Have you ever spent weeks, months or even years practicing
something on guitar (such as technique, soloing or a specific song) only
to reach a plateau and make little or no progress? Then you probably
feel very disappointed and have occasionally questioned your ability to
ever play guitar how you want.
Before I help you solve this problem for good, you have to understand that you CAN become an incredible guitar player, just like your favorite guitarists. If you aren't achieving
your guitar playing goals, it doesn't mean you have no potential, or that you lack natural musical ability. It just means one or both of these two things:
1. You haven't learned the proper steps to follow while practicing what will give you the ability to play whatever you want (I'll tell you these steps in a moment).
2. No one ever correctly taught you HOW to practice the aforementioned steps. This isn't easy to grasp for most guitarists (in particular, self-taught guitarists) because it requires a detailed understanding of how to effectively practice guitar. It's simple to understand WHAT to practice (since these things are often rooted in common sense), but implementing them correctly is not so simple.
Think of your guitar playing as a struggle between two forces: one side being the practice you do to make your guitar playing feel easier, and the other side being the problems that consume your playing (making it harder than it should be). Whenever one side overcomes the other, your goal is split between the following:
Step One: Act As A Doctor While Practicing Guitar
The fundamental mistake guitarists make while practicing is attempting to solve symptoms (things they believe to be problems) in their playing, instead of focusing on ROOT causes (the real problems). This applies in particular to the majority of self-taught guitarists, who were never shown how to effectively practice guitar. It's easy to misdiagnose a problem and falsely assume you know its cause, only to waste tons of time practicing the wrong things (all while making slow progress at best).
The most effective way to avoid wasting time on symptoms of problems and really take your guitar playing to another level, is to apply the feedback you get from an expert electric guitar teacher who knows how to analyze your technique and tell you precisely what keeps you from reaching your greatest potential. In addition to giving you the solutions to your guitar playing frustrations, learning with an expert teacher will help you be your own guitar teacher and solve your guitar playing issues by yourself. This is easily the greatest benefit of guitar lessons, and is the reason why guitar players who learn with a great teacher quickly become killer players.
This is not unlike going to a doctor with some symptoms of not feeling well or having certain aches in your body. Rather than prescribing medicine for the top level symptom of any issue you have, a great doctor tracks every symptom down to its root causes and treats it, causing you to feel much better (getting rid of all the symptoms at the same time). Of course, doctors aren't born with knowledge of how to solve health problems - this knowledge is gained and learned. The same can be said about your guitar playing: even if you have a difficult time correctly pinpointing the causes of your worst guitar playing problems right now, you surely CAN learn to fix them and (over time) be your own guitar playing doctor.
Step Two: Transform Any Problem Into A Self-Sufficient Guitar Playing Exercise
After you diagnosed the problem that is preventing you from playing what you want on guitar, the next step is to understand how to correctly isolate and fix it. Recognizing a specific problem is NOT sufficient by itself. The next action to take is to put the problem into the original context to make it into a self-sufficient exercise. "Self-sufficient" meaning: you do not have to look for more guitar playing exercises to fix it - the problem itself BECOMES the exercise you must work on.
Step Three: Don't Stop Drilling... Until You Strike Gold!
As soon as you identify the correct issue that must be fixed to move your guitar playing forward and correctly made it into its own exercise you now have to practice the problem until it's taken care of.
The mistake that most guitar players make in this part of the process is not performing enough quality repetitions of the exercise in order to start good guitar playing habits to replace the old one. This mistake shows up in one of 2 versions:
Version One: Some guitar players stop working on the exercise prematurely - they get bored, lose their focus and quit after practicing for only a few minutes... never to come back to the exercise again. So they simply never complete sufficient repetitions of the exercise to improve their guitar playing.
Version Two: Others will move forward through strong discipline and willpower to end up practicing the exercise for many hours at a time. Although they perform many repetitions of the exercise, the quality of each repetition begins to decline as they play the exercise over and over, eventually losing focus.
The right way to create a good habit is by continually practicing guitar in bursts of concentrated effort for several minutes at a time. Instead of practicing the same exact exercise for many hours on end, practice it for several minutes at a time, many times throughout the day, gaining tons of volume (repetitions) over the course of a week.
Version one of the mistake above happens often to guitar players who practice randomly (without any kind of schedule). Their practicing is completely unorganized and messy (directly affecting their guitar playing).
In contrast, version two of the mistake above happens frequently to guitar players who don't know the nuances of correctly training the body and the mind to play guitar. Rather, they try to build their practice schedules using a linear guitar practice method with a spreadsheet or a calculator (huge mistake!).
To steer clear of both mistakes, you must be aware that teaching a human being to play guitar is much different than programming functions into a computer. This is why you have to use a highly effective guitar practice schedule that is created specifically for helping guitar players get the best results out of every second of a practice session.
Now that you know what is required to play anything you want on guitar, begin taking action on the tips given in this article (as well as the resources offered throughout) to make your practice sessions highly effective and your guitar playing less difficult.
If you still have a hard time attaining the results you desire from your practice time, you will achieve your guitar playing goals faster by working directly with me.
