What’s the best way to self-learn the piano and guitar?
My whole life I have lived with the regret of not becoming proficient in a musical instrument. I grew up with a piano and acoustic guitar in my childhood home, and I actually took lessons for both but never committed to practicing or improving. As a result I grew up tinkering with both hit never learned how to read music or actually develop any fundamental techniques to play either.
I am an autodidact and have always felt that with the right resources, and a little discipline, I could at least learn enough to play a few songs on either instrument, and possibly with time become a sight reader.
To that end, I am curious, musicians of ~Tildes, what resources are the best to self-learn piano and guitar? Books, videos, apps, anything that you’ve used or know people have used and actually went from complete novice to reasonably proficient?
Thanks and happy new year!
From one autodidact to another- music is one of those things where our innate tendencies will work against us in the beginning. You will waste so much time, and develop bad habits that need to be unlearned, if you forego quality tutoring in the beginning.
Use your self-eval loop for finding what works for you while you practice under the guidance of a quality teacher, and you will progress so much faster than you would otherwise.
I'll chime in on this note: I took piano lessons from age 8 until 16. One of the other students with whom I'd played duets and trios with ended up playing at Carnegie Hall. When I "quit", my teacher told me she'd just been handing me music for 2+ years (my last recital I did not want to learn all of Rhapsody in Blue, or rather, I did not want anyone to have to sit through that, so I only learned 10 minutes of snippets...)
That being said, I can't play jack shit by ear. I can't adlib. I can only play what's on the sheet music or what someone shows me multiple times.
I later learned guitar in a classical guitar course during my first stint in college (1996). There were guys there playing the "motel six 'I'm Tom Bodell'" song and Pearl Jam and Sex Pistols (they also looked like they were punk AF). They got C's in the class, because they just kinda winged the music, whereas I only understood reading music (and also they used their thumbs on the strings, which I later realized is an absolutely great technique if you're not playing for a classical guitar teacher).
I basically never took another guitar lesson, but I started trying to play along to bands I liked. Turns out, power chords were rough at first, but I could sit there playing along with what I wanted.
So, I'd rather state that "proper" lessons can teach you some stuff, but if you can't pick up on how the scales and progressions work, maybe you're not for picking on the guitar with crazy solos or creating your own music. You can always just default back to reading music!
I feel that each person has different abilities and different musical ears, so no one else can really answer this question for you. I'm a logical, pragmatic type, and I always wanted to play the drums. I got a set and started trying to play along with various CDs of bands I love... I wasn't really good but I tried and tried again. Then I found Rock Band. And it provided me with the "reading music" option and suddenly I could basically play anything. On a real drumset though? I'm useless AF... I mean, I can keep a beat, but if I don't have something to read (and also practice), I can't perform. But, to each their own. I hope you do find your groove @OP between my opposite thoughts and Baeocystin's!
possibly unpopular opinion - learn your scales. I wish I did it so much earlier; it's super important for learning how to play with other people (which is such a huge part of the musical experience!)
This seems to be a common refrain among good players, but I really have to disagree with it because it ignores the human aspect. I've heard so many people say "I wish I'd practiced scales earlier," but I have never heard or read anyone say "I'm so glad I did a lot of scales as a beginner." I assume most of the people who started playing by learning lots of scales quit before they got very far. The best way to get good is to keep playing, and the best way to stop playing is to make it a chore.
So, beginners should probably play things that are fun and motivating, adding in scales gradually later on if they start wanting to do things that scales would help with. There's no good reason to learn scales without a clear vision for what those scales will do for you.
I am not much of a musician (though I have had varying degrees of exposure to music throughout my life), but I taught myself a bit of piano in high school. I played songs I liked, even composing one myself (which I am reasonably proud of, though it wasn't particularly good in the scheme of things). And I played scales too.
I, again, cannot speak about music, but as a dancer, the idea of not playing scales seems patently absurd. There is a reason I regularly attend a ballet class with a 30-45 minute barre (ballet barre is an analogue to scales and similar exercises)—and I am not by rights a ballet dancer. Jamming is fun and good and critically important, but I would be quite limited if that were all I did. To make an imperfect analogy, the faculty of writing is both the ability to connect ideas and construct narratives and the ability to string together words—if you connect the words wrong, the themes will not be quite right either. Drilling simple movements teaches me what my body can do and how it is connected and reveals pathways that are invaluable when composing more complex movements. (I tried improvising while drunk once, after a teacher said not to. I was less inhibited, but also less coordinated, and I found that there were some things I wanted to do, but couldn't. It wasn't an overtly bad experience, and I may do it again, but I concluded that I was in a general sense better off working on being less inhibited while sober than working on being more coordinated while drunk.)
