Why I Don’t Start With Chords, and What I Start With Instead
A lot of guitar teaching begins the same way. Learn four chords, get strumming, make some noise, and you are a guitarist. I get why this approach exists. It gets people playing fast, it feels musical right away, and it is easy to measure. But over the years, I have become skeptical of this chord-first mentality, not because chords are bad, but because of what they silently skip over.
When you jump straight to chords, you bypass something essential. You miss the experience of melody unfolding under your fingers. You miss rhythm developing from inside your body instead of being painted on top of shapes. You miss dyads, those tiny two-note relationships that teach your ear how harmony begins, and triads, where chords are first born in miniature. You also miss the slow, necessary development of finger strength, independence, and synchronization between both hands.
The guitar is not only a rhythmic instrument for strumming. It is just as much a melodic instrument for singing lines and feeling harmony from the inside out. If your first relationship with the guitar is only big chord shapes, it is easy to start thinking of the instrument as a strum box instead of a living, breathing voice.
My approach is different. I like to build from the ground up, brick by brick, or really note by note. One string at a time, feeling how each note responds, how your fingers move, how timing settles into your body. You begin to understand the instrument at a structural level before you decorate it with chords. You are not memorizing shapes, you are growing into the guitar.
In this sense, chords are a destination, not a starting point. When you arrive at them after developing strength, timing, and melodic awareness, they are no longer random grips on the neck. They are meaningful harmonies that you already recognize and feel.
For me, this makes the journey deeper, more revealing, and ultimately more empowering. You are not just copying what other guitarists do. You are learning how the instrument actually works.
If you want to experience this approach from the beginning, I built a free beginner course around exactly this idea. It starts in the open position, moves slowly, and helps you understand the guitar from the inside out. You can find it here and start for free whenever you are ready to step into it.