Start Playing Guitar at 40, 50, 60 & Beyond

Steve Stine shares seven essential tips for older adults beginning their guitar journey. The focus is on creating sustainable practice habits, maintaining physical comfort, and finding joy in the learning process regardless of age.

• Start simple and celebrate small wins to build confidence and motivation
• Practice in short, consistent sessions rather than overwhelming marathon sessions
• Be kind to your hands with proper warm-ups, stretches, and comfortable playing positions
• Focus on songs you actually love to maintain interest and connection to the music
• Learn how the guitar works beyond just memorizing chord shapes
• Leverage community and support from other players and qualified instructors
• Stay positive, patient, and enjoy the journey rather than focusing solely on end results

Interested in more structured guidance? Head over to the GuitarZoom Academy where we can help you get from where you are to where you want to go as a guitarist.

Links:

Check out the GuitarZoom Academy:
https://academy.guitarzoom.com/

• Steve’s Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/stinemus...
• GuitarZoom Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/guitarz0...
• Songs Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/GuitarSo... .

Chapters

• 1:10 Welcome and Introduction
• 1:22 Starting Simple and Celebrating Small Wins
• 2:51 Short, Consistent Practice Sessions
• 4:25 Being Kind to Your Hands
• 5:47 Focus on Songs You Love
• 6:32 Understanding How Guitar Works
• 7:19 Leveraging Community Support
• 8:22 Staying Positive and Enjoying Guitar

Transcript

Steve: 0:35

Hey, Steve Stine here from the Guitar Zoom Academy. Thank you so much for joining me today. What we're gonna be talking about are seven tips for the older beginner guitar player. Okay, seven things I think are really important. I've got them written down here. So the first thing we're gonna talk about is starting simple and celebrating small wins. Okay, if you're a guitar player who's just started playing and you're no longer 15 years old, the first thing you have to understand is that things are going to take time, and so celebrate small wins if you can learn how to play, you know an open chord and get comfortable with you know doing it properly, accurately, that sort of thing, or maybe a strumming pattern or something like that, and we start putting those together. The key with all of this, this stuff, is not doing too much at once, okay, and then being able to take the information that you're learning and actually convert it into things that you enjoy Music, that you enjoy bands, that you enjoy styles of music, whatever it might be a genre that you enjoy. But the goal here is not to get overwhelmed. Trying to do way too much at once, learning too many things, and it just becomes, you know, overwhelming, and then you wind up not wanting to do it. So small wins. Keep things simple find an instructor that's actually able to work with you on your level, your interests, and then start trying to put small things together. I guarantee you, once you get a couple of chords together, you start playing a couple of songs that you really enjoy, even if they're not perfect. Again, give yourself some forgiveness. It doesn't have to be perfect in the beginning, but we start crafting these small things and all of a sudden, we start playing some music and we feel better about ourselves, get some confidence, get some motivation and forward motion. That starts happening, happening.

Steve: 2:16

So the next thing I want to talk to you about is short, consistent practice sessions. Okay, I tell people to practice on the days that you eat. Okay, if you're going to practice that day, um, or if you're going to eat that day, you should pick up the guitar that day, learn to become friends with your guitar, develop a relationship with your guitar to where you you just know you have to pick it up every day. It's sitting in the living room or whatever it might be, and you just pick it up and you just play. But the goal here is to do short, consistent practice sessions. You don't need to sit down and play for an hour or two hours. Maybe you practice for 10 or 15 minutes in the morning. Maybe you practice for 10 or 15 minutes again in the afternoon, and maybe you practice for 10 or 15 minutes again in the evening. Maybe you only do that twice a day. Maybe some days you can do more. Maybe some days you can do less. That's called being a human being. That's the reality of things.

Steve: 3:09

But don't like. The whole thing with all of this stuff is is if you just sit and overwhelm yourself and then make yourself feel guilty because you can't get to all of this stuff, it's going to fail. So don't do that. Don't set yourself up for failure. Set yourself up for success by finding the right people to help you, the right person to help you. Okay, set yourself up with what is the best stuff that you need to be working on in the beginning to get you to something that makes you feel good about yourself, gets you motivated, and learn to practice in small amounts so you're not overwhelming yourself with with time or with with you know tools that you're practicing.

Steve: 3:46

The next thing is be kind to your hands and your body. Now, what does that mean? Well, maybe I'm 55, I've got arthritis in my hands, okay, you have to be careful about these things. You want to make sure what you're doing? Of course you're going to have to learn, you, about these things. You want to make sure what you're doing? Of course you're going to have to learn you know how to hold the guitar and put your elbow and your wrist and all this kind of stuff. But there are real ways to do this so you're not hurting yourself, you're not overwhelming yourself. You know doing some basic stretches are really good to do. You know proper, proper warmups before you grab the guitar. You don't need to do a lot of stuff, but a little bit goes a long way.

