10 useful tips to play the guitar better

Here are some tips to play the guitar better. Because being a competent guitarist doesn’t have to be difficult if you’re constant, it’s not difficult to be a bad guitarist either if you take out the guitar once a year on Christmas day for your cousin to play and then you try it. The most important thing: is that you enjoy the process as this way you will learn more effectively and faster. Now let’s see what 10 things you can do.

Be Constant

Practice the guitar every day if possible, even if it’s just a few minutes a day. The more times you repeat an activity, the more you will internalize it and achieve the desired objectives. Muhammad Ali did not like to train but he knew that to be the best you had to do it. I’m not telling you to pretend to be the best because the guitar is a hobby. But any sporting, artistic, or other activity requires sacrifice and dedication.

Reward Yourself

Have you played the guitar for an hour, 30 minutes, 15, 10? Give yourself a gift, be it a chocolate bar, half an hour of television, and ice cream, something that you really like, and if you don’t meet your goals, there is no gift. I’m not saying it works for everyone, but keep that in mind.

Do Not Be Impatient

Don’t get obsessed with wanting to learn to play the guitar fast or thinking about how long it takes to be a good guitarist. This is a process and it takes time. Enjoy the trip, what you are doing has to be fun, not an obligation.

Divide

If you eat a whole cake you may end up with indigestion, but if you eat a piece or two nothing will happen to you. With what you learn you have to do the same to improve your skills in the long run. Divide a sheet music/tablature into small parts and learn what you have to learn but well. When you have achieved it, save a piece for the next day.

Play Very Slowly

When we learn something quickly and repeatedly and obsessively we get stuck and internalize and process mistakes, when what we should do is play the right thing without getting stuck. Therefore, slow down and play slowly, sometimes it’s more boring, but it’s much more effective. You will learn many more songs in less time and the technique will be refined.

Sign Up For Guitar Classes

There are students for whom it is better to have more personalized attention because if they do not, they feel that they are not progressing. It’s like someone who does gymnastics at home and gets tired after two days, but joins the gym and goes every week religiously because he’s paying. You know yourself better than anyone, if you see that distance classes are not your thing or that being self-taught you are not going to learn, look for private classes with a teacher in your city.

Play With Other People

When you play with other people as well as when you play with a teacher to guide you, there is every chance that you will make a lot of progress. This is also better if the musicians you surround yourself with know more than you. Since they will be able to correct your mistakes and from the first day, you will realize that playing alone is not the same as playing with other people because you learn to coordinate yourself, to better convey your musical ideas and to get the rhythm right. Therefore, go to an ad page and look for someone to play with who is at your level. You will notice better results.

Learn Songs

Learning songs has many advantages. I often get messages from people who are starting to play guitar or who have only been playing guitar for a short time and they tell me that they don’t want to play anyone’s songs, that they want to be original. They ask me about scales to compose songs and about chord progressions, techniques… And what I usually answer is that in order to compose your songs you need to have played songs by other artists.

Keith Richards himself in the documentary Under the Influencealready said it while sitting at the piano: When he learned to play songs by his favorite artists on the piano, he used to make mistakes, but according to him, and I reaffirm his words, every mistake is a door that opens up to an idea for some new song. Another good advantage is the satisfaction it gives you when you already know how to play it.

Take Advantage Of Technology

Search for videos on youtube, search for free material, search for courses that teach what you want to learn, record yourself on video and see your mistakes, there are many tools at your fingertips. Make the most of them.

Listen To All Kinds Of Music

Do not be prejudiced with the music you listen to, all songs have something to contribute. Even a commercial song that does not stop playing on the radio. For example, it helps me to understand the world around me, for example why Enrique Iglesias’ Bailando song set a trend with its chord progression in recent years or why a sexist and retrograde Reggaeton song has such lyrics and why do people listen to it?

You can listen to music in different ways: to enjoy the music that you like the most; to learn when you hear a line or a guitar solo that you like how it sounds and you want to have it in your fingers; or to criticize, as in the case above, and find out what you don’t like.

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