James Lee Stanley

Taking Lessons – Should You and When? Now into my second month of guitar lessons, I had an interesting realization regarding lessons and when to take them.

As I have been playing guitar for forty years, I have evolved my own style, my own approach, my own sound, if you will. Edge, the guitar player in U2 (www.U2.com), never had any lessons and his guitar playing is one of the two main ingredients in the U2 sound. He plays like no one else.

I believe that by not taking lessons initially, I evolved my own “unique” style of orchestrations as opposed to just strumming or finger picking, or playing the blues…something that I’ve never done.

As a mature player, out on tour with Corky Siegl last spring (www.chamberblues.com) I discovered that I was missing a large part of what a guitar player’s vocabulary should be, and that was the impetus for taking the guitar lessons.

The things I am learning, most guitar players learn when they start taking lessons, but the difference is I already have a style of playing. Consequently, I look to incorporate what I am learning with what I’ve already evolved, thereby maintaining my style.

If I had had these lessons to begin with, would I have become a guitar player in the traditional sense? Would I have learned all those jazz chords and followed the path already clearly laid out? Most likely.

Of course, the inverse might be true. That the lessons would have moved me along more quickly and I would have become a better player in less time. But would I have become the “unique” player that I am? I don’t’ know. I do believe that the Edge did the only thing that he could figure out to do on his own and that that style is now legitimately his own and of paramount importance to the U2 sound.

I guess in the final analysis, I would suggest taking lessons if you know nothing about the instrument. Learn how to hold it, finger it, tune it (if that’s the case) and then give yourself some time (a year perhaps) of you exploring on your own.

Then when you get some rudimentary chops, go back and take lessons again. For one thing, taking lessons on something that you actually have a passion to learn, is not like taking Algebra II because it’s a requirement. The lessons are fun, something you genuinely look forward to and something that benefits you, not to mention the lesson goes by like lightning.

I remember learning clarinet in the fourth grade. Time did NOT pass while I was in that lesson. This time it goes by so fast it’s truly unbelieveable.

Go take some lessons. I take them from Chuck Smith at Woodlowe Music in Woodland Hills, California.  He's terrific.