The Five Guitar Practice Habits That Will Make You A Better Guitar Player

Nov 2
08:29

2016

Tom Hess

Tom Hess

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These are the types of guitar practice habits that will hold back your progress.

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The types of guitar practice habits you maintain are a huge part of the amount of progress you make. Excellent habits quickly solve your problems and turn you into a better guitarist in no time. Bad habits slow your progress down significantly and make your practice time feel unfulfilling.

This video shows an example of how to practice guitar more effectively:

https://youtu.be/Nu-OrTUM3lY

These guitar practicing habits massively improve your playing skills in no time:

Effective Guitar Practice Habit #1: Noticing The Right Things At The Right Time

The better you can focus,The Five Guitar Practice Habits That Will Make You A Better Guitar Player Articles the more efficient your guitar practice will be. Paying attention to the correct things at the correct time helps you fix your guitar playing issues and take on new skills. You can get better at this even if you aren’t naturally talented with this ability.

The right way to focus on fixing guitar playing problems: Don’t just repeat the same exercises again and again on autopilot. Instead, focus on the specific notes that you have problems with. This makes it easier to solve problems in your playing because you can better understand where your playing begins to break down

Check out the video to observe how isolating the correct part of the phrase makes it easier to fix mistakes in your playing.

Effective Guitar Practice Habit #2: Ask Good Questions

Guitarists who ask the right questions make much more progress in less time than anyone else. They know that:

-There is always a reason why they struggle to do something on guitar.

-There is a specific path they have to follow in order to play guitar how they want.

The questions they ask will help them figure out how to solve the main causes of their problems. Their practicing fixes these causes and improves their playing.

The right questions focus your mind on achieving the results you desire. They are specific, motivating and objective. Here are examples of the right questions you should be asking:

“How can I be able to do X with little effort?” (“X" = the skill you want to gain.)

“What do I need to improve in my guitar playing to master X?”

“How can I get the most from my time during guitar practice?”

“How should I practice guitar in order to play consistently and reliably without making errors?”

The best guitarists aren’t always aware of the precise answers to these questions… but they make it a point to figure them out. To achieve your musical goals, your first step is to ask the right questions. This causes you to develop the confidence that helps you quickly accomplish your goals.

Guitar players who can’t seem to make much progress have a mind filled with excuses and pessimism. They ask disempowering questions and make statements that destroy their motivation, like:

“I’ll never become a great player!”

“Will I ever be able to play as good as [insert popular guitarist]?”

“Am I too old to get good at guitar?”

“What if I just don’t have any natural skill?”

“How do I get more motivation to practice guitar more often?”

“I can’t practice guitar as much as I want, that is why I can’t become a great player.”

These kinds of questions and beliefs slow down your progress immensely and add a great deal of frustration to your practice sessions.

Effective Guitar Practice Habit #3: Make It Simple

Really amazing guitar players make their playing seem effortless, and it truly is... for them! Using proper guitar practice is all about training yourself to make the things you play feel effortless. Find ways to make your guitar playing less complex (without getting rid of good phrasing or musical expression).

A good approach for making your guitar playing more easy is to use efficient fingering. Really think about the notes you choose to fret with your fretting hand. Make it as simple as possible. Making this change can give you a massive shortcut to mastering what you are practicing.

Watch the video at the start of this article (beginning at 2:21) to see how a simple adjustment in fretting hand fingering leads to effortless guitar playing.

Effective Guitar Practice Habit #4: Paying Attention To Detail

Many guitar players practice with a scatter-brained mindset. Some do it because they aren’t sure what they should be practicing. Others think that practicing means repeating the same thing over and over. Not true! Mindless repetition only solidifies poor playing.

Effective guitar practice means:

-Focusing on the correct things, practicing them in the right order and in the right way

-Solidifying perfect technique into your hands. See the video at the top of this page (starting at 0:47) to observe what it means to solidify perfect technique.

-Achieving specific goals during each of your practice sessions.

Question: “Tom Hess, what exactly are you talking about when you say to focus “on the correct things, in the right order and in the right way?”

Answer: The “correct things” are parts of guitar playing that require improvement in order to correct any guitar playing mistakes. For instance: understanding how to properly roll your fingers for finger rolling technique; how to sweep with the pick while performing a sweep picking lick; or getting rid of string noises by using your picking hand’s thumb. That said, all these things do not necessarily have to be related to guitar technique. The “right things” could also involve memorizing the fretboard, ear training, improvising or phrasing, and music theory understanding (among many other skills).

The “right order” refers to the order in which you choose the next guitar element that should be worked on. Some parts of guitar playing have to be improved before you can move onto something else. To know the correct priority for you, you have to pay attention to your specific guitar playing goals, how much time you have to devote to practice, your unique personality and many other things.

Here’s A Fact: the order in which you practice and improve your guitar skills matters a lot. So many guitar players never think about the order in which they learn and improve their skills. This is why so many of them never move on to become truly great.

Practicing the “right way” requires paying close attention and listening intently to your playing. You have to be able to tell whether you are practicing the right way or not. You also have to be able to make adjustments so you don’t end up going down the wrong road.

This no-cost guitar practice guide helps you pay attention to details and get better at fretting hand technique for guitar.

Note: you will commit mistakes even when you are paying close attention. Paying attention to detail specifically doesn’t mean making less mistakes; it means having greater awareness of what is going on whenever a mistake happens. This is like making steering adjustments as you drive a car so that you don’t drive into the wrong lane. This process helps you achieve musical goals in less time.

Effective Guitar Practice Habit #5: Practice With Intention

All of your guitar practice sessions need to lead you in the right direction towards achieving your ultimate goals (one step at a time). This method helps you maintain focus on the big picture while making you a better player faster.

This is how to develop guitar practice that has a strong sense of purpose:

  1. Visualize yourself having already achieved your greatest musical goal. Focus on this thought constantly (as you drive your car, while taking a walk, as you exercise, in the shower, etc.).
  2. Compress your major goal into many smaller goals. These smaller goals should each mark a step along the way towards realizing your bigger goal. Plan these goals for each week, month, year, etc. This musical goals achievement manifestation page tells you what skills are needed to fully master the guitar.
  3. Plan your guitar practice schedules for many days at once. This will assist you in seeing every practice session as a small stepping stone towards mastering guitar.

How To Develop Effective Guitar Practice Habits Within Yourself:

Focus on a single habit at a time over a span of several weeks. Apply the information from this article into your playing to refine each area of your practice. Then move on to work on the next habit. Repeat this process over the next few months and you will see a huge jump in your skill set.

This fretting hand technique guide is important for helping you learn the correctly way to practice guitar and quickly achieve your goals as a musician.