8 Causes For Why You May Struggle to Improve Your Guitar Playing
Today we are looking at the top 8 of the most common reasons that people struggle with improving on the guitar.
I have seen from people I’ve met, students and musicians who have come to me asking for help, struggling and frustrated, wondering how they can improve their guitar playing. I want you to watch out for these, spot the common reasons so that you can avoid them, and make more improvements to your guitar playing overall.
Watch video with Darryl to find out what these reasons are.
1. People Give Up Too Easily
The single one biggest reason that I see that causes guitarists to not improve their guitar playing is just that they are not persistent enough. There will be challenges and difficult parts to playing the guitar. Your fingers and wrist will hurt, I will be lying if I said you can play the guitar and never have any pain. But you need to get past these problems, you need to find a solution to solve the problems that you have. Whether you do this by yourself or get someone to help you. You should never ever give up. Working through your challenges will make you a much better player afterwards.
2. Keeping Playing The Same Things Over and Over Again
We have lots of people who come to us having played for 5, 10, 15, 20 years who have struggled to improve. The main reason we see is that they keep playing the same things they are comfortable with over and over again. For some, it might be playing the same songs over and over, or doing similar exercises, using the same instructional DVD or books. Keeping doing the same things all the time will not help you help you to make big improvements in your playing.
3. Only Learning to Play Songs to Improve Their Guitar Playing
We often see this with self-taught guitarists, whether they are learning electric guitar or acoustic guitar. They look up their favourite songs and perhaps the tab or the video for it and go learn that song. Now when you learn songs, while you do learn some new things, you are not going to make leaps and bounds of improvement on your guitar playing. The most important aspects of becoming a true musician and guitarist rather than just a copycat is the understanding the fundamentals that go into these songs. How are they put together, what techniques are used and why they are used. Wouldn’t you rather know all the building blocks and be able to play any song you want? Rather than learn one song at a time? You need to be playing more than songs if you want to improve your guitar playing.
4. Getting Too Content To Improve Guitar Playing
This happens almost subconsciously for most people and before they know it, and before they even realise it, they haven’t improved in months and years. What is important is to put yourself into the cycle of learning and stay there. Many people hit their goals or milestones and get too happy and then forget to think of new things they want to do. So you need to always aim for another goal when you are playing to motivate you to improve your guitar playing, whether you are wanting to learn to play electric guitar or acoustic guitar.
5. Not Having The Right Information At Hand
A lot of people will go in search of the information they think they need on the internet to try to improve their guitar playing. They haven’t gone to a professional, and they end up with random exercises that aren't right for them. The problems with random exercises and information is that they can be wrong for them in so many ways. Such as being it’s too hard, it’s too easy, there’s too much of it, too little of it, in the order order, the wrong information altogether! They are practising them the wrong way, not enough practise of them, it’s not congruent with what they should be learning to reach their goals. You really need specific information that’s specific for you to make drastic transformation to your guitar playing.
6. Not Getting the Help Needed to Improve Their Guitar Playing
There are a lot of beginner guitar players who believe that they do not need a teacher. That guitar is easily self-taught, and it is still effective. This is just not true for so many reasons. There are also lots of the guitarists who get to a point and think that they are too good for a guitar teacher and that they won’t be able to help them or won’t have anything to teach them. Thinking this way means a teacher will struggle to teach them because they are not willing to be taught.
And behind it all, trying to teach yourself will always be a struggle as playing guitar requires such precise technique and skill. There are so many professional guitarists and musicians who still have a teacher and coach who helps them with their guitar playing. All the while, you just don’t know what you don’t know yet, so trying to find information for something you didn’t know you need is difficult and will hinder your guitar playing progress.
7. Not Believing in Themselves
To play the guitar, you must believe you can. A lot of people don’t give themselves enough believe and think that maybe they are just struggling because they are not talented enough. This holds them back from wanting to committing fully because they are scared of failing. Remember, no babies ever left the womb being able to play guitar straight away. The skill of playing guitar is learnt through various different experiences that all come together. It’s important that you believe that you can play like the guitarists that you aspire to, to even give yourself a chance of succeeding.
8. Holding Themselves Back from Succeeding
There are some people who are actually subconsciously holding themselves back from improving their guitar playing. This is mainly because they are worried about how much effort and work it will take to get there. And I would say is that if you really love playing the guitar and really enjoy music, then no amount of work is too great to ensure that you get to do something you really enjoy! And it won’t feel like work after awhile once you get past some of the initial challenges of getting your brain to work with your hands and body. Every time you play, you are building that momentum to improve your guitar playing for your whole entire lifetime.
What To Do Next?
Are you wanting to improve your guitar playing and feel like you are in one of these traps and don’t know how to get out of it? Do you want to have some more variety in your playing but don’t know how? Are you wanting to be able to express yourself and make the guitar sound great when you play?
If this sounds like you at all and you are based in London, then speak to us about how we can help you progress and improve your guitar playing. In fact, we are so sure we can help you that we provide a free introductory lesson to talk about what challenges you are having, whether you are just starting out a beginner guitar playing or you are an advanced shredder, we know we can get you to progress.
Click on the button below to go through to our contact form to speak to us today.