Advice For Playing Fast Guitar Exercises Cleaner & Without Getting Frustrated
It can become very frustrating when you practice fast guitar
exercises and make mistake after mistake.
Over time this frustration often leads to a lack of motivation, leading to less practice and less (or slower) improvement.
Solution:
Find ways to make your guitar practice both more effective and less frustrating.
This gets you the results you want to play guitar faster while making the process of improving much more enjoyable (just like it should be).
Ok, great. So, what are some ways to do this?
I’ll tell you.
Don’t Constantly Start Over From The Beginning
This mistake is extremely common among guitar players:
So, you’re playing through a guitar lick you want to master… then you make a mistake. Then, you start from the beginning, and play through until you reach the mistake while hoping you’ll get it right this time.
What’s wrong here?
Answer: There is no need to waste time playing through the notes you already mastered. This only adds frustration when you get to the problem note and miss it again.
Instead, focus only on the problem area.
Only repeat the note that gives a problem (or repeat it together with notes directly beside it).
This saves time, while helping you get more reps in with the thing you need to practice the most – making your guitar practice more efficient in the process.
Simply, repeat the part of the tab where the mistake occurs.
Later, you can combine everything together, but for now – resist this and focus only on correcting the notes you currently struggle with.
Practice In Short Bursts Instead Of Everything At Once
This refers to “within any given guitar exercise”. In other
words, you don’t need to practice an entire exercise at once.
Especially if you haven’t mastered the technique needed to play it.
Instead, practicing just a few notes at a time achieves the following:
·
It becomes easier to focus, identify mistakes
and correct mistakes
·
There are less notes to worry about, making
practice feel less overwhelming
· You correct your mistakes faster than you would if you attempted to play everything at once (because you only have to worry about fixing one or two notes at a time).
Practicing these 100, 200, 500 times helps you REALLY narrow down mistakes, correct them and master the skills needed to play the notes perfectly.
Practice In Short Intervals Rather Than Super-Long Sessions
Practicing guitar for a very long amount of time without stopping can cause your focus to wane and tension to build, making mistakes more and more frustrating as time goes on.
Easy solution here!
Practice guitar in shorter bursts of time, such as 15-20 minutes for several times in a day.
This helps you focus more, and become less frustrated when mistakes are made.
Look through the practice items you work on currently and think of ways to combine different items together to make your practice more efficient and effective.
Make Practice About Finding Mistakes Rather Than Playing Perfectly Every Time
The better you become at identifying mistakes, the easier it
gets to find them and correct them quickly.
This makes your guitar practice less frustrating (because you know what to do) and more fun (because you always see yourself getting better).
Here are some things to look for when finding mistakes during your practice:
·
Hands are not in perfect sync (i.e. fretting a
note at the exact moment the string is picked)
·
Not playing on fingertips
·
Not muting correctly in one or both hands to get
rid of unwanted string noise
· Notes bleeding together
So, how do you get started correcting these different mistakes and play guitar perfectly every time?
You’re about to find out.