...I mean, look. Maybe scales bore you to tears, and if so, that is certainly valid. (I am very undisciplined, and I have not had overt difficulty with this sort of practice, but there is obviously no sense in generalising from one person's experience.) However, it seems rather problematic to me to try to minimise the role of practicing drills in getting good at anything.
I started playing piano at 5, then played a few different wind instruments in band and orchestra (school and extracurricular), then taught myself guitar in high school. I had private lessons for the piano and wind instruments. I've played a ton of scales in my life, and I know their value. However I also know that you can have a ton of fun on guitar and play a ton of songs without drilling any scales, because that's what I did for years. You can learn almost any song just using tabs and playing along with the music. I only started practicing scales on guitar after I decided that I wanted to learn to play jazz.
I'm not a pro, but I'd say that I'm a musician. The problem is looking at things from the perspective of someone who didn't quit. If you could be sure that you were serious about making this a long term pursuit, fundamentals are a good idea. However, I think it's important to note that most people who buy guitars don't end up playing past the first year. Since it sounds like you've studied dance for a long time, surely most of the people you've ever seen in class have quit dancing by now. The most likely outcome is quitting, so why inject drudgery into something could just be a casual hobby? Just trying to start playing without having built up calluses is already painful enough. I know people who just like to play chords and sing, and they don't need scales for that. There are a lot of guitarists in famous bands who clearly have not practiced their scales. There's so much you can do without going through the classical training paradigm. The fact that so many great guitarists added the rigor of scales and theory later on shows that this path is no bar to future advancement.
It doesn't have to be literal scales, or anything at all in particular. But it should be something. I studied with a b-girl who talked about how the culture around break dance is somewhat dysfunctional (break dance being a street form, there is not much of a well-considered theory of how to teach it). When starting out, she was just told to just practice and copy what other people did, but when she did—on the street, I might add—she frequently got hurt, and her learning was slow (seemingly a representative experience). She got a lot of value out of systematising her practice (and even studied massage therapy because she wanted to understand the attendant issues better).
Your 'clearly' seems to hint that these guitarists' music would be better if they did practice their scales.
Sure. But it matters how you practice—see e.g. https://danluu.com/p95-skill/ and https://academics.hamilton.edu/documents/themundanityofexcellence.pdf—why get off on the wrong foot?
Perhaps. I think there is a more fundamental question of what is a good use of time. Is it worthwhile to study something casually? I think maybe it isn't. This goes against the mainstream somewhat, I think. My sister—who is about 10 now—had a school activity: they studied karate for eight weeks. My mom was talking about this with another parent; she said: 'it was lovely, but why did they stop after just eight weeks? You can't learn but hardly anything at all in such a short time.' The other parent did not see it this way at all. I mean, it's certainly better to do karate for eight weeks then to do nothing at all, but it doesn't seem particularly ... fulfilling?
In an ideal world, I would have infinite time and be able to devote myself entirely to everything. But I don't. Given the choice of studying few things deeply or many things shallowly, one seems obviously better. The reason I stopped studying piano was because I realised I didn't have the bandwidth to devote serious attention to it, and it would just be a distraction. I wasn't being flippant or insincere when I said I'm undisciplined—executive function is a precious resource.
Back to your comment—I did quit piano! And I did play scales! And, while I'm not saying it isn't the case for other people—again with the generalisations—for me, the latter was not the cause of the former.
A lot of people found themselves at the end of high school with the option of pursuing a professional career in dance—very intense and competitive—or dropping it, having studied it at that point for many years; many took the latter route. I don't think this is really what you're talking about, though. (I am, for better or worse, on a more circuitous road I don't want to get much into.)
