I used Fender Play for 8 weeks to learn the guitar from scratch – here’s how I got on

As the wife of a professional guitar writer and an avid gig-goer myself, my life has always revolved around guitars, bands, and live music. To me, music is everything. It’s what I use to relax and escape, and I count everything from ‘80s goth darlings The Cure to grunge titans Nirvana, as well as a few heavier acts such as Alexisonfire and Deftones, as my all-time favorites. 

As you can imagine, our house is littered with instruments and musical equipment – we currently have around 30 guitars scattered around in various rooms. For years, I’ve longed to be able to pick one up and play it, although I'm sure my husband would be very nervous to let me hold his beloved ES-335 – you never know, maybe by the end of this process I’ll be allowed to have a go on it!  

So, with that in mind, imagine my excitement when I got the opportunity to finally learn the guitar via the online guitar lesson platform, Fender Play. For the purpose of this article, I was granted access to a full Fender Play subscription and was sent a Fender CC-60S Concert beginner acoustic guitar. I opted for this particular model as I am only 5' 1" and find large-bodied acoustics to be too cumbersome to hold. Thankfully, I didn’t have any bother with this guitar and found it to be very comfortable and easy to play. 

While I’ve certainly held a guitar before, I am starting my guitar journey as a complete novice, not knowing any chords, techniques, or even how to tune the damn thing. Over the last 8 weeks, I’ve been charting my progress in the form of a weekly diary – writing down my thoughts and experiences of using the Fender Play app on my phone.  

As someone with a very demanding job and a busy life in general, I can't commit to sitting down with my guitar every day – as much as I'd like to. Instead, I will make time once a week to practice along with the app and work through the courses. Of course, I'll try my best to practice whenever I have a spare few minutes. 

Annie Robertson

I’m a music lover and avid gig-goer based in North-East Scotland. If I’m not listening to my favorite artists, I’m watching a music documentary or planning which gigs I want to get tickets for next! That is when I’m not listening to my husband testing out new guitars at home as part of his role as a writer for Guitar World, or going to watch him play locally with his band. I’m a lover of all things grunge and have recently embarked on my own guitar-learning journey. I also enjoy going to the gym and running when I’m not chilling out at home with my beloved greyhound, Zeus.

Week 1 – getting to know the app 

For my first session, I just wanted to get a feel for the app and my new guitar. The first step was to unbox my shiny new instrument – something I was very excited about. Yes, we already have too many guitars in our home, but this one is mine! I must say, I love this guitar's aesthetic. The sunburst finish looks great and I certainly don't think it looks – or feels – like an entry-level guitar. 

Of course, next I needed to get the Fender Play app onto my device of choice. After downloading the app, my first impressions were good. The app is very user-friendly and easy to set up with the prompts given. I had to answer some simple questions about my ability and my reasons for wanting to learn, then I was ready to go. 

The app looks sleek and is easy to navigate. Aside from the Home screen, there are three main sections: My Path, Songs and Skills. I’ve chosen to start with the My Path section, as I am a complete beginner, and I feel that I need the direction of the instructor-led courses before I can progress to focusing on specific songs or skills. 

This isn’t essential, however, as I'm free to access any of the menus from the start, giving me the leeway to choose how I would like to start my own learning journey.

I browsed through the other menus to familiarize myself with the app and its contents before starting the courses, and I’m now feeling ready to take on the first course.

Week 2 – choosing my path 

Okay, this is where the hard work begins. This week I am starting the first course in My Path. There are several different paths to choose from, based on genre, for each of the instruments covered by the app (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass and ukulele). I am choosing to start with the Essentials path for acoustic guitar, as I am a complete beginner and I want to make sure I can cover the essential skills before focussing on specific styles or genres.

The Essentials path has eight courses, starting with a tutorial that shows how to play your first notes and how to tune your guitar. This is useful for me as I have never tuned a guitar before and wouldn’t know how to approach this. I like that the app includes guidance on such simple skills that are often overlooked, as this makes it feel accessible to a rookie like me. This first course starts with explaining how to hold your acoustic correctly and how to pick a string on an acoustic. 

These basic skills might seem obvious to a seasoned guitar player, but for someone who is starting from scratch, it is good to have instruction and reassurance that you are playing correctly. The instructor explains the aim of the lesson clearly, demonstrating how to pick the strings before inviting you to do it alongside them.

I find this style of instruction beneficial as someone who learns visually. It's good to be able to watch the instructor while attempting to pick myself. Each video has a practice mode version, which you can follow after the instructor video and repeat until you feel confident with the skill you are learning.

