10 steps to take your guitar skills to the next level.
Are you a guitar player and stressed out because you feel stuck, and don’t know what to practice or how to take your guitar skills to the next level?
These 10 steps to take your guitar skills to the next level, will help you master your guitar skills and how never run out of what to practice on your next practice session.
Do you want to shorten the process and advance your guitar skills faster? Check these killer guitar tricks here!
In 2012 when I moved to the united states, I when to the guitar center and bought my first cheap guitar, even though I had been playing guitar since 2004 but I felt stuck.
After I’d learned a few songs and I felt like, my skills were the same and I could not remember what I’d learned after a few days.
It was hard to remember a solo even after spending days practicing by myself and with my band, but on stage, I always forgot notes in the middle of my solo.
Every day I say to myself will I ever be a guitar player ever? I felt stuck and don’t know what to do.
Are you feeling the same way? When you take your guitar and try to practice and you almost fall asleep, what you’re doing is so boring, and don’t know how to improve your skills and get better?
If that is you, keep reading.
And if you don’t have your basic music skills down yet I advise you to take the first step by learning some basic theory, click here to learn a few tricks and take your practice skill to the next level.
However, if you already know the basics use these 10 steps to take your guitar skills to the next level.
Work On Your Timing
One thing that most guitar players almost forgot, and that is one of the most important things in guitar learning, is the use of the Metronome.
If you don’t know the term metronome, a metronome is round like a little pendulum thing that crosses 180 degrees and has a little sound Tic-Toc, Tic-Toc, Tic-Toc.
The metronome’s role is to help you keep in time so you’re playing at a consistent speed.
Its speed measurement is in B.P.M which stands for “Beats Per Minute” so, when you’re practicing strumming, you’re practicing scale or chord changing.
You could use a B.P.M. or Metronome to help you keep track of what tempo you can do things at.
Particularly things like strumming, it can be really helpful if you play on your own, to find out if you are as consistent as you should be.
Timing is the key in music, if a musician can’t keep up with the timing it will be a big issue, and practice with a metronome is the best way to stay on track.
The best way to work on your timing is to always practice with a metronome, and get used to it. That will not only help with timing as well with your speed.
Another advantage of practicing with a metronome, even if you don’t have a metronome when playing live, you’ll feel like you can hear the Tic-Toc in your ears.
That will develop an extra skill that most musicians who don’t get used to practicing with a metronome don’t have.
Consistent And Setting Smart Goals
Most people never understand the importance of setting goals, setting a smart goal can help you stay consistent and motivate you to achieve whatever you’re trying to achieve.
Doing music, or learning guitar is not different from any other skill that you trying to acquire.
It took a while to understand that, and until now I still struggle with setting goals. A goal will help you stay focused and not do several things at once.
Let’s say this month you want to learn the pentatonic minor scale and play it on all 12 chromatic scales on the guitar.
Play the pentatonic scale on all 12 notes is the goal, but to achieve that, you’ll need to break it down the chromatic scale starting with C-C+-D-D+-E-F… etc, and learn each scale separately.
One more thing in setting goals is you can track your progress, and see if you are on the right track or not.
Learn Songs
This is not the most important thing when learning to play guitar for me, this is my personal view on learning music.
But, since you are a beginner and won’t be able to create your own. Learning a few songs will help you along the way.
I teach my kids differently I don’t tell them to learn songs but I have them practice a few chord progressions and give them a few songs in that they are using the same chord progression in them.
That way they will not focus on the song but on the progression.
Whatever someone learns before that person can be good and create his own, he/she has to follow someone that is already succeeding in that field.
This is why I advise you to learn songs, learn as many songs as you can but don’t focus on learning songs only.
Practice melody lines and phrasing
Practicing a melody just means playing a succession of notes forming a distinctive sequence.
I was watching this video that I found very interesting, it is not the best intern quality but it’s very informative, Click here to Watch it on youtube.
Another way you can practice melody lines is to sing a melody and play it, this also will help you with your improvisation skills and train your ears.
