How To: Cut Years Off Your Development on Guitar

This is the first of what I hope will become a series of blog posts on anything and everything guitar related. Whether it does or not, here it goes.

This one is for all you beginner guitarists out there.  I've had my fair share of teaching guitar to absolute beginners, so hopefully I can offer some insight now into a SERIOUS issue that is going to save you a whole lot of time.

Want to avoid looking like this?

As we all know, there are, now more than ever, a huge amount of resources available in terms of guitar tuition. From books, to private and group lessons, to online courses to YouTube videos.  Let's just assume for the sake of this blog post that your source of information is reliable and knowledgeable (however this is not always the case, especially with some of these YouTube 'teachers', but believe me, that's a whole other topic for another day).

So you have yourself a solid source of guitar education, great.  Now what is my advice?

By far the most difficult period in your guitar playing will be when you start out, and by far the most difficult aspect of this period is the mental side of things.  Of course this has to do with the very nature of the instrument, or any instrument I'm sure.  This is that every thing, every single thing you play, requires copious amounts of practice.  The reason there is such a high failure rate for beginner players is this: you can't yet play any songs or have any fun with the instrument, but are expected to put in serious practice learning chords, scales...you name it.

There is one way and one way only to effectively get around this problem and that is to have a PRACTICE SCHEDULE.  I cannot recommend this enough.

It's not often you see a beginner who enjoys practice.  Of course there are exceptions to every rule but for the vast majority of us, this is the case.  Most teachers will advise an average student to practice for at least 15 minutes a day for maximum benefit, and yes this is far better than an hour and a half's practice the night before your next lesson.  For this 15 minutes, I always, for my beginner students, provide a breakdown of time for each exercise.  For an example let's just say 5 mins on X, 5 mins on Y and 5 mins on Z.  The idea is that you take out your stopwatch, put 5 mins on the clock and do not stop doing X until that time is up.  This means you don't check your phone, you don't start  conversation, you don't continuously glance over at the TV; you just do X.  Then you can take a break if you need to, and move on to Y and then Z.  In this way you know you are getting 15 minutes of quality, uninterrupted and focused practice in every day.

The stopwatch: Your new best friend

Also, a written diary of practice could be very useful.  This may seem very meticulous or even extreme to some of you casual players, but I disagree.  If you are accountable for your own practice and keep a record of every exercise you do and every song you master (at least in your beginner stage) you will see real progress.  Obviously the main aim with learning the guitar is to enjoy it, and it is much easier to enjoy it once you become relatively good at it.

These tips aim to keep you focused and motivated in your early days and to avoid the dreaded method of 'I'll do a few minutes here and there and I'll be fine'.  This does not work effectively and you can cut YEARS (yes years, I know this from personal experience) off your development by the simple use of a practice schedule.

Alright then, that's it for this first post.  Any questions or comments would be much appreciated.

Thanks for reading.

SB