it through in your practicing technique, you will have better concentration. You will feel more guided towards it. You will love it with that much more. The second thing is that it will show it through in your performances when you play with people. And then to be able to take that and you will excel 20 times faster playing music that you love rather than play music that you think other people say you should play.
So you are saying that you like rock, blues and jazz. So if you just start to learn guitar yesterday, I would not recommend learning songs yet. There are always four chords in a piece of music—well not only four. But if you started playing a guitar, there are seven basic chords. A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. They are all you major chords. A triangle means major. You have that minor chords. You have A minor, A major, B minor, B Major but what you want to do is that—let us say like the first two weeks—the first two weeks, learn a couple of chords. Let us say your A. Let us say that you learn your A, your E and then your D. So learn those chords. Learn those chords and in the next week or the next month or whatever, learn your other chords. So let us say that you learn C, E, and G.
So learn them, get them down and make sure that you get them perfectly. Do not rush. I say this all the time. Slow and steady wins the race. So take it slow, take it in. Learn these chords perfectly. Why is it important to measure these chords first before you learn anything? Because these chords are the root to every other song that you learn. Once you learn these chords, that is it. You now learned it for the rest of your life. So learn these chords first and then learn your basic song.
Now you want it to be easy. You are saying any style works for you then that is a great thing. Just learn any style but when you learn that style, make sure that after you learn these chords, that you take your first stepping stone and that is the song. So learn the chords first, take it slow by August or even the end of July, you will be fantastic. Learn these chords first, John, and then after that, what you want to do is take it slow. Learn to slow the things a little more easy; maybe just a couple of chords, but one that you really enjoy. One that like you cannot stop singing about or one that like maybe you want to play it for your friend or maybe you have a significant other that you want to play it for or whatever it is. Have a goal set in mind.
Set yourself John. Four months from now—not four months. Two months from now, I want to play guitar for my girlfriend for our anniversary. You now have goal. So you take that goal and everyday, everyday, day in and day out, You work on these chords. You got it. Then next month, you are working on a song, you got it. And what is your goal? Your goal is to learn the song and your reward is to play that song for that special someone.
And so that is how you do things. You set a goal and at the end result of that goal, is the reward. And if there is a silver underling over that, and what is that? That you do not only get to play it to someone—play music for someone that you care about but you also now are one, a better musician and two, a better person.
So you learn it and you pay it forward. This is what is all about. Keep your ques
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