Tired Of Being A Slow Guitarist? Learn How To Play Guitar Fast By Correcting These Common Practice Mistakes
It’s common for guitarists to go long periods of time without making much progress with their playing speed. However, it does NOT have to be this way for you! Most guitarists make the same practice mistakes that keep them from learning how to play guitar fast and add tons of unnecessary frustration to the time they spend with their instrument.
Some guitar practice mistakes are due to a lack of knowing
the correct practice approach, inefficient use of time or simply having a
disempowering mindset.
Correcting each of these mistakes sets you up to quickly become a faster guitarist and finally play with the speed you always wanted:
Mistake #1: Practicing Just For The Sake Of Going Through The Motions
Practicing guitar mindlessly is like planning a 5,000-mile road trip, but then getting into the car and just driving around in the general direction of where you think you need to go. This is much less efficient than getting a map or following the specific GPS directions to get you where you want to go as fast as possible.
While practicing guitar without a clear plan, you end up making very slow progress (if any) when you could be reaching your musical goals much faster.
At the beginning of each week, create your guitar practice schedule. Then practice each day with specific goals to be achieved in each session and by focusing closely on making every action count.
Mistake #2: Thinking That Age Is A
Problem
Too many guitarists fail to improve their guitar speed because they tell themselves their too old to get good. This is much worse than simply having bad technique or low skills because it prevents you from even attempting to make progress.
No matter how old you are, you have the potential to achieve great things in your guitar playing. It doesn’t matter if you just started playing at 18 or 40… guitar speed doesn’t require being a certain age. With enough quality practice, anyone can play guitar fast in a matter of weeks or months (depending on their current experience level).
Mistake #3: Practicing For Too Long Of A
Time Period
Believe it or not, practicing guitar for many hours each day
is actually counter-productive! This goes against the conventional wisdom that,
“Becoming a great guitarist requires practicing 5 hours straight every day just
like [famous guitarist] did.”
Here’s why you shouldn’t do this too often:
Getting results from your guitar practice is about practicing the right things in the right way and doing so with intense focus. After practicing for a long time, your ability to focus goes down very significantly.
Try practicing guitar for just 15-30 minutes at a time and spread it throughout the day. This ensures that you practice with focus and get the most results from your time!
Mistake #4: Blaming The Lack Of Time
Good news: It is possible to make serious progress on guitar without having tons of time. What is more important is that you practice efficiently and effectively with the time you do have.
Fact: It’s possible to play guitar faster than ever in 50% less practice time than what you are doing right now. Learn how to do it by studying the points in this free guitar speed guide.
Mistake #5: Not Knowing How To Practice
To Make Progress
It sucks when you have tons of materials to practice but don’t know how to use them to make progress. For example: Tons of guitar players have binders full of tabs or solos they want to learn. Then when they go to learn them, they get stuck and don’t know what to do to get over the barrier that is holding them back.
More on this in the next point…
Mistake #6: Only Learning Guitar On Your Own
Learning guitar on your own is the hardest and most frustrating way to do it. This leaves you vulnerable to getting stuck and not knowing how to improve for years at a time. The solution here is to find an experienced guitar teacher who has already helped others achieve the same guitar playing goals you have.
Finding the right guitar teacher not only means you get faster on guitar in less time, but that you become a much better player than you even was possible (since the teacher can show you things you wouldn’t think about on your own).
Learn how to find and choose a great guitar teacher by reading this free guitar teacher selection resource.
Mistake #7: Believing That Only Natural Talent Can Create Great Guitarists
No matter what great guitarist you are thinking of, they became great through practice and dedication… NOT by mere natural talent. Natural talent will only get you so far, and most people (including great players) had zero natural talent to begin with.
So forget about whether you are talented or not. Playing guitar faster is just around the corner as long as you remain dedicated to improving and reaching your goals.
Mistake #8: Having Guitar Practice Tunnel Vision
Too many guitar players practice only one aspect of their playing A LOT. This creates an imbalance because they never improve other aspects of their playing or learn how to integrate their current skills together.
This results in things like: being able to play guitar fast, but not actually knowing how to play creative-sounding and musical solos.
No matter what your greatest skills are currently, invest time into integrating all your skills together. Practice scales using vibrato, improvise, combine arpeggios with string skipping, learn chord inversions and use them with scale runs, etc.
This ensures that your guitar playing develops in all areas at once and you make progress at a fast rate.