How to play the guitar well

A student who wants to learn to play the guitar with some excellence really only needs to remember a couple of things.
What’s the main component in playing the guitar REALLY WELL? Repeated practice. Every day. For as many hours as possible.
The second ingredient is interest. If you grit your teeth and play endless exercises and chord changes for eight hours a day you may well end up simply a mediocre guitar player without a girlfriend. Long hours of playing MUST contain variety. Riffs, new songs, improvisation, whatever.
A philosophy for guitar playing often quoted by gypsy guitarists is to play for your own enjoyment first, for the enjoyment of your fellow band members, and then for the audience. If you’re guided by what gives you pleasure (as well as accepting advice from teachers) when you play your guitar, you will find yourself constantly improving.
What about talent? Well, at the moment we’re talking about working on constanly improving our guitar playing. That’s work. Talent surfaces all by itself if you put in the work.

Technorati Tags: learn to play the guitar

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!