Gfrktyl

I want to learn blues and metal guitar but I have no motivation to self learn and no money to engage a teacher. I don't want to give up guitar but I left my guitar sleeping at one corner and collecting dust in my bedroom.

Am I confusing myself or should I just give up totally ?

The way you ask the question makes me think what you really want is help understanding yourself well enough to make a decision. You may want to spend some time with these questions:

• Have you successfully gained skill using long-term solitary effort before? Performance art, athletics, and handicrafts would count.


• If so, how did it go? What worked for you, and what didn't work?


• If you have "no motivation to self learn," that means you'd have to fix that somehow, by acquiring the meta-knowledge and meta-skills, say, looking up methods online for building up new habits, including mental habits to sustain your enthusiasm. How does that idea make you feel?

Best of luck in any case. I'm self-teaching too, about a month in, and I know it has unique challenges.

One certainty—whether you have a teacher or not—is that you have to put the work in. It doesn't sound like you want to. I'm not saying you should give up, though, unless that's what you really want. But it won't come magically. You have to do the work.

Maybe you just need to find the motivation? Try these two things:

1. 
   Inspire yourself by listening to guitarists that you like. Find a great metal or blues solo and imagine that it's you playing it. There's your motivation to put in the work. If you work hard, that could be you.


2. 
   Decide on a reasonable goal and start breaking it down into smaller and smaller problems until it's something that you can tackle directly. Maybe it's just to play one song along with the recording, maybe it's to play live with some friends. Whatever the case, start mapping out the steps it will take you to get to that goal. Then break each step down in the same way as much as you can until it's something that you can practice today, right now. The exact details of these steps depend on your goal and your experience level, but the general concept is the same.

As far as mapping out your goal, that's something a teacher can be a great help with. But it's also something you can ask here as well. You'll just need to ask more specific questions because "learning metal and blues guitar" is a bit too broad to fit into a single answer.

Don't give up - because it sounds like you already did! You either want to play or you don't. With no self-motivation, there is apparently no reason why you would continue, which is why you didn't.

Even if you had a teacher - for free even - without any fire at all, you (and the teacher) are on a hiding to nothing.

It seems that you actually answered your own question. Leave it, find something that does get you enthusiastic, and pursue that instead. Let someone who would love to play your guitar use it. Your lack of enthusiasm is showing you that it's just not what you genuinely want to do. We can't all be musicians!

Find others who are interested

For all but the few, music-making is a social activity. Being a soloist is tough.

I took up guitar because a school-friend invited me to his house and demonstrated his playing ability.

Each week we learned a new simple piece (this was years ago and we emulated the Shadows) and I had to work ten times as hard as he did but the desire not to look stupid made me do it. Later we formed a band.

How to find like minded people

Where I live there is a local Meetup group. They get together weekly and play some well-known songs - this is called 'jamming'. Join such a group if it exists. In my experience most amateur musicians are friendly and won't expect expertise from you immediately and will be willing to teach bits and pieces (though don't expect an hour-long tutoring session)

If you look up the life-stories of non-classical musicians you will find that most of them are self-taught. Very often they went to local gigs and, if the artist was friendly they might be willing to demonstrate a particular lick if you go to see them backstage. Ask for their autograph and then for a demo. They may refuse but if they say no it's not a personal rejection - they may just be tired.

You are confusing something: You don't want to learn the guitar, you want to be able to play the guitar but you don't want to learn it.

So the ideal thing for you would be a direct skill to mind download like in the Matrix movie. Unfortunately this doesn't exist, so you have to decide if your motivation of wanting the skill is higher than your lazyness of learning it.

As your guitar is collecting dust, it seems you already decided that. But hey, you could still listen to that music! Maybe in 5 years that motivation will come to you. Better than forcing yourself to do something you don't want and getting burnt out of it for life. For example I stopped playing the piano and then started again more than 10 years later and I've been going strong ever since! I told my parents they should have forced me to continue but they told me if they did that maybe I would have stopped a bit later but would have never continued it again.

Maybe you can find someone who is very motivated to learn the guitar but cannot afford one? It would be a great gift.

I want to learn blues and metal guitar but I have no motivation to self learn and no money to engage a teacher.

That does not make a lot of sense. Let me try translating this into something that makes more sense: "I want to end up having learnt blues and metal guitar but my attempts at self-learning have been demotivating. I'd expect a teacher to be better able to organise ongoing incentives but am not able to pay for one. Can you recommend resources for me that will make learning guitar on my own more rewarding than I have found it so far?"

Why do you want to end up having learnt blues and metal guitar? You need to figure out what is in it for you and then try choosing your path in a way that your goal and its way there are tangible for you.