One thing that is also important as a musician to know is, you need to learn how to improvise. Practicing a song is good but having the ability to play over any song without ever listening to that song before is perfect.
Don’t Practice Through mistakes
If an engineer is building a house and found that there’s a mistake in the foundation and keeps building the house without fixing the error, do you think this engineer will ever build the perfect home?
Well, In music it’s even worst because any small mistake in a song can mess up everything.
Don’t practice through mistakes just means when practicing if you find out that something is wrong and the pitch is not perfect, start over.
Find out where the mistake is correct it and move to the next step. It might be because your guitar is not tuned properly or you not holding a note properly.
It doesn’t matter how much time spending to get right but having it wrong will hurt your career more.
And remember to start slow and identified each note and its position and increase the speed little by little. This is why it is important to use a metronome when practicing. Learn other ways to get better at guitar right now
Play with other people
Being a musician is not a solo thing, to be able to play comfortably anywhere you need to learn how to play with other musicians.
That will help you overcome fears and other people will be able to correct your bad habits and correct your timing.
Play with other people, whether the other person is more advance than you or at a lower level, first that will help you work on your confidence, expand your mind, and express your feelings at different levels.
Again this is a great video that I found while I was doing a little research about this topic. I think you will learn a lot from that video. Watch it here!
Practice tuning your guitar by ear
I have the last blog I talk about the benefit of tuning my guitar without a tuner, this practice will help a lot when improvising.
Your ear is the most important instrument, yet you need to develop your listening skills. I always say that music doesn’t play with hands.
Your hands just use the instruction that your ear sends to your mind and execute them. Now if what you hear is incorrect, your hands will just produce it as is.
Practicing tuning your guitar by ear will help you identify the right pitch at all times, and learn how to match them or play the accordingly.
Practice with a metronome and practice tuning your guitar by ear are the two most important a guitarist must have in other to play like a pro.
Learn the name of the notes on the fretboard
There are a lot of methods other guitarists are using to learn the fretboard, I won’t take a lot of time in this, but it is an important skill to have as a guitarist.
Especially when coloring all over the guitar, knowing the name of the notes and learning where they’re at in the neck of the guitar may save you a lot when playing live.
This will require commitment and a lot of focus, practice will help you memorize the names of the notes on the guitar easily.
But remember make it your goal, to learn them.
Learn some basic music theory
Learn how music work, there are a lot of musicians that I know are good musician, but ignore some basic detail.
When playing a piece of music, what is the reason they’re playing the notes the way they play them, how they came up with that, and what is the theory behind that music?
Know what are Progressions, how to play them, and why.
Learn major keys, minor keys, intervals, different modes, etc.
We have been helping students and teachers advanced their skills for a long time, book a trial lesson here!
Practice with your ear
You can see that I focus a lot about practice with your ears, the reason is sometimes some musicians are tired of doing the same, and stress themself out.
But there is some simple exercise that can help you take your guitar skill to the next level this is why I included it in the 10 steps to take your guitar skills to the next level.
(For Example, play a scale and repeat the notes, ascendent, descendant, and break it down into pieces)
On one scale there is an infinite exercise you can practice, practice with your ears will benefit you a lot along the way and it won’t be boring.
Another example
Let’s say that you want to practice C major Scale at a beginner level.
C-D-E-F-G-A-B in the second step play the note by one and replay the process make sure you are using a metronome or you can use a click track.
It goes like this: C-D-E, C-D-E-F, C-D-E-F-G, C-D-E-F-G-A, C-D-E-F-G-A-B, C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C, C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C-D etc
Do that up and down and see how exciting this simple exercise is, and how that will help your ears when improvising.
Conclusion
Now you have these 10 steps to take your guitar skills to the next level down, I hope you take some notes.
Go practice and with these steps alone when mastered, you can create hundreds of steps yourself even if you are a complete beginner.
Now, if you haven’t done yet, you’re looking to buy your first guitar, or you want a second one or you want a travel guitar to visit Guitar Temple Shop For all your instruments shopping.