What if a lot of the things you’ve been told about learning to play guitar were a big lie?
Well it’s true … read any guitar magazine and there will be a new guitar hero (pun intended) who will tell you that they never practice, that they were born naturally gifted and spend most of their time (a) lounging around. beach, (b) catching up on the much-needed soda at the pub, or (c) chasing girls (or boys).
If you want to believe those things, you are destined to be another aspiring guitar statistic; To be honest, there is good information available from some really talented guitarists and teachers, but you have to be able to sift through all the garbage.
Here are three guitar secrets that most guitarists will never discover … study and apply them and you’ll be on your way.
Secret # 1: Practice does NOT make perfect! Contrary to popular belief, practicing relentlessly will not produce a professional result.
Why?
Answer: It is about the quality of practice, NOT the quantity of practice.
Let’s say a guitarist has learned some information incorrectly, now no matter how dedicated the guitarist is and regardless of the number of hours spent practicing, the guitarist will continue to play incorrectly.
Solution: Perfect practice makes perfect. Therefore, make sure that you are studying information of the best quality; If you get it right the first time, it is much more difficult to retrain your nervous system once bad habits have become a habit.
Secret # 2: Two types of practice! Most guitarists are unaware that there are two types of guitar practice.
Type of practice (a): information or data memory practice and
Practice type (b): motor skills practice
It is vitally important to your progress that you make the distinction as to the type of practice session you will be working on before beginning your practice session.
Data memory The practice sessions are sessions that are designed to learn new concepts, for example, new scales, chords, songs, etc., these sessions do not require you to have the guitar in your hands, in fact, in many cases, to have the guitar in your hands slow down the process. learning process.
Motor skills On the other hand, the practice sessions require you to practice everything you have learned in the data training sessions on the guitar. The trick is to reproduce from memory all the information that you have studied in the data sessions.
Get all the information off the paper and in your head in the data practice sessions and then apply that information in the motor skills session (preferably without having to refer to any written information).
Secret # 3: Speed is a by-product of precision. Learn to play everything in very small and easy pieces, no more than four to six notes at a time (this is how master players learn their craft); play those notes as accurately as possible … make a big problem with every note.
Don’t worry about speed … that will come in time, it’s much better to perfectly reproduce a small amount of information than to play a bunch of sloppy things!
Remember: it does not require skill to play the guitar sloppily, anyone and everyone can do it, but only the best guitarists can play fast and accurately.