Self-taught. 16 years in. And still learning — which is exactly why this community exists.
I walked in ready. The teacher seemed knowledgeable. First question he asked: "What song do you want to learn?"
I told him. He printed off the tabs. We worked through it. At the end: "Practice that, and we'll see where you're at next week."
That was basically every session. I'd pick a song I liked. He'd hand me tabs. We'd play through it. No real homework. No direction. No one looking at where I was and telling me specifically what I needed to work on to get better.
Four sessions in, I stopped going. Not because I gave up on guitar. Because I could tell that what I needed wasn't what those lessons were offering.
That person didn't exist for me at the time. So I taught myself.
For years, I played with a pick. I got decent. Strumming through songs, hitting chord changes, keeping basic rhythm. But something always felt off — like I was hitting the guitar from the outside rather than playing it from the inside.
Then I put the pick down and started playing with my fingers.
Everything changed. My feel for the instrument changed. The connection between what I heard in my head and what came out of the strings changed. And — maybe most importantly — my rhythm changed.
Rhythm had always been my weakness. With a pick, I struggled to feel the beat consistently — always chasing it, never quite locked in. When I switched to fingerpicking, I stopped fighting it. The technique forces you to feel the rhythm from the inside out. The beat lives in your hands instead of chasing you.
That was the turning point. Not a lesson. Not a course. A decision to try something different and commit to it completely.
The songs you're a little scared of are the ones that make you better. Comfortable songs keep your fingers busy — they don't grow your skills.
You cannot fix what you cannot see. Nobody watching your hands is the single biggest gap in how most people learn guitar.
Your ear is a muscle. Learning to hear what you want to play — slowly, imperfectly — builds a confidence that no tab-reading can replicate.
Speed is a byproduct of precision. Precision is a byproduct of patience. Slow, quiet practice beats fast, sloppy practice every single time.
Good one-on-one instruction — where someone actually watches your playing and tells you specifically what to work on — typically costs $40–$80 per session, or thousands of dollars for a coaching programme. Most people can't afford that consistently. And most free online content, while genuinely useful, can't give you feedback.
Fingerstyle Guitar Skool is my attempt to close that gap. A growing library of structured song and technique lessons, full tab workbooks with homework, and personal feedback on your actual playing — every time you submit a video.
All of it, for $9 a month.
I'm not a YouTube personality with a production team. I'm a guitarist who spent 16 years figuring this out the hard way — and who genuinely loves helping other people shortcut that journey. Every lesson I teach, every video I respond to, every tab workbook I put together is shaped by what I wish had existed when I was sitting where you are now.