Are All Instruments as Hard in the Beginning as Guitar?

Are All Instruments as Hard in the Beginning as Guitar?

Guitar and piano are the hardest

Short answer? No. Its widely accepted among music teachers (including myself) that the guitar and piano are the two hardest instruments to learn. The first reason being that they both require learning chords and scales, unlike say a saxophone, which only plays only single notes.

This is also the reason they are the two dominant instruments in popular music. Any serious singer or songwriter has some skills on on or the other.

Can't Baffle them with B.S.

The second reason is that everyone knows what they are supposed to sound like! Play an obscure instrument no one has ever heard of and it can take people an entire performance to evaluate whether they are good or not. And novelty usually wins out.

On guitar and piano people decide if you are good or not in seconds! You "got it" or "you don't". And the less overtly "avaunt-guard" the genre, the less forgiving people are in their opinions. Fusion jazz makes little sense to the average listener, if you are capable of playing it fast with decent rhythm, people will assume you are good. Make one out of tune bend in Country & Western music (the supposedly "simplest" genre in popular music) and people will instantly think you suck.

Ask yourself what genres of music get played behind steel cages and you'll get the picture. Fortunately Rock, Blues, Metal, and Folk fall between these extremes.

The Guitar's Learning Curve

Piano is much easier than guitar in the beginning, but gets way more difficult in the intermediate stages.

Guitars big challenge is its insanely steep initial learning curve. Most people I've talked to who've tried playing and quit, did so because they couldn't change the chords in time with the music. No books tells you really how exactly to move your hand to change them, (it really is "all in the wrist") and sadly a lot of teachers can't explain it to you.

The Man Who Made Me Such a Successful Guitar Teacher

This includes the guy I first tried taking lessons from at age 12, to whom I am really indebted as a teacher. Despite being able to play fast, he couldn't explain a thing, and figured if he took me through a song in the crappy Mel Bay book, with zero explanation or technical foundation, he had earned his money. The places I felt lost, hopeless, and confused are the first things I was sure to have exact, simple explanations for when I started teaching.

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