Think about your playing



Many guitarists look all over the internet for guitar playing tips. That is understandable and reasonable to a certain amount. But this behaviour has some limitations. In this article we will look into those and you will learn a process that will enable you to make a lot of progress on your own.


What is so bad about guitar playing tips?
Let’s start with the biggest influence right away. If you are solely looking for tips your mind is acting in a state that looks for input from the outside. You feel certain that the answer is out there and searching for it will bring you the best results. But that may not be the case. If you invest half an hour into searching for a specific tip and then practice that tip for two minutes you would have achieved a lot more if you just had invested the 32 minutes into practicing.
In addition to that the guitar techniques described online often are only categorized into “Novice/Beginner”, “Intermediate” and “Advanced”. And even this distinction is strongly dependent on the author of that piece.
Finally it may give you the impression that you only need to find the one tip and suddenly all your guitar related frustrations are gone. This chance of that happening is very small. If you are expecting that and seeing that it takes a bit more than that may then feel very frustrating which may harm you more than finding a certain tip will help you.


So what could you do?
The best thing you could do is to invest some time into looking into your guitar playing and try to figure out what is not happening in the most efficient or best sounding way possible. This may seem overwhelming at first. You may find that it’s easiest to make lists of your problem and think about how you can solve this problems. You could start with these questions:


1. What is the hardest thing I can play on the guitar?

2. What does hard to play even mean?

3. What exactly am I having problems with?

4. Can I list 3 causes of the problem?

5. Can I list 3 ways of fixing each cause?



I strongly suggest to write down the answers and when you answered them. Even if you can’t work through every problem this way you will get a lot farther than you might expect. In other words thinking about your guitar playing problems can help you a lot in fixing those problems. By the way a good guitar teacher has invested time into thinking about these and similar questions and gained some experience in guiding people through those and making them excellent guitarists. If you want to save time and be sure to practice the right thing consider to look for a guitar teacher near you.


Do not forget: solving (guitar related) problems is a skill. Everybody can get better at this skill with practice. Whether or not you bring up the effort to get better is your choice. You decide!


About the author:
Rene Kerkdyk is a guitar teacher in Hildesheim, Germany. Solving problems is one of his most favored activities.