How Hard Is It to Learn to Play the Guitar?

The quick answer to this question is “it’s pretty easy,” IF you have the right instructor or instructional materials (ie books or videos). After teaching guitar since 1962, I’ve had a wide variety of students walk through the door. The vast majority have learned to play and, as far as I know, have kept playing for years. The small number of people who didn’t get cozy with the guitar probably were missing one essential ingredient: determination. If you really want to play the guitar, neither hell nor high water can stop you.

As I indicated above, your success at learning

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How to Jam on the Mandolin

By Wayne Erbsen

By now you’ve learned to play a few tunes on the mandolin. You know some of your basic chords, and you’d love to be able to play with other musicians in a jam, but you’re “chicken.” That’s because up to now, you’ve just been playing by yourself in the closet, so to speak.

Well, it may be time to walk proudly out of the closet and into the limelight. Or, on the other hand, you may need to go deeper into your closet, pulling a coat down over your head (just kidding).

Let’s take this little

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Bluegrass Jamming on Banjo MP3s

Thanks for purchasing Bluegrass Jamming on Banjo. Click on one of the links below to download or stream a folder containing a whopping 197 instructional audio tracks to accompany your book. Whenever you see an image of an antique gramophone in your eBook, it will have a number inside of it which corresponds to the numbered audio track.


Here are the links to download or stream the MP3s:

Download (zipped) files
Stream Audio


Please let us know if you have any questions or comments! If you like this book, check out out our other banjo instruction books, Clawhammer Banjo

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The Appalachian Dulcimer

By Wayne Erbsen

It’s amazing just how many people dream about playing a stringed instrument. When they finally do get around to trying out a guitar, banjo, fiddle, mandolin, or bass, they sometimes find it takes a little more work than they figured to make their dreams come true. If you are one of those people who has always wanted to make your own music, instead of buying it prepackaged in the store, let me tell you about an instrument that is both very easy to play and inexpensive to buy — the dulcimer.

Of all the stringed instruments

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Bluegrass vs Clawhammer Banjo + ‘Things in Life’ Tab

Don Stover on StageApproximately 99.99%  of all banjo players fall squarely in one camp or the other: Clawhammer or bluegrass. It’s kind of like the Hatfields and the McCoys; you’re either with us, or you’re against us. This silly notion has lingered for too long. Let’s do our part in poking holes in this crazy idea by looking at the life of a renowned banjo player who played both styles extremely well: the late Don Stover.

Don grew up in the coalfields of West Virginia, and spent much of his teenage and young adult life working down in the mines. He originally learned

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‘Gospel Boogie’: white southern gospel music in transition, 1945-55 by Charles Wolfe

It has become a truism to say that most forms of traditional music in the American South were to some extent ‘commercialized’ by the end of the 1920s; certainly this is true of fiddle and instrumental traditions, country singing, the blues and jazz. By the middle of the Depression most of these musics had gained access to the mass media, either through phonograph records or radio. Throughout the Depression amateur musicians gave way to semi-professional, and then fully professional, musicians who spent most of their time playing music. While these changes meant erosion of regional styles and dilution of tradition,

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How Hard Is It to Play the Guitar?

By Wayne Erbsen

The first question I hear from people interested in playing the guitar is “how hard is it?” For those of you with that same question, this article is for you.

The relative ease or difficulty of learning to play any musical instrument depends on three main things:

    1. Natural talent. It’s just a fact that some people are born with more musical talent than others. But before you jump to the conclusion that you were standing behind the door when music talent was passed out, stick with me here for a minute. Natural talent alone doesn’t guarantee
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How to Order

Ordering

We’ve made ordering simple and painless! You’ll find an “add to cart” button for every product we sell. When you go to check out, you can change your order or cancel it altogether. You can add items to your cart, view your cart at any time, and change items or quantities, all before going to the check out. We accept PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and American Express. If you’d prefer to pay by check or money order, please order by mail. International orders can only be paid by credit card. Unfortunately, we are not able to accept returns, so

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How Difficult is it to Play the Fiddle/ Violin? 

Old-Time Fiddle for the Complete Ignoramus! instruction book by Wayne Erbsen

Among the many stringed instruments, the fiddle or violin has long been revered but also feared. Somewhere along the line, it got the reputation of being the most difficult instrument to play. Let’s look this question right in the eye and answer it right here and now, once and for all.

What do I say when someone says that the fiddle is the most difficult instrument to learn? “Hogwash.

A more detailed answer would go like this. “It depends on several things.

  1.  Talent. Some people have more natural ability to learn musical instruments more than
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Just 2 Chords! Easy Bluegrass & Folk Songs on Guitar

By Wayne Erbsen

In Basic Guitar Chords, I showed you a number of basic guitar chords. Armed with that knowledge, there are thousands of songs you can play simply by strumming the chord and singing, humming, or whistling the song.

Before you can do that, you will need to figure out which chords to play when.

The good news is that most bluegrass, folk, and country songs can be played with just three chords. These three chords form a little family called a “key.” We often give the chords in the same family the numbers 1, 4, and 5.

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