Common Guitar Practice Pitfalls
This article is going to target your practicing habits. By the end of this article your practicing should be brought to a whole new level and you will see the massive difference.
Practice Pitfall One: Practicing guitar while watching Television.
Many people try to practice guitar while watching television to help them crank out more hours of practice. The mistake here is believing that simply holding the guitar and putting in more hours will make you a better player. It’s not the number of hours you put in, but the number of quality hours you put in.
I know that many people get intimidated by long hours of practice and the sheer idea of that concept wears them out. So here’s a tip if this is you. Go through cycles of focused practiced and relaxation time. 10 minutes of focused practice and then 5 minutes of relaxation. This is an easy way to get super focused valuable practice in while at the same time allowing you to enjoy a break. This should help lower the intimidation factor of long practice hours.
Practice Pitfall Two: Practicing the same thing every day
Practicing the same thing every day is a quick way to get you into a nice boring rut. Not only that, but it’s a quick way to make to get you stuck, lopsided and no where near the guitar playing level you want to be at.
Make sure when you’re practicing that you practice multiple skills in one practice session. Being able to work on multiple skills will go a long way to making your guitar practice more exciting and skills grow faster. Music is not like math, it’s not just one skill. It’s multiple skills performed at the same time. Your job is to make sure you train all of them every week and a handful of different ones every day. Then, you will truly be on your way to guitar greatness.
Practicing Pitfall Three: Having no plan for your practice routine
You should have a schedule and that schedule should help you meet specific requirements for certain goals. It’s important when practicing guitar that you know where you’re going. You don’t want to reach one point and then question where you want to go next. What you want to do is say “ this is my plan” I finished this step, now I need to do this step to execute the rest of my plan. That’s how you will accomplish your goals. Start with what you want to achieve and break down the requirements for it and then devise steps to take to get there.
Here’s an example:
What would it take for you to be able to have strong rhythm guitar playing skills?
- You must understand rhythmic notation
- You must have a good knowledge of chords and how they fit together
- You must have good creative skills for build riffs and chord progressions
These are the general skills you would need to be a good rhythm player, but then you would need to go into more detail for each skill.
What would it take to have good rhythmic notation skills? You might need to know odd time signatures, understand 16th note phrases, how ties work ect.
The main thing is this plan should be so focused that you know exactly what steps to take, to get you from where you are now to where you need to be. If you can’t figure this out, you will need a professional’s help.
Avoiding these three pitfalls will super charge your practicing and get you right on the path to meeting your goals. If you have any questions feel free to email me at [email protected]
About the author:
Chris Glyde is a dedicated guitar teacher and learner. He spends most of his time refining his teaching skills to help his students reach higher and higher heights. Would you like to be one of those students? Guitar lessons in Rochester are available now