Learning Guitar? Don�t Study Music Theory
First
Hi there, I�m Tomas Michaud from Real Guitar
Awesomeness and Starland Guitar School of
Music. Our intellect � it�s a wonderful
thing As an adult it is something we rely
on every day of our life however when it comes
to learning guitar try to understand the music
theory first and how everything works as a
significant roadblock to learning to playing.
When I was a young man, I took Celsa dance
lessons it was a lot of fun and as a single
guy it was a great way to meet women but any
woman who has ever danced with a guy who is
trying to think out every step and every movement
cannot test how painful it is. It just doesn�t
work. Starting out by trying to understand
music theory doesn�t work when learning
to play guitar either.
Once you engaged that analytical part of your
mind it�s difficult to let it go. Try to
understand or grasp the why gets in the way
of two of the things that really do work so
what really does work when learning guitar?
of course, there�s lots involved in learning
to play a complex skill like an instrument
but I wanna give you a four steps process
that you can use as a guide for your first
learning.
The first step is to Chunk It Down second
would be to apply repetition and third get
feedback and finally make adjustments. Let
me show you a simple lesson to demonstrate
this process. Now the material is not what
is important. I want you to get the process
and be able to apply it to your own learning
experience. Now to demonstrate this four steps,
I�m gonna teach you a very simple little
blues lick sounds like this (strumming) now
the part that we�re gonna concentrate on
is just this, we�re gonna chunk it down
(strumming). The introduction is actually
four chords going down, half step at a time
chromatically so let�s chunk it down. First
thing to do is maybe is practice the chords,
it�s 3 notes. I�m using the 9th fret and
3rd string. I have my first finger on the
8th fret 2nd string and 3rd finger on the
1st string 9th fret. I would first just practice
the note and just get the chords and go down
by half steps. I�m really just playing the
top 3 notes 
so applying this process I practice that then
I would apply that fingerpicking part, 9th
fret so the fingerpicking part I�ll start
on just one chord, it�s the third string
first and then the first string down the second
and then third now you can use the pick just
easily �3rd string, 1st, 2nd, 3rd then I
would practice the chords and fingerpicking
together, going down the half step. Now repeat
that many times. First slowly 
and look for little adjustments. Now to make
adjustments, you need some kind of feedback.
The first feedback is from your ears. You�re
listening and making decisions by what you
hear or what kind of adjustments to make.
There are other types of adjustments. Of course,
you could be looking at a video and comparing
what you�re doing. You could be listening
to an audio and comparing if you sound like
the audio and of course all of these one is
if you have a teacher. The teacher might be
playing something and telling you, you�re
given verbal feedback � No, do it this way.
No, try it this way but one of the most important
feedback really is to listen regardless of
whatever your teacher or copying somebody
else. Listening is what makes it musical in
the long run so this is how it fits into the
leak and I would go on to chunk down other
parts of the song little by little and put
it all together.
Thank you for joining me today in that short
lesson. I hope to see you in the next lesson
if you�re working just anywhere but on my
blog please go to my blog and get the full
lesson. Bye for now.
