Music can alter your mood, give you an endorphin rush, and help you heal.

Music therapy, a growing and progressive healthcare field, uses sound and rhythm to treat depression, cancer, chronic pain, ADD, and drug addiction.

Addicts in treatment sometimes feel safer and less judged projecting their feelings into songs than they do in mainstream modalities of therapy.

Music therapists often suggest patients learn to play an instrument as part of long-care treatment to provide an outlet for self-expression, relaxation, and stress management.

Guitar is the popular instrument of choice.

Blogger Ryan Edmunds of GuitarToday has been playing guitar for ten years and never had a lesson.

His blog offers daily tips, tricks and techniques for beginning and advanced guitar players. His new weekly segment Guitar News summarizes top stories and news items in the world of guitar playing from around the web.
An interview on beginning guitar with Ryan:

1. Purchasing a guitar for the first time can be an intimidating experience. What should buyers know before they shop for a guitar? Do you recommend acoustic or electric? What about price range?

Finding an instrument you won’t get tired of looking at is fairly important, once you find one you like there a number of ways to get to know it and make sure its right for you. Your hand should fit comfortably around the neck, chords should sound ‘in-tune’ all the way up and down the fretboard, check all the switches and make sure they work (this is doubly important with used guitars), also fiddle with the tuning. If the tuning knobs are hard to move this is a bad sign.

Most people know at least one person who already plays guitar. Taking someone who knows what to look for along with you to go guitar shopping would be the best. For someone who has never even strummed a note I would recommend they borrow a friend’s guitar if possible and see if its’ something you want to stick with.

Between acoustics and electrics it is up to style and personal preference. I can tell you from experience that if you buy an acoustic for someone who wants to learn electric, it will not only be a disappointment but it will add years to their learning curve because you have to love your guitar to want to play it.

Price is a little difficult to summarize, a good guitar can run you anywhere between 500 to 1200 dollars, but for someone who is just learning there are other options. Used guitars are significantly cheaper, and most music shops also have guitar rentals. This means you can rent any model of guitar for a period of time and see how it fits you.

2. How did you learn to play without lessons? For those less fortunate, what are the qualifications of a good guitar teacher? What is the best way to find one?

Most of what I learned was from watching and mimicking my friends when they would play. Every so often one of them would come in with a new song and teach it to the rest of us. It was sort of a group therapy for guitarists. Not having the intimidation of a one-on-one setting did wonders for my confidence, as some of the guys who could already play very well were also learning with me.

The interesting thing about guitar is you can be the greatest player and still be a lousy teacher. A good guitar teacher must be extremely patient, as they can often be teaching small children who will not even know how to properly hold a guitar. Another important quality is empathy. Someone who has been playing for years can easily forget how much practice it takes to be able to change between chords quickly, or how much it hurts your fingers to play for even a little while at first. Knowing where to start with a given student is also important.

You can find a guitar teacher in your own area by checking out the bulletin board at your local music shop, there are usually a few postings up there.

3. Do you recommend learning to play guitar by reading music or by ear? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?

The great thing about the guitar is that it has its’ own system for reading music. So, even if you don’t know how to read music in the traditional sense, you can quickly and easily learn to read guitar tabs. Which means you actually have three choices for learning: By ear, through guitar tabs, and by reading music.

I would say a healthy mix of all of the above would be ideal. Tabs have their limitations as they only show you a rough sketch without tempo or rhythm and ear training means you need the time it takes to listen to a song before you can play it. If you can read music you are able to know the notes or chords, the tempo and everything you need to duplicate a piece of music you have never even heard right off of a sheet of paper. That isn’t to say that it is the best or only way. I am 24 years old and still haven’t taken the time to learn to read music. I think I will someday, for my own reasons.

4. The old adage is “Practice makes perfect.” What are your suggestions for proper practice?

When I was 16 years old my Dad wouldn’t let me play guitar in the house. He lived on a ranch that had a huge barn just a few steps from the house. It had a small stoop made of wooden slats that was used for keeping hey bails off the dirt floor and that’s where I kept my guitar amp. It was almost like my own personal stage. Since I had limited electrical outlets in there I would listen to songs on my CD player in the house while playing my guitar unplugged. I would learn all the solos note for note until I had them down and then go out to the barn and play them ‘live’ to my screaming crowd of rakes, pitchforks, Dad’s motorbikes and the lawnmower.

Not everybody has a barn and a Dad who cares enough to lock them in it. The point of that story was what I did inside the house. I would listen to guitar parts and play along with them a little quieter until I was sure I was playing the same thing. Sometimes, its’ best to copycat and let the theory come when it comes.

5. Which websites are helpful for beginning guitarists?

The best website for guitar tabs that I can recommend is www.ultimate-guitar.com , there are so many people on there submitting tabs, writing columns and publishing online guitar lessons on a daily basis. My online buddy and fellow blogger, Connor Wilson of www.connorwilson.com started out writing guitar instructional on there which is presumably how he caught the blogging bug in the first place.

I also really like www.guitarsite.com and there are some really wonderful guitar blogs right here on Today.com such as electricguitar.today.com , guitaralley.today.com, guitartalk.today.com , amateurguitar.today.com and the list is growing.

Thank you, Ryan.

Recovery Rocks!

Roxie

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