Biggest Myth About Guitar Playing (And How It Hurts Your Progress)

Biggest Myth About Guitar Playing (And How It Hurts Your Progress)

By Tom Hess

The following myth about guitar playing massively slows down your progress when you believe it: “There is no right or wrong way to do things”. Fact is, there (often) ARE. This doesn't mean there is only one right way, it simply means there are often wrong ways.

Don’t confuse making expressive musical choices that come from mastery with doing things at random, practicing sloppily or ignoring glaring weaknesses in your guitar playing.

Here are a few examples of how this attitude hurts your progress:

Using The Wrong Picking Style

Many guitar players continually use the same picking approach to play everything from scales to arpeggios to rhythm guitar riffs. This results in ineffective use of motion that prevents them from improving their speed and often leads to sloppy playing at higher levels. Picking like this makes your guitar playing weak in some areas and strong in others. This lack of balance leads to a lot of unnecessary frustration.

Practicing Guitar Speed Ineffectively

A lot of guitar players try to improve their overall playing speed using the conventional wisdom given to them by others. They are told to start slow and get faster over time. This might help for a while, but eventually this approach leads you to a plateau. There are many right and wrong strategies for getting faster on guitar that apply in different situations based on your specific weaknesses. Using the correct one helps you overcome plateaus like this.

Using The Wrong Approach To Fretboard Visualization

When you learn how to visualize the fretboard incorrectly, you struggle to improvise and stay in key while playing guitar solos. When you learn the right way to master fretboard visualization, improvising becomes effortless and it is easy to connect guitar soloing phrases together all across the neck.

Trying To Clean Up Lead Guitar Mistakes Using The Wrong Approach

When you approach the task of cleaning up your guitar playing incorrectly, your playing remains sloppy and you never figure out why. Using the correct approach quickly identifies the main cause of string noise or sloppiness in your playing. This helps you understand exactly what and how to practice to clean it up.

Learn the right way to improve many areas of your guitar playing by taking this guitar playing test.