Since graduating high school I've taken class in various settings with professionals, pre-professionals, and non-professionals; I'll speak to the latter. The ballet class I mentioned above I've been attending for about a year, and the attendance is about the same now as it was when I started. 'G' is in his forties, discovered ballet about two years ago, and has been obsessed ever since; his technique is all right, but seriously lacking in some respects. By nature, the class is tailored towards people who pursue dance casually, as a hobby—even though they stick with it!—and it is not ill-suited to people who, like me, have a lot of classical training (of which there are a decent number too). But what it doesn't do is give people good tools to bridge the gap. I can't say whether a more rigorous approach would be better suited to most of the people in the former category—maybe they would quit—but the fact that they've stuck around for at least a year suggests likely not. And people like G are certainly overtly harmed.
(I think there's probably some selection 'bias' here—I suspect people are much more likely to do things like swing or salsa casually than contemporary or modern or ballet. And you probably see open level classes for the former too.)
On reflection, and a reread, I think one reading of your comment is: but how is somebody to know what to devote themselves to seriously without first trying it casually? And that's fair. I don't think it means you don't play scales though. For two reasons:
If devoting one's self seriously to music entails playing scales, then how do you know what you are getting into if you don't play scales?
When I was in high school, I tried to get my friend to teach me piano, with not very much success. One time, he had me play scales. My timing was irregular; I was using too much force; my legato was off. If it was that bad just on scales, how much worse must it have been when trying to play something more complex? When you play scales, you practice having a degree of competence that you may not have in a more complex piece for a while, even when you can find a sense of rhythm and musicality (my hands still remember the chorus to Pure White, and it sounds nice to me, but I know could never play it well).
Again, you obviously don't just play scales. Or mostly play scales. But I seriously question never playing them at all. Hell, when it was winter I had to play scales just to physically warm my hands up enough to do anything more interesting!
I think ultimately it depends on what the goal is. Not all goals require scales. OP mentions two goals, which are miles apart in level of effort. If they just want to play a few songs, no scales are required. This might be some tens of hours of effort depending on the songs. If they want to sight read, they should really learn their scales, and this will be hundreds or thousands of hours of effort depending on the difficulty of the material. My opinion is that one is more likely to reach the second goal if they start with just the first goal.
Most of my friends/peers growing up played some kind of instrument as well. Out of dozens of examples, two are professional musicians, and literally no one else plays anymore, despite some having invested thousands of hours. I quit piano too and just play guitar/ukulele these days. So, I feel a strong connection to this subject. Playing a musical instrument requires the formation of some habits, and most of the books on habits advise making them easy and fun to start with. This tracks with my guitar playing experience. I played what I liked, not what I was told was important. After I developed a good relationship with playing guitar (unlike piano), I added on some of the more boring parts, which became less boring because they were in service of a specific goal. I don't regret that I didn't start learning this stuff earlier, because the journey was fun.
To generalize a bit, there are zillions of exercises you could do that some people like. How do we decide what's worth practicing?
I think it's better to think of music as more of a skill tree than as a linear progression. Many skills could be picked up in any order. You could learn to read sheet music and practice playing from sheet music, in the traditional way for piano. The Suzuki method does it differently, starting out learning by ear, working on memorization, ear training, and basic theory. You could play exercises, or you could practice actual songs, or some of both. (These days I like to practice the relevant scales before working on a song.)
Knowing what the skill tree is and having some milestones you want to reach would be useful to beginners. Unfortunately this is often less settled than some people pretend. There there are teachers with different approaches. Sometimes people who are self-taught go far.
I'm interested in being more efficient in my practicing, but honestly, one reason I pick some exercises over others is that they're kind of fun? Possibly, being fun is a sign that you're learning something.
For a while I rarely practiced scales. I learned them on piano as a kid, and I felt like I could practice them more if I thought I needed it. Last year I was learning to play chromatic button accordion, which required going back to basics. So, scales seemed helpful. But which scales? It turns out that on CBA there are multiple valid ways to finger scales, none of which dominate. I ended up learning multiple ways to play the same scale, and that's okay.
I also got into making up my own exercises, and I think that can be a way to make doing exercises more interesting. Originally I thought that to play a scale, you just go up a couple octaves and down again, but there are lots of variations you could do.
I suspect it doesn't really matter which variations you choose? Making up exercises and switching it up seems like a good way to make things more interesting.
It seems like an important thing to get across to beginners: there are lots of possible exercises. They can be fun to do. If you're bored with an exercise, you can practice something different and maybe come back to it later.
I'm so glad I did a lot of scales as a beginner.
