June Guitar Lessons Update
Once those building blocks click, everything starts to connect — and that’s when guitar stops feeling like a guessing game and starts feeling like a language.
What learning to read taught me about guitar
Lately, my wife and I have been teaching our four-year-old how to read. We found a method that worked wonderfully for our daughter and, lo and behold, it’s working just as well for our son.
The approach teaches phonetic sounds first, then builds on them. This allows children to sound out and read almost any word independently rather than relying on memorization or guessing.
Many “learn-to-read” books take the opposite (read: wrong) approach, pairing words with pictures and encouraging children to recognize whole words by sight. Reading isn’t about memorizing every word in the English language — there are well over a million of them. It’s about learning the building blocks that make up every word.
Then I had an epiphany: it’s the exact same with guitar.
Many players focus on memorizing songs, but the most effective approach is to learn the building blocks of music first.
This means learning chords, rhythms, patterns, and shapes, then building on those skills over time. When you understand these fundamentals, you’re able to learn new songs without starting from scratch every time. Spoiler alert: This is, in fact, why so many aspiring players are perpetual beginners.
Many guitar methods take the opposite approach, teaching songs as isolated pieces to memorize. You might learn one song that way, but the next feels completely unfamiliar. Becoming a musician isn’t about memorizing every song ever written, just as reading isn’t about memorizing every word. It’s about learning the building blocks.
Once those building blocks click, everything starts to connect. A chord progression from one song appears in another. A strumming pattern becomes useful in dozens, hundreds, even thousands of tunes. And that’s when guitar starts to feel less like a guessing game and more like speaking the language of music. That’s when it gets fun!
My four-year-old son finished reading his first book with no help last night, and I could see the pride in his eyes. I live to see that exact same look in my students’ eyes.
Membership Updates
This month, members picked up a new full play-along and two new printable worksheets:
New Play-Along
New Worksheets
🎸 Join the All-Access Pass Here →
🌟 Student Spotlight: Rob Malone
Meet Rob — lifelong songwriter, lifelong guitar-circler, and living proof that the right small fix can change everything.
Watch Rob tell his story, from circling the guitar for decades to the moment it finally clicked →
Rob is a songwriter first. He started writing poetry as a kid, eventually set it to music, and even sang in a band in his younger years. But for most of his life, the guitar was something he circled without ever fully landing on. That changed when he found Good Guitarist.
“I never gave up the guitar. At times the guitar gave up on me.”
— Rob
He’s straightforward about the path that got him here. From his home in Eastbourne, a small seaside town on England’s southeast coast, he’d tried other platforms — including a well-known channel he found technically solid but geared toward younger, fully able-bodied players. Managing a condition that affects his joints had forced him to step back from playing for a stretch, and what he needed was an approach that met him where he was.
He found it. “James caters for everybody. From young to old. And the way he breaks things down into really small chunks, you just cannot fail with his videos,” he says, before adding: “They really are the best on YouTube, as far as I’m concerned.”
What Rob came back to guitar for was simple: he wanted to finish what he started as a songwriter. He’s always written lyrics. But being able to put music to those words — to actually play the chord progressions himself, sit with a song and feel it come together — is what keeps him at it now. His guitar is out on a stand every morning, and he runs exercises before the day even starts. His wife has grown used to it.
“It’s a sense of freedom. Pure escapism. When I pick up the guitar, even if it’s just learning a lesson, I find it so relaxing.”
These days he’s working on Tears in Heaven and on a percussive slap technique he calls the hardest thing he’s ever attempted on the instrument. His own songwriting, he says, is “Bob Dylan-esque” — it’s about the message, and it’s personal.
The real turning point in his playing came down to one thing: the pivot finger. He used to lift his whole hand off the strings between chord changes, which broke the flow entirely. Once he understood how to keep one finger anchored between chords, everything clicked.
“Oh man, that was something else. Everything finally came together. I was actually making a musical sound that was bearable to my own ears.”
These days, Rob wakes up and the guitar is already waiting. He has songs to write, techniques to learn, and a teacher whose lessons meet him exactly where he is. That’s not a small thing — and for anyone thinking about picking up the instrument, it’s worth knowing that the path doesn’t have to be complicated. It just has to be the right one for you.
Inspired by Rob’s story?
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What I’ve Been Teaching Lately
Here’s a look at the lessons that went out this month, broken down by song lessons and non-song lessons.
Song Lessons
- 5 Easy Campfire Songs Anyone Can Play (Just 2-4 Chords)
- Tennessee Whiskey Intro Riff
- I Will Always Love You
- 7 Nation Army (Acoustic Chord Melody)
Non-Song Lessons
Coming Up Next
Here’s a look at what I’ll be working on next:
- A Horse With No Name — your first two-chord song
- Wagon Wheel — the easiest way to play it
- The Folsom Prison Blues solo
- Why your chord changes still sound choppy (and the simple fix)
- How to read every symbol in guitar tab
That’s all for now!
– James
