Keeping Motivation Up-Practice Tip 1

One of the hardest things that I have to do as a guitarist, and a teacher, is to stay motivated and keep my students motivated to play. Everything can seem overwhelming because there is a lot to learn in order to be a well rounded guitarist.

Especially when you are starting out, there is a lot of material to learn. This is made even worse when your fingers aren’t necessarily doing what you’re telling them to do. Setting goals and time management quickly become your most important tools for your practicing.

John Petrucci Lesson Tips

I recently came across an article repost on Guitar World’s website. It’s from a series of articles John Petrucci wrote for them and then were put into a lesson book that I use a lot in my one-on-one lessons.

This particular article talks about how to go about setting goals and utilizing time management. Like working out, or learning to swim, practicing guitar can be tedious but totally rewarding once you do it.

To find out what John Petrucci suggests in the article that inspired this post click here.

Setting Goals and Time Management

Ultimately, how you plan to schedule your practice time depends on your goals as a guitarist and musician. So first things first, decide whether or not you want to learn guitar to play in front of crowds, shredding away all over the neck, maybe you want to learn a few songs to play around the camp fire, or somewhere in between.

Either way you’ll have to be honest with yourself about what you need to learn. This is because in order to progress you need to play things your fingers are unfamiliar with. Only playing things you’re familiar with is a sure fire way to quickly become frustrated with your progress.

Once you know what you need to work on break it down to specific things within specific topics. For example, playing the Am pentatonic scale in positions 2 and 5, or even just second position by itself.

Similarly, breaking down the amount of time available for you to play into manageable chunks is just as important. If you have only a half hour to practice, I would recommend choosing three things to work on for ten minutes each. If you have an hour to play pick three to six techniques to work on for ten to fifteen minutes a piece.

When choosing topics it’s easy to get sucked into the technical side of music like scales, chords, arpeggios, etc. Don’t forget to do other things like creating your own licks or songs, analyzing sheet or recorded music, music theory, ear training, etc.

Unfortunately, no one can learn to play the guitar for you, so keeping your motivation up is up to you. Try breaking down topics and your time in order to progress at a steady rate. It’ll be more rewarding and will keep the guitar fun.

Header Image Attribution: Flickr Creative Commons: Lisa Ann Yount