Should You Quit Playing Guitar?

Are you questioning your musical life? Do you feel there’s no way you’ll ever shred faster, play cleaner, or write a good song?

Fear not, guitar friend. We all feel that way sometimes.

The truth is, self-doubt is completely normal, especially for musicians, and I believe it’s actually necessary to project us to the place we’re meant to arrive. If times never got tough, we’d never know what it felt like when things were going well. In fact, you should consider your feelings of uncertainty a sign that you’re destined to make great music. After all, if you didn’t really care about playing guitar, you wouldn’t hit these emotional walls of despair from time to time.

If self-doubt and lack of confidence weren’t factors, Kurt Cobain never would’ve inspired the grunge movement, Robert Johnson wouldn’t have had a reason to feel the blues, and countless other musicians would only have joy and happiness influencing their music, which aren’t always the right ingredients for creativity.

So, should you just quit playing guitar? The answer is simple: NO.

Tyler Larson is the founder of the guitar-centric brand Music is Win. His insightful, uncomplicated guitar lessons and gear demonstrations along with entertaining, satirical content about life as a musician receive tens of millions of video views per month across social media. Tyler is also the creator of the extremely popular online guitar learning platform, Guitar Super System. A graduate of Berklee College of Music, Tyler has been teaching guitar for over a decade and operates a production studio in Nashville, TN.