Everything you need to practice playing guitar

If you have been feeling that burning flame within to pick a guitar or to learn how to play this music instrument, but somehow cannot make it like one of those guitar idols that we all have, let’s put aside that regret or feeling of not good enough and find some ways to hone this skill. What we are about to discuss here is also ideal for someone who is pretty busy with other things of life and always look at the guitars intermittently with a sigh.

Define your level of mastery

Foremost, we can break down this problem to the simplest level of our already possessed skills. That is to say, let’s categorise ourselves into three levels. Beginner, intermediate, to the top! If you are a beginner, for you the best option is to go down the roads of lessons first and then stick with guitar tab. Even if you don’t feel like getting lessons and just want to practice your favourite piece or songs, don’t even hesitate and start just learn the guitar tab from any of the YouTube videos and get started. For the intermediate or the man of the silver mountain, you guys just set aside a goal.

Set your goals for mastering your guitar skills

You can use various habit tracker app to keep track of your progress. Now what you should keep track of is, set your goal of playing guitar with day and time divided. It could be once a week if you are too busy. Set the amount of time you want to play as well.

It would be wise if you are too busy and somewhat become drained to even hone your guitar skill at the end of the day, just start small. For instance, once a week, 15 minutes and set the goal of doing it for 30 days. I know, once you get into the flow it is unbreakable and that “no!” feelings when the set amount is up and you have to put that weapon down. However, remember, the point is to build habit first then to worry about the consequent steps.

Introduce regular warm ups into your daily routine

As the saying goes that “Motivation is what get  you started and habit is what keeps you going”. So this is suffice enough to realize that we just need to pay some damn attention to our weapon of choice as well as our soul and not to drown ourselves in the worldly needs to the point that our soul is struggling to breath space.

The next thing you should keep in mind is building a habit of warming up as much as you can a week. Then you can progress from where you are to where you want to be, nailing down those new scales, chords, licks, techniques and so on. One of the best ways to build the habit is once you get to the point where you can play your favourite songs. Just pick one and play along with any guitar tabs online and get the bars right with a metronome. This is a great way to keep you on the track if you are a dedicated listener whose heads are full of songs.

In case you are not yet quite familiar with guitar tabs, it is not thus difficult once you get a hang of how it works. It is like reading a manual for something and identifying which symbols correspond to an exact kind of behaviour and so forth. For instance, what the time signatures of the bar or the whole songs are, what key it is on, the ledger lines and their corresponding notes and the behaviour of notes.

There are modern online guitar tabs out there such as songsterr.com, Ultimate guitar, Guitar Pro and others and they are a nice place to look in. They have a vast library of songs you will be able to pick from.