Learn Guitar Online – Which One of These 3 Learning Guitar Mistakes Are You Making?
Jan 26th, 2009 by guitarnews
Guitar playing should be a lot of fun. I’ve just completed a Google search for “How To Play Guitar” and received 16,300,000 results, wow – with this sort of help learning the guitar should be a breeze for everyone. So why do we have more confused, frustrated and aggravated guitar players than at any other time in the history of the instrument?
We can’t say we don’t have enough information … the world is saturated with it and we can access this information 24/7/365, so that can’t be the problem.
The problem can’t be lack of quality instruments, recording equipment, signal processors or software every music store online and offline are packed to the rafters with stuff …
It’s because guitar players constantly make one (or more) of three common learning guitar mistakes. Here they are … see if any of these scenarios are familiar to you.
Learning Guitar Mistake #1: Constantly buying new information – and getting more and more confused!
The Problem: the golden rule with information is QUALITY not quantity… if you got it for free, you probably paid too much for it!
Who cares if you can download 1,700 “How To Play Guitar” videos for free, if they are all little disjointed snippets of random information, you would be better off without them!
The Solution: structure and order
Without structure and order you have chaos …
The only way we make progress in any field of endeavor is to learn in an organized manner. We learn fact “A” then move on to fact “B”. Fact “B” sits on the shoulders of “A”.
Moving to “B” without understanding “A” is a recipe for disaster. Only when you have absorbed and applied the information do you “own” it.
One of the major issues with learning the guitar in the 21st century is that there are so many self appointed “experts” ready to share their information.
Recently I came across a well known “learn guitar” website where the guitar instructor was giving a demonstration of the 12 bar blues, the only problem … he played an 11 bar blues, now if you were a beginner how would you know?
Remember, you can’t learn skills from someone who does not have them … you would be well advised to do your research on the source of the information before you waste your time and money on random, unstructured, messy stuff.
Learning Guitar Mistake #2: Practicing endlessly – and can’t remember what you have learnt!
The Problem: information overload – what’s the point of learning something if you can’t remember it?
You could have saved yourself a lot of bother by not learning it in the first place, the result would have been the same.
The Solution: learn how to practice in a rewarding, motivating way. Ask yourself questions such as …
(a) What style of guitar playing do I want to play? rock, blues, country, jazz, folk, bluegrass etc
(b) Do I want to play electric or acoustic guitar?
(c) Do I want to learn how to read standard music notation? (recommended)
(d) If you are learning new information keep your practice sessions short 3 – 5 minutes.
(e) Correctly diagnose your practice problems are they physical issues (motor skills) or long term memory problems (data memory).
(f) Learn to slow everything down to a tempo where you cannot possibly make a mistake then gradually bring the tempo up to performance speed.
(g) Set yourself musical goal(s), write them down and review them often.
(h) Research a guitar course that is relevant to your particular style and interest and make a daily practice commitment to improve your guitar playing.
Learning Guitar Mistake #3: Relentlessly Investing in guitars and sound equipment – looking for the Holly Grail!
The Problem: there isn’t any music in a guitar/amp/effects unit etc
The Solution: learn musical skills and apply them to your instrument.
Once you understand that no matter how much money you invest in musical equipment it can never replace musical skills.
It’s the old story “junk in …junk out!”
A hack guitar playing with an expensive top-of-the-line Gibson guitar is still a hack guitar player.
For many would-be players hours spent buying musical stuff is a great diversion from the real job of serious guitar practice.
Of course, you should play a good quality instrument (notice I did not say expensive), once you have your quality instrument it’s time to roll up your sleeves and get into the practice.
Musical instrument companies spend untold fortunes marketing products in a way that makes ‘newbie’ players feel like they cannot possibly live (or progress) without the latest guitar gadget or gimmick.
Important: Music is something we all have inside … we just have to work on getting the music out. You don’t have to go out and buy stuff, music is not something external, it’s exists internally in every human being.
A guitar is just a tool for musical expression, it is to the musician what a computer is to a writer, a tool for expression.
Spend your time improving your musical skills and applying the language of music to the guitar and you will reap rich rewards of musical expression and enjoy the real fun of playing guitar.
Mike Hayes develops systems and products to help you succeed in your guitar playing. Find out more about how to learn guitar fast with his popular free ecourse, available at: => http://www.guitarcoaching.com
