Everybody wants to be a better guitarist, could you be making a mistakes which are holding back your development as a musician? The following are common guitarist mistakes which could be slowing down your growth as a musician and stopping you from being the guitarist you want to be.
Playing Out of Tune
One of the most important – and hardest – skills to develop as a guitarist is your ear. In order to be a good musician, you need to be able to know what the different notes sound like, and how they sound together. If tuning your guitar is a chore, invest in an inexpensive guitar tuner (they even make iPhone guitar tuner aps, so you never have to be without your tuner again) and tune up every single time you play.
Playing Unplugged
Many new guitarists are worried about disturbing the neighbors, so they strum on their electrics without plugging in. The problem is that when you do this you can barely hear what you’re playing. This allows a lot of sloppiness to creep into your play, and also slows down the development of your ear.
So plug in. Play quietly, or get an amp that lets you plug in headphones. You will develop much faster.
Relying Too Much On Guitar Tabs
Guitar tabs are great. It’s fantastic that you can find chords and tabs for thousands of great songs in seconds with a little help from google.
But …
If you want to develop as a musician, you must work on your ability to transcribe music – to listen to a song, figure out what the guitarist is doing, and copy it. Every great guitarist did this. It is how you internalize the music, and learn to truly understand it.
This will be hard at first, but you can find free software on the internet which will slow down music for you, keeping it in pitch, to make the task easier. This will rapidly improve your playing, and transcription gets much easier with practice!
Playing Alone
A lot of inexperienced guitarists are nervous about playing with other musicians. They’re worried about not being good enough – but few things will improve your playing more than challenging yourself to play with other musicians, even if you’re all at about the same level. Relax, have fun, swap tips, and play. Playing with other musicians is one of the most rewarding aspects to being a guitarist – don’t deny yourself that pleasure!
Not Taking Lessons
With a guitar, sometimes its too easy. Grab some chords online, or watch a couple of how-to videos on youtube, and you’ll be learning new songs and having fun. But don’t underestimate the value of a good teacher. A good teacher listens to how you play and helps you address your specific weaknesses. He spots bad habits and corrects them. With a good teacher, you can learn more in a few months than you will in years of noodling around on your own.
So now you know some common guitarist mistakes to avoid, and you are all set to start making rapid improvement as a guitarist and a musician.