Steve: 4:21

So, learning how to do some things like that to take care of yourself, you know, one thing that I like to do is, before I start a practice session, when it's available, certainly when it's cold out. I live in North Dakota, so it gets really, really cold in the wintertime here. You know 40 below 50 below zero, and so if it gets cold in my studio at all, the first thing I do is I always run my forearms and my my hands under really warm water not hot water to where it's painful, but really warm water as much as I can tolerate it for a few minutes to try. And then I start doing some basic stretches to get stretched out. That can be part of your routine. So you just do some stretches and things before that. You sit down in a comfortable chair. Okay, learn to sit comfortably like not, you know, hunched over and all that kind of stuff. You learn those kinds of things, so you take care of yourself, okay.

Steve: 5:09

The next thing is is focus on songs that you love. Like I said in the first one, it's very important that you're motivated. So just learning things may or may not get you to where you want to go, but if we remind ourselves, the reason why most of us play guitar in the first place is because we love music, we love listening to it. We'd love to be able to play some of those songs that you know motivated us as children or teenagers or whatever it might be. So there's things inside there that we can find. There are songs inside your memories of the things that you like that we could find, that we could play and start working toward. And when we play those again, you're going to feel really great about yourself when you start actually putting together something and you're like, wow, this is legitimate, you know that's the next thing.

Steve: 5:57

The next thing we've got is learn how the guitar works. Okay, not just understanding the how, but the why, because they're actually in a key. It doesn't force you to have to play more. It puts you in another realm where you're actually working on thinking about things, visualizing things, memorizing things. So that's really important to do too. Along the way, while you're learning these things, let's learn what it is and how it works and why it works that way. We don't need to know everything to a perfection level, but to be able to do some of that. So if you and I were jamming together and I said, hey, let's do this song, it's a, you know in the key of G, and you're like you know you don't freak out, you go, oh, that makes sense, so I know what he's talking about. Like, just some basic information would be really really good for you, okay. Next one we've got, okay, leverage, community and support Okay, which means, the more you're around other people who are positive, like-minded, motivated, maybe educated, and can help you all of those kinds of things that can be huge to your progress.

Steve: 7:06

It's really hard sometimes to make progress when you're all alone and watching videos or reading a book or something like that. You're trying to be the teacher, right? You're trying to learn the resources. You've got a book or you've got videos that you're watching on YouTube or whatever, but you ultimately, are the one that has to try and assess the information and figure out whether or not it's something you need or don't need. Well, how do you do that when you're a beginner? So, to be around other like-minded people, be in a community, be with a group of people, work with people that care about you and have been there and can give you advice, the proper advice to get from where you are to where you want to go I think that's really really important as well.

Steve: 7:44

So the last thing is stay positive and enjoy the journey. Okay, it's really important. You got to be patient, you. You got to stay positive doesn't mean every day is happy, happy, joy, joy. There are days where you're going to be frustrated, okay, and that's okay. Every day can't be like that. Okay, every day can't be like that, and so what we need to do is make sure that we're enjoying this as well, understanding that anything worth.

Steve: 8:08

Something takes time. We need to put in the effort, right. Right, there's no magic pill to learn how to play the guitar, contrary to what is often said. You know, learn to do this and what. Maybe maybe that works, maybe, but some things just take time. The difference is if you've got the proper guidance and you know what it is that you're doing and why it is you're doing it and how it benefits the bigger picture, and then you start trying to make sure that you're not getting overloaded, you're not getting overwhelmed with too much stuff. You can see why you're doing what you're doing and you can feel that progress. And all of a sudden, you start playing some things that you're relating to and you feel that motivation. That's half the battle here, okay.

Steve: 8:48

So being patient, staying positive, okay, getting encouragement these are all really important and just enjoying what you're doing, all right. So take care. God bless, and hopefully this helps you a little bit. If you are interested at all, you can always head over to the Guitar Zoom Academy. There's probably going to be a link around here somewhere. You can always just type a search for Guitar Zoom Academy and find us, but you know, if you're interested in trying to get some real help to get from where you are to where you want to go and, um, you know we can see. If it's a fit for you, that's that's. That's the best thing we can do. If it's not, it's not, that's okay. But if it is, we can get to work and start getting you where you want to go. So take care and stay positive, all right.