Guitar Instructional DVD: Begin Your Career Today
Knowing the fact that the approach you use to learn the guitar is the key-determining factor in your success or failure to actually learn, these three conclusions follow:
Its not uncommon to see the player’s advice be summed up in a grand total of three words: Practice! Practice!! Practice!!! Well of course we all know that practicing is the main ingredient. But rarely are we told much more than that. In my long quest to become an excellent player and to help my students do the same I carefully took note of what worked and what didn’t. What parts conventional wisdom is accurate and what parts are (at least in my opinion) are not. I believe the twenty concepts that have proven to bring great results to those who use them are:
Remember that its ok to daydream and fantasize about where you are planning to go, but it can’t stop there. Don’t wish without planning! Don’t dream without doing! And always, always, have a strategy.
You may need to revise certain aspects of your strategy as time goes on and that’s ok, but don’t try to go forward without one if you want the maximum results in the shortest amount of time. In my early days learning to play guitar, I wasted a lot of time aimlessly desiring to get better without having a clue as to how to plan for it. Sure I practiced a lot, but without direction and without an efficient path to follow. Most of my substantial progress as a musician came only after I developed a strategy and worked with it.
For instance, the process may go like this: I notice I have trouble with a fast scale passage in a piece I am playing. I notice a particular note starts disappearing when I reach a certain speed. The note is being missed.
But for many people, it is a very disconcerting experience. I have gotten letters from people who have read some things I have written, and become afraid to practice! They are so aware of, and on their guard against, excess muscle tension, and the devastating effects for the developing player, they are afraid to touch a string!
You can undo bad habits you have learned along the way. You can begin the process of undoing bad habits right away, when you begin to acquire the correct understandings, and use the approaches based on them.
For instance, practice chord changes. Perhaps switching from an F barre chord to a D open is driving you crazy. Spend ten minutes going over and over the change.