I’m teaching myself guitar now, and I’m about a month in. This stuff still boggles the mind.
I can barely make a note. I practice an hour today, and I am musically inclined (Piano, autoharp, some big band experience and i can read sheet music and hear out music pretty well).
My fingers just can’t seem to hit the strings cleanly. A practiced guitarist just makes it look SO easy.
Start with plastic strings.
The fact that Django’s left hand was deformed because of a fire when he was a young boy, with one finger Frozen in position makes his playing all the more unbelievable.
The good news is, in 20 years Django Reinhard will *still* seem humanly impossible to duplicate.
You: even breathing, sit up straight, metronome, one quarter note scale and one scale only for 5 unrelenting minutes, timed on a real clock. Visualize an engine and how the pistons arrive at their ignition points just at the right time(s). It will be painful to sustain that for 5 actual minutes. If you do, it will yield powerful rewards.
Note that Django has a couple of fingers that don’t work.