No matter if you've been playing your whole life, or if you just picked up a guitar a month ago, playing guitar is not an easy task. It is more than just learning your favorite songs and feeling like a rock star. Through all of the broken strings, bad days, and endless requests, your journey to becoming the guitar player you are today surely has been rifled by both good and bad experiences.
1. Finger blisters are the worst.
Until those blisters turn into tough calluses, it's a painful journey to learning how to play your instrument. I can't count the amount of bandaged fingers I had throughout middle school when I was first learning how to play.
2. Broken E strings are the easiest way to ruin your day.
You're strumming along to your favorite song, relieving some stress, enjoying the music, when all of a sudden, your little bottom e-string snaps. It happens so quickly, sometimes snapping you right on the hand or even in the face. All you can do is stare in shock at how your guitar could betray you like this. Eventually you pick yourself off the floor and go change your string, but not without first cursing that tiny, fragile string to hell.
3. You lose more picks than you have to your name.
You find them every except in your gig bag. They're in old pants' pockets, the washer, the dryer, in old purses, wallets, on the floor, in winter coats--everywhere except the place you need them to be.
4. Everyone thinks you're "that guy" who only knows how to play "Wonderwall" by Oasis.
Nobody wants to be that guy.
5. Your chances of getting a date automatically go up, at least a little, when you mention you play guitar.
Hey, it's a better, more honest tactic than when guys in TV shows use other people's babies or puppies to pick up women. Who can resist someone with a gig bag strapped to their back?
6. When someone asks you to play something, you automatically forget every song you've ever learned.
The struggle is real. Your confidence in your skill wavers as you try to remember all of the painstaking hours of memorizing chords, tabs, and notes and it suddenly becomes impossible to remember any of the tabs you've bookmarked on Ultimate Guitar's website.
7. There's nothing more rewarding than learning that one song that you've been practicing forever.
Some of us are good at lead guitar, some of us are good at rhythm, and some just do their own thing. No matter how we play, however, there's nothing better than learning that one song you've been working on for a while.
8. Capos are life-savers.
Capos are just so much easier to use than barre chords; I don't care if using them is the easy way out. Barre chords are exhausting (especially when you have really small hands).
9. You have a specific kind of pick you like, and no others compare.
I like medium Fender picks. Flimsy thin picks will not do. Thick picks are overwhelming. Any kind of medium pick will do, but please, no thin, flimsy picks. They are the worst.
10. You can tell when any string is a little out of tune and it drives you insane.
Even if it is barely out of tune and the rest of your strings are perfectly in tune, you can still hear that little off-key twang. It makes me cringe just thinking of it.
11. At some point, you become the free entertainment at family parties.
I started playing guitar in middle school and from that moment on, for a while, I'd take my guitar to every family gathering and play and sing in the background forever. It got a bit exhausting sometimes, so now I just stick to the occasional cover song video on my Facebook.
12. Everyone asks if you can teach them how to play a song.
At first, you get really excited, saying "Yeah! Of course! It will be so fun! Then we can collab or something, maybe??" Then you actually try to teach them and it turns into "what do you mean you can't stretch your fingers that far?" "No, no, hold the pick like this." It's much more tedious than you initially thought it would be. God bless the teachers who had the patience to give us lessons every week.
13. People treat you like a DJ, hammering off song request after song request.
"Can you learn >insert overplayed pop song here<?" "Can you play >insert obscure song you've never heard in your life<?" Sometimes it's fun to learn songs for other people, but most of the time, you're playing for your own enjoyment and you want to pick out your own songs. The only things that are going to hear you are your bedroom walls, anyway.
14. There is always going to be that one person who is better than you and that is okay.
Okay, so most of the time, there will be far more than just one person who is better than you. The thing is, though, that you shouldn't let your skill level compared to someone else's make you feel bad. After all, it's about the love of the music more than anything else. As long as you're happy and doing what you love, then it shouldn't matter how good or bad you are at playing your instrument.
15. Your love of music will always be bigger than your skill level.
One thing all guitarists can always be sure of is our undying love of the music, whether we pick at our six-strings every day or haven't picked one up in years. The love of music is always there.
