If your New Year's resolution this year was to learn how to play guitar, no matter where you're getting your instruction, your fingers will need to go through a guitar-players' own sort of boot camp: building calluses.

One local musician, Collin Keith, recommends half hour per day, for at least six months, to build the calluses. Being persistent will pay off, he said.

For local songwriter and producer, Artan McManus, who is 15 years old and just released his second EP, "Yellowline Dynamica" on all digital music platforms, it took a little longer.

"Eventually you get used to it. I had pain playing guitar even when I was recording my first original stuff when I was younger," he explained. "It hurt when I played, and now it's just easy. I can play whenever I want. I have formed calluses. Now my fingers don't hurt, so really it's been probably a good two, three years now, but I have been playing for six years this year."

Taping your fingers won't get you where you want to go.

"That sort of wrecks the precision, and the way that it feels," McManus said. If they're going to do something like tapping on guitar, it's sort of hard to use tape, or any form of gloves like I would even try and put mitts on to help with my the pain on my fingers, but that doesn't work, it's just you have to develop the calluses. It should not take six years like it has for me. I've just been playing sort of on and off, not every day instantly practicing. I wish I did, but there was a point when I was playing lots and then other times when I wasn't playing that much and so it doesn't take six years."

McManus shared his advice for those who would want to record their own music. It starts with an app like GarageBand.

"GarageBand is a great way to start. I'd recommend also to keep the vocals quiet, don't leave them loud in the mix, because no one wants to hear that, I've learned, and just start off simple. Make the simplest music you can. And then when you know how to make it more advanced, do that, but start off simple and try your best to make the mix sound good too."

 Read more about Artan's music HERE.