I've learned saxophone and bass. If I hear a song I want to play on bass, it's a whole learning piece of trying to figure out the intervals, learning the notes one by one and how they fit into the songs, and then fills trip me the hell up. On the sax it just... Comes out. I figure out everything is in a particular scale - even if I don't inherently know what scale it is - and everything slots in there based on my muscle memory from doing them for years. It's a huge anchoring point. My bass teacher knew I was transitioning from another instrument and I'm sure figured my knowledge from jazz would carry over, but it didn't; I really wish I took the time to nail the muscle memory of scales on a fretboard to start off. I just cannot improvise or recover very easily when I get lost. Also can't read bass clef nearly as naturally.
Hey, me too!
I'm not arguing against the value of scales, just their inclusion for complete beginners. Fender says that 90% of new guitarists quit within a year. So, it makes sense to first try everything in your power to make playing a fun habit, then add on scales later. What's the rush, anyway? You said that you didn't do a lot of scales when starting bass, but why was that, since you already knew about scales from playing sax? Probably something having to do with motivation. Scales are boring and require discipline to learn properly, especially if you have no experience with how they might help you and you can only play for 10 minutes before your fingers hurt too much. After playing for a while, a lot of guitarists hit a point where they've learned enough to play some songs but feel like they've plateaued or start wishing they could improvise. Whether it takes a few months or a few years to get that feeling, that's the best time to start learning scales, because then there is motivation behind it.
Another area I see this pattern is with the gym. People get hung up on doing the optimal lifting routine when starting at the gym. The problem is, the optimal workout is long, hard, and causes a lot of soreness. Dealing with the time commitment and the pain, most people quit the gym shortly after starting as well. It's most likely better to stick with an easier workout that you are willing to do often, then add on more volume later if you want to progress to more advanced levels. There's a reason why there's the saying, "the best workout is the one that you do."
That's totally fair at the beginning, I just mean I didn't do ANY scales even though I played for years and it showed in the wrong circumstances. I went straight into learning things, I picked up assorted basslines to practice on, played with my friends at rock sets fine, and I played some live jazz sets doing ok - but I pretty much cranked it all out beforehand and I felt pretty uncomfortable trying to figure out how to improvise on faster changes. If I ever dropped my line, I'd flounder way, way more getting back in than on sax. Not trying to toot my own horn here (, ha, ha,) but I don't really remember being in a recital or serious performance with the sax where I messed up and fumbled hard. Totally beefed it on bass a few times.
I'll go along with your metaphor - right, someone looking to stay fit doesn't need to go that hard as long as they're trying at it and keep a routine. But once you've got the habit down, if you're serious about gains or weight loss there's only so far you can get by just going to the gym... And if you really intend to stick at it, it gets harder and harder to unlearn bad habits the longer you keep them. Having the foundations makes everything easier in the future. Eat ya veggies.
I think when people talk about practicing scales it tends to be taken as, "Practice scales and nothing else." There's no reason given, it's like telling someone to practice drawing a straight line over and over before drawing anything else. It's not an either or, though, you can play whatever is fun for you and also practice scales.
I don't play guitar, so possibly it's different from other instruments when it comes to scales. I think it's the same with classical guitar based on what I hear, but I'm far from an expert.
The reason this advice exists is because so many songs are scale based. The better you can get at playing a variety of these, the better you'll be at playing music that seems more fun - with a glance at the music you know how to play it. You can still become a fantastic musician without doing this, it'll just take longer. Scales are kind of a short cut.
I'm a very very amateur musician (piano lessons and violin lessons when I was younger, self taught guitar) but I think that this is the best advice in general. Not just scales but basic music theory will go a really long way, especially since it's applicable to all instruments.
Guitar: justinguitar.com hands down. There’s other great online instructors (e.g. you’ll probably run across Marty Music when trying to learn certain songs), but Justin has a great free course that organizes concepts in a useful way that gets you playing music immediately. He also has such a positive attitude that emulates a great personal teacher if you’ve never had one. He also has good saying:
Repetition can really ingrain poor habits as others said, so don’t assume you can do everything by ear.
Also use guitarmadillo.com when trying to understand what notes fit where on a guitar.
