Senior Instructor at Halifax Guitar Lessons
You had very high hopes when you started to learn to play guitar. We all do!
You made the decision to finally get started, bought a guitar, found some instruction online and got busy.
That’s when you quickly found out that playing guitar is not as easy as people make it look! This is tricky!
That’s ok, you bear down, initially, and decide to overcome this. But the pain continues. You are struggling and are getting frustrated.
That dream of playing seems so distant now that you wonder if it is even worth trying?
Here are 3 reasons why you are not likely progressing very quickly and what to do about it so you can finally learn to play guitar.
1. Teaching Yourself
I’m sure you have heard or know of someone who taught themselves how to play guitar and are really good players today and maybe even professionals.
It seems reasonable that you should be able to do the same. Fact is, most people who try to teach themselves do not have much success. Those who make it are not the norm.
The biggest problem with teaching yourself is that you have no way to know if you are doing something properly and if you aren’t it can slow you down a lot. That’s because there is no feedback to help you get it right.
You could take a lot of time and effort and try to figure out with sheer brute force but that takes a lot more time and most of us do not have that much available so we tend to get frustrated and give up.
If you had a trained guitar teacher helping you they could point out how to do things properly and help you progress instead of getting stuck.
2. Not Committed To Practicing
This is a big problem for most people who try to learn guitar. We live in a busy world so trying to fit guitar lessons can be challenging.
This is especially problematic when you try to teach yourself because there is no real and consistent commitment required. You learn when you want and when you can fit the time in.
What tends to happen is you go in spurts. You learn some things, practice a while, things get busy and you stop, then a while later you pick things up again and try to move forward.
Without a solid commitment to consistent practice there is no way you can progress very quickly.
3. Not Knowing How Or What To Practice
This is a big one. I had no idea how to practice properly for many years and I know this had a huge effect on how little I progressed in the beginning.
But how would you know? If you have not been shown the right way to practice the chances of doing it properly are not good. So if you struggle with this you are not alone!
Over time I learned that there are specific ways to practice that are a lot more effective and that help you get better in a much shorter amount of time.
More effective practice is great but the biggest problem people typically have is not knowing what to practice and how to move beyond it. We tend to keep practicing the things we know and like and don’t get much better.
Just knowing what to practice and how to do it more effectively will help you progress a lot faster.
Progress Quickly By Finding The Right Guitar Teacher
Knowing how to effectively practice those items and actually doing the work will then turbocharge your progress even further.
Simple right? Not really of course. This is not intuitive and would take a long time to figure out on your own through trial error.
However, you can get all that by finding a trained and certified guitar teacher to help you. Someone who has been taught how to teach guitar specifically and who has proven results with other people just like you.
They will create a personalized plan just for you and put you on the best path for success to reach your guitar playing goals!