How To Play Guitar
If you are one of those people who has been playing guitar for ten years but still quakes in fear when somebody asks them to play, then you need to pay close attention. Unless you are really dedicated to learning how to play guitar, you will probably practice faithfully until you reach a point where you stop processing new information. You see, it is not because you are no good, or dumb at guitar; you just need to get familiar with the secret to helping your body learn new movements.
The first step is to set aside for yourself the time necessary to do a profitable amount of guitar practice. If you were able to learn touch typing you might remember that when you first started you made many mistakes. You were probably despairing that you would ever learn, but eventually you started making less and less mistakes. Your persistence yielded rewards.
There is no magic involved here. The first principal in teaching yourself new skills is repetition. You sit down and practice your chord changes for an hour today and do it all again tomorrow and again the day after that until you find that your guitar playing has suddenly become easier just like your typing, just like when you learnt to drive a car and, for that matter, when you learnt to walk. A baby tries to walk and fails day after day. Then what happens? Suddenly he takes his first steps and walks from that time on. No gradual process, no backsliding, just suddenly the skill has been learnt and it stays forever. The degree of excellence is dependent on how much you practice.
What chords do I learn? What scales do I practice to build this skill inside me? It does not matter, any will do. Just do it. But that is not quite the whole deal. There is the matter of HOW we do it. Practice must be done in a certain way. You take care with how you move when you are learning to drive or practice your golf swing. Some martial arts teachers will tell you that speed and force will come only after practicing for a long time with precision and a light touch.
Do not think that you are going into this ordeal alone. Your metronome and guitar tuner will be with you. In order to practice in the right way you need to check often to see if your guitar is in tune. You need to play using the metronome at a slow speed. Try 60 to start. If it is too easy you need to speed the metronome up. Of course it is always easier if you have someone you trust to help you with the discipline. They do not have to be a musician, just somebody who can tell you when you are being too demanding on yourself or when you are letting yourself off.
A word of warning. Do not think that because putting yourself in a room and practicing your guitar is a simple concept that it is an easy thing to do. You will find that you spend too much time looking for your guitar tuner, not stopping to tune when you think of it - there are lots of ways to lose focus, and it is not only you who falls victim to these devils. We are all only human. But we want to be guitar players too!
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