Piano: I learned with an actual teacher and I’m not aware of any Justin Guitar equivalent, so I’m not sure if I’ve got a good resource that can leap frog you ahead. I feel you might ultimately have to learn sheet music in order to get better at some point, it’s one of the few ways you can teach yourself any song if you’re willing to commit the requisite time. Keep in mind guitar tabs are easier to read than piano sheet music.
If you are looking for a teacher, try to avoid ones who will give you songs like homework assignment to perform rote memorization on, and instead look for those willing to teach you music theory. Once you have a good understanding of chords, you can pick up chord progressions that unlock so much of music.
There’s 12 main chords, and most popular music only uses 4 of them. Most of music is a further extension of those concepts so learning music theory can really pay dividends even though it may feel like an academic study rather than practical at first.
A friend told me that quote and it’s generally rung true. You can play a song on piano in a matter of days, but sight reading sheet music could take years. Guitar will be hard an uncomfortable at first, but once you get a four chord song under your belt you’ll be able to adjust to play many songs on guitar before you can match them on piano. Piano makes music theory much easier to understand as it maps to sheet music much cleaner, and this in itself can help improve your understanding of guitar.
I learned guitar during Covid, having played piano for 20+ years, and one key element to learning anything instrument is: Time. You have to dedicate time to actually progress with the instruments/specific songs and so you need to find a way to regularly play them. You don’t need to play for hours on end, but regular enough that you’re not stuck trying to remember what you’re supposed to be practicing. Indeed, there’s actually a daily limit you can reach with practicing, and you will need to sleep to subconsciously commit the practice to memory.
I find there’s three phases to learning with music:
. Mental memorization
. Physical memorization
. Cognitive playground
The first phase is learning what the proper notes to play are, this is similar to studying for a test, and will usually have you consulting some visual aid as reference. Once you’ve got the notes relatively understood for memory recall, you have to have your body actually play them reliably, which is where repetition and rote memorization is play a big part. You have to physically train your myelin sheaths to promote certain neural pathways in your musculoskeletal system and this takes practice, practice, practice. Similar to an athlete repeating the same motions over and over again, you need to get your body to adopt the movements as second nature before you can actually sound good at anything.
Once you can play reliably and at a good speed, you can begin to enter a phase I’ve called the cognitive playground. It’s where improvisation and experimentation can enable a more intuitive understanding of the music, and only possible once you’ve freed your mind from cognitive load of thinking about what the correct notes are (and how to play them) and instead can choose to introduce different tempos, grace notes, and eventually fully improvised melodies. This is where understanding scales and chords really pays off, and is essential to improvisation, or jamming with others.
Reaching this final stage could take months, depending upon your skill level, and is why you will have to dedicate enough time to reach it. The learning curve is only fun once you get over the hump, and I find many people just never reached that point and gave up. YouTube tutorials can only get you so far before you need to drive your own progression, so finding songs to learn that you enjoy is going to be key to fighting the boredom/frustration with learning an instrument before you enjoy it.
You’ll find most songs have guitar chords online that you can use as a cheat sheet for playing the song. This can benefit piano once you know enough music theory, and playing songs that you like is great practice! You can play the song on speakers/headphones and play along either matching the chords, or playing a melody on top.
A good and achievable goal for the year ahead might be learning a four chord progression, and the pentatonic scale to play as a melody to match.
I like how Justin emphasizes the importance of learning to play songs that you like. It puts the lessons in a musical context and makes practicing more fun. It also guides advancing guitarists in deciding what skills to work on when they transition from learning from a teacher to learning on their own.
I learned to play the guitar when I was a kid. Then I had a 20-year-long break. I re-learned playing with some really cool songs (like Mary on a Cross by Ghost and Sweet Child O' Mine by Guns N' Roses) in less than two months with Justin's courses. They're amazing. What also helped me a lot was the "Guitar All-In-One for Dummies" book. I didn't know guitarmadillo.com, thanks for sharing.
I started with guitar trying some lessons that didn't stick (I had previously learned piano and saxophone as a kid). What made guitar really stick for me was trying to play guitar tab's. It's a really easy-to-read notation where each line is one of the guitar strings but there usually isn't notation for timing. It's more like 'listen to the song while looking at it to figure it out' kind of method. It's imperfect but a really good start.
Just Google artist name + guitar tab and you'll find them. I'd recommend you find some really easy ones to first get into it (I went with Nirvana to start) and be aware that these are user-created so some will be flawed, and the odd one will be extremely off base but there are many excellent ones made. It's a good starting point.