I am also following the lesson on how to tune your guitar this week. Although I am finding this tutorial useful, the tuning functionality is not built into the app itself. This isn't a big deal as I was able to download the Fender Tune app to my phone myself and use it to tune. However, I feel that it would have been nice to have the tuner integrated into the Play app and ready to go. Despite this, my guitar is now tuned for the next lesson and I now know how to hold my instrument and pick the strings – I'll be a rock star in no time!

Week 3 – playing my first riff

It’s now time for me to tackle the next course in the Essentials path, 'play your first riff.’ Again, this course starts with the basics, showing me how to fret notes. I’m following the lesson and practice videos and continuing to practice throughout the week until I am confident that I have nailed this skill. The instructor video gives a detailed overview of how to fret, including tips on finger placement, which I find useful.

Now that I am more confident in my fretting ability, I am progressing to the next video in the course, which shows how to play a simplified riff from Purple Haze on your acoustic. 

I find it exciting that I am being shown how to play such an iconic riff while I’m still at an early stage of the process. This keeps the path method of learning interesting and helps me avoid any temptation to skip to the Songs menu. The video starts with a cool intro of the instructor playing the riff along with the song, which sets the scene nicely before starting the lesson.

Again, the instructor talks through how to play the riff first. A diagram of the frets appears at this point in the video, highlighting the notes to play. Again, I find this really helpful as a visual learner. 

The song is played at a slower pace on the video, which is perfect for playing along as I learn the riff. I enjoyed this lesson as it allowed me to continue to practice the fretting and picking techniques I had learned in the previous week while also putting them to use to learn a riff. The lesson itself is short (just under 3 minutes), and after playing along with the lesson and then playing through the practice mode a couple of times, I was able to play the riff with confidence. 

This definitely gave me a sense of achievement and progression, which I feel is crucial to keep me engaged and motivated – I'm looking forward to next week! 

Week 4 – learning to read tab 

The app notified me to return and complete my next lesson if I wanted to maintain my learning streak. Although I was planning to return today, I appreciated the reminder to stay on track. 

This week, I’m doing the next course in the path, which explains how to read guitar tablature. This starts with a lesson on how to read tab, followed by a lesson on strumming in time, and then ends with showing the user how to play the Stones' classic (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction. I was keen to work through the first two lessons so I could progress to learning the song.

The tab reading lesson starts with an explanation of the strings and their corresponding notes and how numbering on each string relates to the fret that the note should be played on. This seems straightforward, but I decided to follow the practice mode a few times to ensure I had fully grasped the concept and was able to keep time while doing so before progressing to the next lesson. It's worth noting that, the playback speed on the practice mode lesson can be changed, allowing me to go a little slower if needed.

Next is the ‘strum in time’ lesson, which introduces whole, half, and quarter notes. Following this lesson has given me awareness and understanding of the importance of timing when strumming, allowing me to build some rhythm into my playing.

I really enjoyed the final lesson on Satisfaction, as I felt it brought everything I had learned in the previous lessons together. At first, this seemed a little daunting as it was more challenging than the previous lessons, but I felt reassured by the instructor's guidance and her calling out the fret numbers as I played along with her. 

I also like that the videos give you the benefits of learning from an instructor but also the independence to pause or repeat the lesson as you please if you need to recap.

This riff did feel a little trickier than the previous Purple Haze riff, and I struggled a little with being able to stretch my fingers between frets. I decided to spend time in the practice mode, playing the riff over and over until it felt more comfortable, and I made use of the reduced playback speed to allow me to nail the notes down before picking up to full speed. 

I have continued to do this exercise a few times over the week, and I now feel like I have mastered being able to play the notes accurately while also keeping time. This feels like a win, and I’m really happy with my progress so far!

Week 5 – playing chords

The next course in the path focuses on playing chords and then using them in a song. I’m feeling a bit apprehensive as I do find chords quite intimidating but based on my experiences with the app so far, I feel optimistic that it will help me to learn this new skill.

The course starts with a lesson on one-finger chords, which is good to ease me into this uncharted territory in my guitar journey. With the clear instructions given in the video, I soon find myself strumming the two chords along with the instructor. 

By this stage of my learning, I am feeling more familiar and confident with reading the tab along with the video, and playing the notes on the frets and strumming the strings is all starting to feel much more natural. Just as I thought the strumming of select strings (only three in this case) might take a little time to get used to, the instructor went on to explain how this should get easier with practice, so once again I went over to the practice mode after the lesson.

