Ten Incredibly Actionable Guitar Practice Motivation Tips That Improve Your Guitar Playing Today
by Tom Hess
You probably already understand how difficult it is sometimes to feel inspired to practice guitar. On days where you lack motivation to practice, you become much more likely to stop practicing earlier than you planned.
Solution: Use the following powerful tips to raise your motivation to keep practicing & make guitar practice a lot more enjoyable.
Tip #1: Think Of New Ways To Play Guitar Licks & Techniques You Already Know. Here is How:
Practicing the same thing over and over quickly becomes boring. Finding new ways to play something you are already familiar with refreshes it and makes it fun again.
For instance: Consider string bending technique. How many various ways can you think of to bend a string? If your answer is less than 7, there is a lot you can do now to massively improve your musical creativity.
Check out this video to see a demonstration of many cool ways to bend strings:
Learn five cool guitar tricks that make your playing sound great in no time by downloading this guitar playing resource.
Tip #2: Ask A Difficult Question
What if…
…Something happened and you were never going to play guitar again? Think about the regret you would feel for not playing guitar when you had the opportunity to do so before.
Or, think about this: What if today was the last chance you had to play guitar? Would just put your guitar down and go watch TV? Or would you squeeze as much fun out of your last moments with the instrument as you could?
You probably won’t have to worry about never being able to play guitar again. However, asking these types of questions focuses your mind on your guitar playing goals and pushes you to keep getting better.
Tip #3: Use The Three-Minute Approach To Grow Your Guitar Practice Momentum.
Pick up your guitar and practice it for only 3 minutes. Allow yourself stop playing guitar if you don't feel like it after this short amount of time. Generally, you will continue practicing longer than just a few minutes.
This happens because:
*Getting started is the most difficult part of any task. Once you get started, it’s much easier to keep going than to stop in the middle of it.
*Practicing guitar for only a few minutes can be done by anyone regardless of how busy their life is. Use this trick to always get yourself to practice.
Tip #4: Create An Imaginary Musical Mentor In Your Mind
Consider this potential scenario:
It’s 8:30pm on a Tuesday night. You are in the middle of your usual guitar practice routine. Then, out of nowhere your favorite guitar player steps into the room.
What are you going to play for them? Is there something you want them to motivate you to get better at? Figure out the answers to these questions and visualize this scenario to motivate yourself.
Tip #5: Turn Your Guitar Practice Sessions Into A Game. Here is how to do it:
So many guitarists don’t like practicing, because it feels boring for them. Turning guitar practice into a game helps you overcome this potential issue.
- Measure your progress consistently to see how much improvement you have with specific skills on Sunday every week. Try to make more progress than you did the last week.
- Focus on various areas of your guitar playing when you repeat the same practice items.
This prevents you from becoming uninterested, helps time go by more quickly and develops your guitar playing very fast.
Tip #6: Take Your Mindset Back In Time.
Consider all the challenges and frustrations you’ve overcome in your guitar playing since you first began. Imagine if you quit early on when times were tough. If that happened, you wouldn’t be the player you are now.
This means:
- When you put off practicing guitar now, it becomes less likely that you become the great player you want to be.
- You’ve already experienced the most challenging and frustrating time of learning guitar (getting started as a beginner with no skills). You did this and achieved your current skill set.
Right now, you are closer to being able to play guitar how you want than ever before.
Tip #7: Put Your Guitar Playing Success On The Right Path
This refers to building a network of serious and enthusiastic guitarists, just like you. No matter what skill level the guitarists in your group have, their enthusiasm to improve inspires you to practice more and reach your goals.
(If you are unable to locate such musicians in your town, search for a high-quality online music forum to join)
Tip #8: Use Visualization To Take Yourself Forward In Time
Imagine yourself playing guitar exactly the way you want to and visualize others cheering you on as you play amazing licks, solos or songs.
How fast you become the guitarist you want to be depends on what you do in this moment. Every practice session brings you a step closer to the goals you want.
Tip #9: Turn Your Guitar Playing Upside Down
This refers to improving skills you haven't worked on before. Give yourself the chance to:
*Play guitar using techniques you never tried.
*Begin playing new guitar solos or licks you always wanted to try.
*Go through your old guitar lesson exercises, licks or techniques you worked on before. It feels amazing to go back and play old material at a level infinitely higher than you could before.
Taking these actions helps guitar practice feel fresh and new again. This is incredibly motivating and inspiring.
Tip #10: Do Difficult Things That Other Guitarists Don't
Practice combining tons of different musical skills together whenever you can. When you practice integration, you learn how to use what you know in a musical wat. This feels great and makes practice fun.
Note: You don't have to wait until you fully master something before you can integrate it into another area of your guitar playing. You only need to be able to play something slowly to do this.
Learn five cool guitar tricks that make your playing sound great in no time by downloading this guitar playing resource.
About The Author:
Tom Hess is a highly successful guitar teacher, recording artist and virtuoso guitar player. He teaches guitar players from all over the world in his online guitar lessons. Visit his website tomhess.net to get free guitar playing resources and to read more guitar playing articles.
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