If I could do it again from the start, I would really recommend getting the second rocksmith game. It's getting old now and hard to find the plug in but it was rock band but you plug an actual guitar in. It covers all levels of difficulty and even introduces concepts that are ones you won't pick up without being taught in some fashion. I was already very experienced when I picked it up and still learned some things from it.
Honestly, this.
I took guitar lessons for 4-5 years in middle/high school and really never learned much, because I never got to play anything I actually wanted to play. It wasn't until I was an adult that I picked up my guitar and really started learning things.
Find a song that you really like that sounds fairly simple. Learn how to play that using tabs. Then, find another song that's slightly more difficult. Learn to play that. Find a song even more difficult that requires more complicated techniques you don't know how to do. Watch YouTube videos on how to do those techniques. Rinse wash repeat
Additionally, at least in my own experience, a great way to force yourself to become better at an instrument is to perform. Find a garage band, join your church's band, maybe just set up on a street corner for a while. For me, the added pressure of knowing other people will hear what I'm playing pushes me to learn and perfect new things. I would never have learned how to read music for bass if I hadn't agreed to join a band and play live semi-regularly
I had much the same experience, although I gave up a lot sooner than you did. It still amazes me how so much teaching in the creative arts seems aimed at stifling any actual interest on the part of the students.
Unfortunately Ubisoft has been removing their PC version of Rocksmith 2014 that is generally regarded as the superior version of Rocksmith. In place of it they want you to subscribe to a monthly service for a lesser quality experience (part of Ubisoft’s perpetual enshittification).
The 2014 version has a mod for one of the DLC songs (Cherub Rock) that allows you to use any user created song to practice on. Since Ubisoft took the PC version off shelves last year you’d have to find a bootleg version.
Otherwise, there are likely still copies of the console versions that are floating around still.
For guitar, there are countless resources on YouTube alone. They range from truly excellent to still helpful.
Justin has already been mentioned. One hidden gem for music theory is Michael New. His tutorials on basic concepts of music theory are as clean and helpful as they get.
Speaking of music theory: particularly among guitarists, there is a tendency to downplay its importance. Some say its is not necessary to play pentatonic rock/pop/country, others say it downright limits creative freedom. But it is sooo valuable to understand what you are playing and to communicate with other musicians. And I actually can be creative on the spot as a guitarist BECAUSE I know my music theory. I can come up with interesting and fitting chords on the spot because I've learned my harmony. I can solo along whatever comes my way, because I not only learned my scales by heart, but because I was taught how they all fits together theoretically.
With a basic level of theory you also understand WHY the songs you play are arranged the way they are. It is neither coincidence nor laziness (maybe a bit...) that you can play thousands of songs with the same four chords, but my fellow guitarist oftentimes rather strum themselves along into oblivion instead of trying to understand why these patterns occur.
I know its difficult enough to physically play any instrument in the beginning, but anyone who pays a little attention to music theory from early on will get so much more out of the instrument and music almost immediately... Its really not necessary to learn to harmonize Lydian scales two months into your journey, but please don't just discard any theory as "nerd stuff". It is helpful and really not all that difficult...
I learned piano a very long time ago from a teacher (and method books), so I don't have anything specific to recommend, but for the basics of reading music, maybe you could drill yourself using flashcards (the old school way) or some kind of app? I'm under the general impressions that there are a lot of resources for piano that gamify it, but I haven't looked into it.
For both: easy covers. I don't play piano but for guitar I got easy wins with music I liked to build a foundation towards broader learning such as chord forms and scale patterns on their own for later improvisation and ear training.
So, I suck, but I'm currently teaching myself bass and the songs I play don't always have tabs, or worse, they're wrong. But through trial and error I've managed to learn them (and write some of them down) which has probably done the most for my musical ability. It's tedious and hard to do but I really do feel that everytime I crack a bassline I get better at the instrument itself, which also makes it easier to practice scales and the like.
I'm not particularly adept at any instrument but I mess around on guitar and have decent muscle memory with the top 20 or so chords. I learned guitar myself but I had a couple years of piano lessons, a couple years on the bagpipes, then self taught electric bass and then guitar.
If you are going to tackle both piano and guitar I would recommend tackling piano as an academic pursuit and guitar are a creative endeavor.