7 MUST KNOW TIPS For Learning Guitar Over 50

Hey, guitar enthusiasts. In this video lesson, I'm going to be going over seven tips for older learners learning to play the guitar today. Let's get into the lesson.

So I have many students that email me from time to time. You know, they're in their 60s, they're in their 70s, some are even in their 80s. I actually have a couple guys that are in their 90s that I work with. So you're never too old to start learning guitar. But, but they oftentimes have questions because they're concerned about their age. They wish they did this 20 or 30 years ago. But I'm going to go over some tips here for older learners who are trying to learn the guitar. These are my suggestions and things that I help my students with that they've found helpful on their journey. So let's get started. Tip number one, make sure that you warm up before playing guitar. So in my seven level guitar system, I have lots of different, like finger exercises and different ups and down exercises, things, things to warm up the fingers. Particularly when you're older, your joints can be stiffer. I have lots of students who have arthritis and playing the guitar can be helpful with arthritis. But I always tell students, you know, especially today, it's a cold day here in Boston, warm up your hands. I have some students that use a heater to warm up their hands, get blood flow into the hands and then start off with a very simple five minute warmup. Maybe a nice little spider exercise. Okay, I'll put a link up here if you guys don't know a spider exercise of a simple one you can do. Because all a warm up does is it gets the fingers moving. So make sure to warm up your hands and just get them moving. Particularly if you have arthritis. It can really help out, get the joints going and getting those fluids moving and make playing the guitar a little bit more comfortable. Tip number two, make sure you simplify your lessons when you start. Now, I know a lot of students who reach out to me. They're older learners, they feel frustrated, they feel like they want to give up with the guitar. A lot of that stems from older learners starting with three finger chords. These three finger C chord, G chord, D chord, these three finger chords. Especially if you're someone who's older and again has arthritis, they can be very, very hard for you to do. I have many students who because of their arthritis can't even play those chords. So I use simplified chords when I start out with students. Usually they're two finger chords. I also have one finger chords for Students with really, really bad finger pain and stuff. But most of my students can get by with these two finger chords, which make playing the guitar fun for students in the beginning while you develop more flexibility and dexterity in your fingers. Because, again, older fingers, you're less nimble, you're less flexible. So my goal with my older students is, hey, let's just get the fingers moving. Let's start building some flexibility. Let's start building strength, okay? Because when you play guitar, you're going to start using your hand muscles more, which can help with arthritis and actually can help make your fingers stronger. I have many adult students that have, you know, weak tendons or they have nerve damage or they have a hand injury, and they're using the guitar to help them rebuild strength in their hands, and that can help. So that is a recommendation that I have for older learners. Tip number three, Keep your practice sessions short. Most beginners can't really practice for a long time anyway because of the finger pain that is associated with getting started with the guitar. I promise that finger pain will go away. You just have to form calluses on your fingertips. So oftentimes, even for beginner students that aren't older, I Recommend Practicing for 10 to 15 minutes. Now, for those of you that are older and again suffer from arthritis and have finger pain, you may not be able to do more than 10 or 15 minutes, and that's perfectly fine. What I tell you to do is do what you can and have fun as soon as possible. All right? So don't focus on. You have to practice for an hour. You don't. I don't even practice for an hour. It's better to do more, more short sessions than really, really long sessions. Because when you're older, repetition is your friend. Okay? You know, as we get older, we get more forgetful. We don't memorize things as easily as we used to. So I always teach students in chunks and sections. Let's focus on learning these four chords and these four chords only, all right? And when you do that, you're able to do that in a short lesson time instead of trying to memorize, like, 12 or 13 chords. So I always tell students, if you're practicing for 15 minutes, spend five minutes on your warm up, okay? Getting either doing some picking exercises or some dexterity exercises. So we're working on dexterity and warm up for the first five minutes. Spend five minutes working on either your chords or your chord changes, and then spend the last five minutes on another exercise or working on a song end on something Fun. But I always tell them break your practice up into little five minute step segments and if you do that three, four or five times a week, I promise you you'll get much