Does this sound like you? You decide to learn guitar and figure it doesn’t look too hard because I see so many people playing on the Internet or American Idol and I guess I can figure it out. We tend to think It always looks easy when someone else is playing.
Very, very few can learn this way. It actually can really hurt your playing by developing a lot of tension that you may not be aware of. You may learn a little but then you can’t understand why you can’t improve. It’s the tension that was developed early on and it’s like putting the brakes on.
Videos from the internet or store bought (in the beginning) are not usually a good source because they are not interactive and normally don’t give you an effective practice program or how to solve your playing issues and you don’t really know in what order you should learn things.
Next you think, maybe I should get a guitar teacher? I definitely think you should have a teacher to train you, coach you and inspire you. Check some guitar teachers out. Do they have a website that has testimonials, or do they write blogs that are helpful.
Do they do an introductory lesson that won’t cost you anything to see how they teach? I am able to quickly assess when a new student comes in a make a 90 day plan of where they can go with some consistent practicing. I develop and write a strategic practice routine for my students to make immediate improvement and video it for them at a lesson.
I don’t leave anything to chance. A student sits with me for 60 minutes but has 6 days that they have to practice on their own out of my sight. Most students have no knowledge of what they need to know. A great guitar instructor will have the big picture in mind when guiding their student. One of my best skills as a guitar teacher is being a guitar problem solver.
Finding out what is preventing a student from moving forward and isolating the issue and giving ways to fix the issue. Sometimes we see in magazine of how one of our favorite player s practices a certain way and we try it just falls flat.
Or we try to do everything at once, take lessons, watch You Tube, learn tab from magazines or books, free online lessons which can be distracting us from really getting where we really want to be. You make a bit of progress here and there but it’s not getting you to sound like you want to sound. We can dilute and thin down our progress this way.
I’ve had many students shave years off the learning curve by working with me and practicing with a detailed, strategic game plan of how to really plan. It’s a great feeling to pick up your instrument and play something with no mistakes, great timing and it sounds like music not a struggle.
Keep these concepts in the forefront of your mind in how you approach improving your guitar skills. It’s usually one of these issues that I’ve addressed in this article that prevents the forward motion. When I learned these ideas and avoided them creeping into my plan then I made great progress.
Keep playing and have fun!
Sid
Sid