Do I need to start with classical guitar, if electric guitar is what I want to learn?

There is a wide spread public opinion that mostly people who don't play any guitar at all hold, which goes like this:
"If you want to learn guitar you have to start with classical guitar
to get a good background of theoretical knowledge and proper technique before you switch to electric guitar."

These people are mostly ignorant and simply reproduce what they have heard somewhere.

You must have heard it probably thousands of times, especially me as a guitar teacher. This article is written to enlighten you about whether this is true or not and delivers my theory on WHY this belief rose in the heads of the community.

Let us go back a few dozen years, to where the electric guitar became more and more popular. Around the 1930s guitar players, who were already adults, started to experiment with ways to amplify a guitar louder, so that they could be heard against trumpets in jazz for example. So that instrument only was accessible for adult players.

Children who wanted to learn the guitar were forced to play the classical guitar, because simply the classical guitar already existed way earlier in a child friendly size. So whenever a child saw one of their idols on stage jamming on the electric guitar and wanted to become like them, it was told to start with the classical guitar like everybody else, since guitars for kids already existed. That of course is really frustrating to hear for a little child, which is why the majority of children who carry the wish to play electric guitar are discouraged right away. From the tiny fraction that decides to start learning to play anyway, only a small percentage already inherently possesses the willpower to torture themselves through boring guitar lessons.

Adults who wanted to learn to play the guitar either were told they were too old already anyway (which is another misconception about which you can read here: Is it too late to play guitar?), or they were told the same things as the kids: "Start with classical guitar like everybody else.", or - since back in the 1950s-70s it was standard to learn an instrument - "Stick with piano/saxophone/flute/whatever instrument you play."

It is not exactly known to me, when guitar manufacturers started to build smaller acoustic guitars. What I can say for sure is, that it was many years before somebody built an electric guitar for children. The reason being, that the misconception, about starting to learn guitar was so widely spread, that even guitar manufactures did not question that for a long time. It took the market until the 21st century to finally have it dawning on them, that children, too, can start directly on the electric guitar, so they started building smaller electric guitars and tried to sell them.

Of course, the common opinion was so strong already then, that this market took off slowly. There are only a few teachers (me among them) who teach electric guitar to kids below the age of 10, who could see past the misconceptions and realise, that it is only a matter of preference, which instrument you play.

You can think of acoustic/classical guitar and electric guitar as two completely different instruments with a lot of similarities and it simply depends on your taste, which of the two you want to pick up.

The techniques are different, but that does not mean, that your child cannot learn them. The author successfully teaches electric guitar techniques to young children between ages 6 and 10. Often they really manage to surprise you, with what they are capable to do already, if they are provided with the right instrument to begin with.

So the answer is most definitely NO, you do NOT have to play classical guitar first, also not as an adult beginner.There are a few dealers out there, who sell small electric guitar for kids. One of them is Musikhaus Louis in Remscheid, Germany.

If you find an expert guitar teacher, who knows what he is doing and who knows how to motivate your child properly and who is a lot of fun to take lessons from, your child might soon become your cities next (or FIRST) little guitar hero.

About the author: Miika Korte is a professional musician and guitar instructor from Finland and teaches Kitaratunnit in Tampere.
He is a specialist in teaching electrical guitar to any age group starting at 6 years and delivers lots of success and fun to his students.