better than if you just sat down for an hour. And playing through pain is not fun. So never play through pain on the guitar. Do what you can and have fun with what you can do, not always what you can't do. Hey, hope you're enjoying these tips for older learners. Just a reminder, I do have a seven level guitar course. If you're interested in learning guitar in a very step by step and organized way, I'll put a link in the description below. Go check that out. I would love to see you guys in the guitar course. Tip number four Put lighter gauge strings on your guitar or play an electric. Now the thicker the strings on a guitar, the harder it is to press down on a guitar. So going with very light gauge strings. So something like a 9 or a 10 would be recommended on an acoustic or get an electric guitar. Electric guitar strings are much thinner, they're easier to press, and electric guitars in general are much easier to play and require less strength than an acoustic guitar. The other thing you can do when you buy your guitar, whether you have an acoustic or an electric one, get lighter strings, but go someplace where they can set your guitar up and lower the action. The action is the distance between the strings and the fretboard. So. So the closer the strings are to the fretboard, the easier it is to press the strings and make chords. So that is something that can help you. So if you have an electric guitar, go to your Lutheran, tell them you want your strings as close as they can possibly be to the fretboard without buzzing, and it will make playing the guitar much easier for you until you develop the strength to do what you need to do on the guitar. Tip number five do not go for perfection. Perfection, the killer of progress every time. And I know that's very hard for you perfectionists out there, but I get a lot of students, they're like, my chord sounds like this and I'm like, oh well, how long have you been playing? They're like seven days. And I'm like, perfect. That's what it's supposed to sound like. Your chords are supposed to sound like this in the beginning. Why? Because you're a beginner, you're just learning one. You probably haven't developed the calluses yet. And calluses alone will make your chords sound better. So that can take a month or two months to really get that Down. I always tell students when we're working through the seven level system, they're like, well, this sucks. And I'm like, well, that's okay. It's going to suck in the beginning. But don't let that hold you back. I want you to keep moving forward. Because as we develop these skills, your hands are automatically going to fix themselves. Your cords are going to automatically fix themselves. It's a magical thing that happens. You're playing a D chord, and it sucks for like, three or four months. And then all of a sudden, you wake up one day and you play a D chord and it sounds perfect, and you're like, what the hell did I just do? And it's just over time. As you play more, your fingers are going to stretch more, you're going to get more flexible, your wrist is going to get more flexible. So as you go over time, playing the guitar gets easier, in fact, because your hand gets stronger, too. Remember, we're going to the gym. We're working out here. So your hands are going to get stronger, you're going to get your calluses, and that's going to help you play better over a longer period of time. I always tell students, do not expect to be good in three months. You will not sound good for the first three months. Your chords will probably sound like this, where one or two strings are getting muted, and that's fine. I don't go for perfection in the beginning. When I talk to students, I say, listen, there's probably a hundred things right now that I can fix in your playing. But if I tried to fix all 100 of those things at the same time, you're going to get frustrated and you're going to give up. So we're going to work on fixing only one or two of those things at a time over the course of a long period of time. So I tell students all the time, if you get 1% better every week by just practicing a little bit, if you get 1% better every week, by the end of the year, you will be 52% better than you were last year. All right? So just keep that in mind. We are making baby steps, but every time we put one foot in front of the other, we get so much closer to our goal. And I always tell students, you're going to start feeling things coming together probably six to 12 months into your guitar journey. So don't rush this. Don't go for perfection. Try to step back, breathe, and just enjoy the process. It does take time. Number six, go slow. There's so Many people who are in a rush to get to the end of the journey, the guitar journey. And I always tell people no, when. When I start with students, we really do focus on four chords for a very long time. Like the first third. The first three levels of my guitar course focus really on four chords and learning those four chords very well. They're the C chord or the G chord, the E minor chord, the C chord, and the D chord. And we use simplified versions to start off. But with those four chords, I can teach you thousands of songs. No joking. With just four chords, you can play a ton of songs. And what I want you to do, I want