Before I help you solve this problem for good, you have to understand that you CAN become an incredible guitar player, just like your favorite guitarists. If you aren't achieving
your guitar playing goals, it doesn't mean you have no potential, or that you lack natural musical ability. It just means one or both of these two things:
1. You haven't learned the proper steps to follow while practicing what will give you the ability to play whatever you want (I'll tell you these steps in a moment).
2. No one ever correctly taught you HOW to practice the aforementioned steps. This isn't easy to grasp for most guitarists (in particular, self-taught guitarists) because it requires a detailed understanding of how to effectively practice guitar. It's simple to understand WHAT to practice (since these things are often rooted in common sense), but implementing them correctly is not so simple.
Think of your guitar playing as a struggle between two forces: one side being the practice you do to make your guitar playing feel easier, and the other side being the problems that consume your playing (making it harder than it should be). Whenever one side overcomes the other, your goal is split between the following:
- To keep practicing in the most effective manner possible, in order to make fast progress (I've explained many approaches to this in my previous guitar articles).
- To move beyond certain challenges that keep you from playing the things you want to play as well as you'd like to play them (this is what I'll show you below).
Step One: Act As A Doctor While Practicing Guitar
The fundamental mistake guitarists make while practicing is attempting to solve symptoms (things they believe to be problems) in their playing, instead of focusing on ROOT causes (the real problems). This applies in particular to the majority of self-taught guitarists, who were never shown how to effectively practice guitar. It's easy to misdiagnose a problem and falsely assume you know its cause, only to waste tons of time practicing the wrong things (all while making slow progress at best).
The most effective way to avoid wasting time on symptoms of problems and really take your guitar playing to another level, is to apply the feedback you get from an expert electric guitar teacher who knows how to analyze your technique and tell you precisely what keeps you from reaching your greatest potential. In addition to giving you the solutions to your guitar playing frustrations, learning with an expert teacher will help you be your own guitar teacher and solve your guitar playing issues by yourself. This is easily the greatest benefit of guitar lessons, and is the reason why guitar players who learn with a great teacher quickly become killer players.
This is not unlike going to a doctor with some symptoms of not feeling well or having certain aches in your body. Rather than prescribing medicine for the top level symptom of any issue you have, a great doctor tracks every symptom down to its root causes and treats it, causing you to feel much better (getting rid of all the symptoms at the same time). Of course, doctors aren't born with knowledge of how to solve health problems - this knowledge is gained and learned. The same can be said about your guitar playing: even if you have a difficult time correctly pinpointing the causes of your worst guitar playing problems right now, you surely CAN learn to fix them and (over time) be your own guitar playing doctor.
Step Two: Transform Any Problem Into A Self-Sufficient Guitar Playing Exercise
After you diagnosed the problem that is preventing you from playing what you want on guitar, the next step is to understand how to correctly isolate and fix it. Recognizing a specific problem is NOT sufficient by itself. The next action to take is to put the problem into the original context to make it into a self-sufficient exercise. "Self-sufficient" meaning: you do not have to look for more guitar playing exercises to fix it - the problem itself BECOMES the exercise you must work on.
Step Three: Don't Stop Drilling... Until You Strike Gold!
As soon as you identify the correct issue that must be fixed to move your guitar playing forward and correctly made it into its own exercise you now have to practice the problem until it's taken care of.
The mistake that most guitar players make in this part of the process is not performing enough quality repetitions of the exercise in order to start good guitar playing habits to replace the old one. This mistake shows up in one of 2 versions:
Version One: Some guitar players stop working on the exercise prematurely - they get bored, lose their focus and quit after practicing for only a few minutes... never to come back to the exercise again. So they simply never complete sufficient repetitions of the exercise to improve their guitar playing.
Version Two: Others will move forward through strong discipline and willpower to end up practicing the exercise for many hours at a time. Although they perform many repetitions of the exercise, the quality of each repetition begins to decline as they play the exercise over and over, eventually losing focus.
The right way to create a good habit is by continually practicing guitar in bursts of concentrated effort for several minutes at a time. Instead of practicing the same exact exercise for many hours on end, practice it for several minutes at a time, many times throughout the day, gaining tons of volume (repetitions) over the course of a week.
Version one of the mistake above happens often to guitar players who practice randomly (without any kind of schedule). Their practicing is completely unorganized and messy (directly affecting their guitar playing).
In contrast, version two of the mistake above happens frequently to guitar players who don't know the nuances of correctly training the body and the mind to play guitar. Rather, they try to build their practice schedules using a linear guitar practice method with a spreadsheet or a calculator (huge mistake!).
To steer clear of both mistakes, you must be aware that teaching a human being to play guitar is much different than programming functions into a computer. This is why you have to use a highly effective guitar practice schedule that is created specifically for helping guitar players get the best results out of every second of a practice session.
Now that you know what is required to play anything you want on guitar, begin taking action on the tips given in this article (as well as the resources offered throughout) to make your practice sessions highly effective and your guitar playing less difficult.
If you still have a hard time attaining the results you desire from your practice time, you will achieve your guitar playing goals faster by working directly with me.
Tom Hess is a professional recording artist, composer, and expert
guitar instructor. He teaches and trains guitarists how to become great
musicians in his online rock guitar lessons. Visit tomhess.net to receive additional free guitar playing resources and to read more guitar articles.
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