Pinelands Music Academy offers private one-on-one guitar lessons on site at our location in Medford Lakes, NJ
What’s a good age to start?
We usually recommend starting around age 10 to ensure a child has developed to meet the physical demands of the instrument, but with dedication a student as young as 7 could start picking up the guitar. We highly recommend starting out on an electric guitar rather than an acoustic, as they are far easier on the hands of a new beginner. For students under the age of 11, we’d recommend starting with a 3/4 size electric guitar and moving up to a full size electric guitar when they’re over 5 feet tall.
Where do I find a guitar?
First and foremost, we highly recommend working with your teacher to help you pick something out that will be a good fit within your budget. We know there’s so many options and nuances and we’re happy to help! We also highly recommend buying a used guitar locally on Facebook Marketplace for the best deal, especially for beginner guitars as almost every family has a beginner or 3/4 size guitar gathering dust that they want to get rid of!
If you’d much rather go to a store or buy a new guitar online, popular retailer Guitar Center is a great place to shop in person or online retailers like Sweetwater or Musicians Friend are great places to look for a new guitar online as well.
What guitars would you recommend?
For children 7-11, depending on how much they’ve grown, a 3/4 size electric guitar such as an Ibanez Mikro or a Squier Mini Strat are great choices!
For children age 12 through adults, we highly recommend standard Fender Stratocasters, Fender Telecasters, and Ibanez RG Series guitars. These are not cheap, but these are time tested quality instruments to play for decades for the price of a video game system. Be mindful that a good guitar is an asset that will last and potentially retain its value indefinitely.
If you are truly on a tight budget, there are Chinese made equivalents of these guitars such as the Squier Telecaster or the Squier Stratocaster that can be good guitars, but have notoriously had issues with quality control and longevity. Given the quality control issues of those guitars, we further recommend you buy used if you go this route, as a brand new guitar could be a bit of a waste if you have to get it fixed the first month you buy it. Whatever you do, please for the sake of your wallet, DO NOT BUY GUITARS THAT COME IN A COMBO PACKAGE WITH AN AMP IN A BOX! If you’re lucky enough for the guitar to be pretty good, we guarantee you the amp and accessories are not worth it.
For older children and adult students who are particularly interested in playing acoustic guitar, we recommend Fender acoustic electric guitars and carry some in store.
We do NOT recommend playing an acoustic guitar for students under age 12, but if your young child is adamant they want to pursue acoustic playing, we recommend starting with a 3/4 size nylon string classical acoustic such as the Yamaha CGS103AII, as these are much more playable and easier on the fingers.
What should I expect?
Guitar is hard, especially for kids, and there is a bit of a hump to get over at first! Once they get their first few chords down and are able to play basic bits of some songs, it gets a lot more fun. It is critical to keep expectations low for the sounds coming out of the instrument at first and focus effort on making sure they keep the guitar in their hands and practice consistently for the first few months to get over that hump. Most students are able to play simple songs by the end of their first year and expand from there. Generally, the younger the student, the slower the progress at first, but this is variable based on practice, effort, and willingness to improve.