At times you’ll feel like you’ve reached a plateau in your guitar playing, especially if you’re trying to learn on your own. But sometimes a little mental tweak or physical detail can help you break through really easily. Let’s take a look at a couple:
Keep your right hand moving.
Nearly every student I teach has trouble moving from chord to chord smoothly at first. They will usually strum through the chord they’re on, stop strumming, place, their left hand on the next chord, then continue strumming. Did you notice how long it even took to read those steps? It takes just as long to physically go through them.
There’s something in neuroscience called a “Dissonance”. That means your brain doesn’t like something that’s going on and will do its best to find a solution to the problem. And your brain loves to have your hands working together. That means when you stop your right hand strum that actually gives your left hand permission to move slower. So instead, you’re going to keep your right hand moving the whole time. This sets up a dissonance that we can use to your advantage. If the right hand is moving in time, your brain wants your left hand to do the same. Your left hand will automatically start to move faster towards that next chord.
Will you make some mistakes? Hell yes, you will. But that’s ok. That’s what practice is for. You’ll mangle that first chord hit 4 or 5 times until all the synapses fire correctly and your left hand learns where it’s supposed to be. And yes, I said 4 or 5 times, not weeks. This is the quickest fix I’ve found for chord trouble. Turn your right hand into a strumming machine that never stops and your left hand will learn how to get in the groove.
Don’t go back to fix mistakes.
It’s human nature to want to fix our mistakes. And in a lot of cases you should. But not in music. Let me be specific here. If you’re working on a certain chunk of a song and trying to work out your problems on it, definitely fix your mistakes. Here I’m talking about anytime you’re trying to get through the whole tune, whether on stage in front of thousands or just sitting in your bedroom.
Think of it this way. Most guitar mistakes are never heard by the audience. They’re also never heard by the rest of the band. That means two things… If nobody heard, nobody cares. And, if the band didn’t hear, they’ll just keep chugging through the song leaving you in the dust while you try to go back and fix a boo-boo. Don’t do it. Just keep going.
Since you don’t want to be faced with learning this skill in front of an audience, practice it on your own. Once you’ve learned a tune, practice playing all the way through it come hell or high water. If a mistake happens try to let it pass through your brain as undetected as possible and keep going. There will always be a little mental acknowledgment, but it’ll be a fraction of a second and you just forget about it. If you practice doing this by yourself, you won’t get flustered as easily when others are watching.
Keep your eyes on the music.
There are only two places your eyes should be while you’re playing… on the sheet music or on the thousands of people in front of the stage. You’ll notice “looking at your guitar” wasn’t one of those options. If you have the luxury of having sheet music in front of you, that’s where you should be looking. Otherwise, if you forget where you are in the song you have to 1. look up, 2. find where on the page you were, 3. figure out what comes next, 4 bring your sights back to the guitar. Again, too much movement, brain power, and time.
Once you’ve practiced a song, the notes on the page simply act as memory triggers. You won’t have to consciously name them or think about them. It’s just a visual trigger than sends your fingers to the right spot. It’s very Pavlovian.
Now, if you’re in a performance situation you may not have sheets in front of you. In that case you should be making eye contact with the audience and your bandmates. Making eye contact with the audience while you play will make your performance more engaging. There’s nothing more boring that watching a dude stare at his shoes for an hour. And making eye contact with your bandmates will keep the non-verbal communication lines open for last minute adjustments and cues to what you’re playing.
What about eyes closed playing? It’s ok sometimes. If you’re in the middle of a ripping guitar solo and you need to be in your own little world for a few bars, cool. But don’t spend the whole show with your eyes closed. Again, you want to be engaging to the audience and the eyes are the windows to the soul.
Don’t try to learn the whole song at once.
If you’re practicing guitar correctly then you’re constantly challenging yourself with new material that’s slightly above your playing level. The hardest way to learn that new piece is by trying to play it top to bottom every time. It’s too much information for your brain to take in all at once. Remember, you’re creating muscle memories and connecting new neurons in your brain every time you learn something new. That takes time and repetition. Trying to force too much to happen at once slows down the process.
So, take just a small section of the tune. 2 bars, 4 bars, whatever seems comfortable to you. I’ve had piece I can learn 8 bars at a time and others that I had to study 2 beats at a time. Take that small section and play it until you can play it 5 times in a row without a mistake. If you get to 4 and blow, start your count at 1 again. You may have to play a part 25-30 times to get that 4 times in a row. But it’s a lot faster in the long run.
Once you’ve got a couple of chunks learned that way, say 2 bar sections, start to sew them together in larger 4 bar sections. Go through that same process. You’ll always lose a little bit of what you learned when you start putting the pieces together, but most of it will stay in your head. Build the song gradually and you’ll end up learning it in way less time than trying to bang out the whole song at once. This is the way professionals practice whether it’s a rock band or an orchestra.
Ok, start putting these tips into play this week during your practice and you’ll see a lot of improvement in your guitar playing quickly.
Phil Johnson
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