Guitar Playing Test For Accomplishing Your Musical Goals

Sep 13
08:38

2016

Tom Hess

Tom Hess

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Do you know what it takes to become a great guitarist? There are lots of myths out there that can hold you back from becoming a trully great musician.

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Think you know what it takes to make yourself into a great guitarist? There exist a lot of false claims when it comes to what one must do to get better at guitar. Guitarists who believe in these myths almost always fail to achieve their ultimate goals. Guitar players who discover the truth about how it really is improve their skills fast.

See how close you are to reaching your musical goals using the test below:

https://tomhess.net/files/images/FalseGuitarPlayingBeliefs/TestYourKnowledgeOfPlayingAndPracticingGuitar.jpg

 

Question #1: What is the best way to quickly reach your musical goals?

a. Getting information from as many sources as you can find

b. Learning on your own

c. Learning from a single proven source

Learning from a lot of different sources is harmful for your overall progress (even when those sources are solid). This is why:

- You start to learn in a random and unfocused manner. The specific order in which you learn new things must be controlled. Taking in tons of new information makes it hard to know what to focus on,Guitar Playing Test For Accomplishing Your Musical Goals Articles when you should be focusing on it and when to focus on something entirely different.

- You quickly become overwhelmed from an overload of information. This takes away your motivation to practice. It becomes much easier to focus on learning new things rather than getting better through practice.

- Randomized learning makes it difficult to focus on achieving particular goals. This also makes it difficult to measure your progress. You aren’t sure what your skill level is and how to get to the next level.

These problems make you frustrated and greatly hinder your progress.

Being self-taught also slows down your progress in a similar fashion. Self-taught guitar players usually aren’t sure what to focus on, when to focus on it, why they should be practicing one thing over another and how to practice in order to achieve their musical goals.

You become an excellent guitar player much faster by learning from a single proven source. This keeps you on the right path at all times.

 

Question #2: What is the best way to improve your guitar speed?

a. Using a metronome

b. Using the best guitar speed exercises

c. A lot of time and patience

d. Mastering technique fundamentals

A metronome is helpful for testing your overall top speed, but should not be used to develop your speed. Instead, your guitar speed comes through a mastery of fundamental technique. If you practice a lot with poor technique, it will only produce bad habits in your playing and make fast guitar playing nearly impossible.

To truly build your guitar speed, familiarize yourself with the right techniques to work on. Doing this is very important because this is what forms the foundation for speed. Once you have this foundation you can start raising your speed with the help of a metronome.

This free guide shows you how to easily double your guitar speed and reduce your practice time by half.

 

Question #3: What do you do when you feel overwhelmed by things to practice for guitar?

a. Take a break away from practicing

b. Force yourself to learn more and become more disciplined

c. Work on integrating everything you know together

Taking long breaks from guitar practice won’t help you make progress. It takes away from the time you could be investing into becoming a great guitarist.

You can transform yourself into a great guitarist without taking a break from guitar practice. Additionally, you won’t need to have ample amounts of discipline in order to practice guitar every day. You just need to learn how to balance learning new things with integrating new concepts together with what you’ve already mastered. By doing this, you’ll be able to continually get better at guitar without dealing with feelings of overwhelm.

The following video explains what it means to integrate your guitar skills together:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/7GORmlZg1Qk

 

Question #4: What is the most effective picking technique for playing scales on guitar?

a. Alternate picking technique

b. Directional picking technique

c. Economy picking technique

d. All of the above (there all equally effective)

The majority of guitarists think that there is no “best” picking technique. This is not the case. There are picking techniques that are more effective than others. The answer is: directional picking. This helpful article explains why directional picking is the most effective picking technique for guitar.

 

Question #5: What is the easiest and fastest way to master fretboard visualization for guitar solos?

a. Memorize every note on the guitar fretboard

b. Master a single scale and learn to use it all over the fretboard

c. Learn tons of new scales

d. Learn guitar licks from guitarists of many styles

Fretboard visualization means this: having the ability to play and improvise on any part of the neck. Memorizing note names won’t help you with fretboard visualization. Note names won’t help you see the patterns you are playing and stay in key while you solo. Mastering one scale and playing it all over the fretboard will help your fretboard visualization the most. When you can visualize the neck as ONE overarching scale shape, improvising guitar solos is infinitely easier.

 

What you should do now?:

1. Create a list of the guitar playing myths you failed to identify while taking this test. This helps you understand what you should focus on in order to improve.

2. Don’t worry if you answered many questions wrong. Now you understand what you must do to get better. Be excited about this!

3. Use the tips from this article to achieve your musical goals.

This guitar playing skill improvement test helps you become a better guitar player faster.