you to get so good at these chords that you can play any song that uses them. And we'll throw some strumming patterns over them. And then people are, like, rushing. They're trying to, like, I'm working on this chord, you know, they're trying to work on a bar chord, which I consider bar chords intermediate level. I don't even teach bar chords to beginners. I usually don't start bar chords with students about 9 to 12 months into their journey, there's so much other stuff that we can work on. We have to build a good foundation first. All right, so what I do with students is, you know, we'll just focus on one thing for months, but we will expand upon that one thing. So even though you're only playing four chords, you're still learning a lot. You're learning about strumming, you're learning picking patterns, you're learning different stuff, but you're getting so much better because you're only focusing on four chords instead of focusing on, like, a dozen chords. And again, when you're older, you. Your memory isn't as good. So it's easier to remember four chords and learn those very well than trying to do 12 chords all at the same time. And they're all kind of going to be mediocre. Tip number seven. Find a guitar teacher that loves working with older students. I've had so many guitar students come to me that worked with another teacher. And I'm so sorry if this has been your experience with other guitar teachers. They come to me and they say, my guitar teacher told me to just, like, give up. Or they told me to play harmonica because they don't want to. You know, they get someone who comes in who's older, maybe doesn't pick things up as quick, and the teacher gets frustrated because the teacher's not patient. I've been told I have the patience of a saint. Because I can do the same thing over and over and over again. It's not really that I get bored of doing the same thing. What drives me is that, is that light bulb that goes off when students have those light bulb moments, or they make like they get over the mountaintop that they've been working on. Those are exciting moments for me. So I'm more than happy to do something a hundred times if I have to bother me at all. I love doing that stuff. But there's a lot of teachers out there who, you know, they don't, they don't like working with older students because they just get frustrated because they do learn guitar a little bit slower. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just sometimes we have to adjust. We have to make things maybe a little bit more simplified for you guys to get it. And you know, for some people, again, they have students that are blind or have arthritis and they're like, well, I don't know what to do with this. So you should just. You have arthritis so you shouldn't play guitar. And I totally think that's bullshit. I think anyone who wants to play guitar can play guitar. There's people without feet or people without hands that play guitar with their feet. So I firmly believe where there's a will, there is a way. We just need to find the right way for you. And, you know, I'm more than happy to help students and try and problem solve and figure things out. If you don't have hands, you know, I don't have a method for teaching you how to play without your hands. But, you know, I've helped students who have missing fingers or have nerve damage and stuff. So I've worked with a lot of students over the years. Like I said, I taught a student who was completely blind. I've taught a few students who were blind and couldn't see anything that I was showing them. So I had to get really, really good at explaining and describing things for them. So, you know, I'm not afraid of a challenge. I can't say I've been able to help every student that's walked through my door. I'm not perfect, I. But I do my best and I give my all to help everyone that I can. And I really love working with older students. The majority of the students who are enrolled in my seven level guitar system are probably in their 60s, 70s. I do have a lot of students in their 50s as well. I have a few students in their 80s and I even have a couple students in their 90s my oldest student right now is 92. So you're never too old to get started. And you know, I love all the music that you guys love. I love the Beatles, Neil Young, you know, ccr, all that stuff. That's. I love that. But I think the new music is like, like total crap. So you guys listen to better music. So. So if you're an older learner and you know, you're looking for a teacher who, who loves, you know, the music you love and loves teaching older students and has. Has patience and a big heart for you guys, go check out my seven level guitar system. Would love to have you guys in the course and help you reach your dream. I really love helping students achieve their lifelong dream of wanting to play guitar. So if you want to achieve your dream, click the link below, go check out the guitar course, and I hope to see you guys in another lesson very soon. Hope you enjoyed this video. Don't forget to subscribe to my channel and turn on the notifications so you'll know when I release more videos just like this one. YouTube is gonna pop up a couple more videos over here. Feel free to go and check those out. Hope to see you guys again very soon.