The next lesson on reading a chord diagram was also useful in training me to ensure that I strum only the correct strings. After this short lesson and associated practice, I went on to the final video in this course, which shows you how to use chords to play Barry White’s Cannot Get Enough of Your Love Babe. As with the previous courses, it was nice to end by playing part of a song to bring all of my new skills together - you could say I cannot get enough of this guitar thing! 

Week 6 – time to tackle Green Day

This week I am continuing with the next two courses, which are also focussed on chords, starting with mastering the D chord before moving on to learn some minor chords. This feels like a step up from last week’s single course, but I certainly feel ready for the challenge.

My first thought is that these chords are more complex than those I learned previously, since they require the use of two or three fingers on different frets. Again, I found this challenging due to the need to stretch my hand across the frets. 

Fortunately, the lesson videos use different angles to show the placement of the fingers on the fret, for example, from above, which helped me to visualize the placement from the player’s perspective. 

This course also features an ‘Ear Training’ lesson to teach the player the difference between Major and Minor chords and test their ability to recognize different chords and pitches. I guess that this would be an important skill for more advanced players, and I like that the app is introducing this idea now, although I am at an early stage of learning.

To end my learning for this week I took the lesson on playing Green Day’s Good Riddance (Time of Your Life). This song uses all the chords I had learned in the previous lessons, with the added complexity of switching between multiple chords in the same song. This took some additional practice after the lesson so I could build the muscle memory to change between the chord shapes quickly enough and to remember the correct strings to strum for each chord, in addition to the notes to play on the frets. 

I definitely found this demanding as it was the most complex thing I had attempted to play so far, bringing together all of the skills I had learned to date into one song. I will need to continue my practice for this into next week before I am confident enough to play it through, but I feel that I have made a lot of progress and really stepped up my learning this week.

Week 7 – more practice needed

This week I want to continue practicing playing ‘Good Riddance’. I am going to re-watch the instructor-led video to refresh my memory on what I learned last week, before moving to practice mode.

I spent an hour in practice mode, starting on 75% speed to allow me time to make those tricky chord transitions. After a few repeats at reduced speed, I decided to attempt playing along with the full-speed practice, but I’m not quite there yet. I feel a little frustrated that I’m not yet able to play through at full speed but looking back on the progress I have made in the last seven weeks, I am proud of how far I have come. 

After some reflection and a much-needed break, I re-visited this task later in the week and gave it another go. I decided to watch the lesson video again before returning to practice mode. After a few more attempts, I finally managed to play through the song at full speed. My transitions and strumming weren’t perfect yet, but Rome wasn’t built in a day! I will continue to practice this song in the coming weeks, with the aim of perfecting my newly learned techniques.

Week 8 and beyond – looking to the future 

This week I am attempting the final course of the path, which is called ‘You’re a Player Now’. This made me smile as someone who never thought it would be possible to play music myself. Although I am still very much a beginner, when reflecting on the past eight weeks, I have accomplished fundamental skills that I can build on, such as reading tab, playing chords, strumming and fretting. I really appreciated the flexibility.

I tested myself with the final exam at the end of the path courses, before eagerly exploring to see what else the app has to offer. There is so much more content to access as you progress in your guitar journey, with alternative paths to follow, as well as the skills videos that allow you to really focus on fine-tuning your playing techniques. But more exciting is the Songs library, which allows the player to put their new skills to the test and master songs by their favorite artists. The library is easy to filter by your chosen genre and playing ability. 

To my surprise, when filtering to 'easy' and 'rock’, I had lots of exciting options to choose from, most notably Black by one of my favorite bands, Pearl Jam. I was also happy to see that several songs by Nirvana were in this category and within my current capabilities to attempt.

I’m glad that I have taken the opportunity to learn with Fender Play. The app is accessible to all levels and has allowed me to learn independently at my own pace, with the flexibility to switch between paths, skills or songs as I please. This gives a sense of freedom and keeps things interesting. 

I loved how the lesson videos were short and engaging, making them perfect to do in the evening after work when I might only have a short amount of time to play. Following the series of videos allowed me to take a structured approach to learning, even when I was busy and short on time. I really feel the app helps to make playing music accessible to anyone and proves that you don't need to spend hours a day to learn a new skill. 

I should also mention that I really appreciated the diversity of the instructors across the videos, particularly that they featured other women, as it felt more relatable for me.

So, if you are looking to learn the guitar for the first time, I'd highly recommend downloading Fender Play and giving it a go. I am so proud of my progress and I can’t wait to continue my journey and explore all of the great features Fender Play has to offer. Also, my husband better watch out... I'm coming for his job! 

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