Originally Posted by: jtcomctagOnce again I am finding myself slipping out of touch with my guitar. I am one of those guys who has struggled staying with it over the last few years. I put in tons of time and money and am dedicated to learning for a stretch of time and then when I hit a rut or something else comes up that stalls my playing I end up just slipping away from it for a while. Does anyone else out there relate to this? What can I do to stay in touch even when things get a little stale?

I think definitely you got to keep making progress to keep interested. But then you have to have a goal! For myself I realized I wanted to go back to basics. I actually mean the foundations. So I decided that although I'm interested in rock and metal. I've gone back to blues and plan to progress through learning those songs to the 70s rock to 80s and so forth. And have fun all the way. I'm learning by ear now. First time I'm REALLY trying to do it without tab, etc, etc.

I'm learning Born Under a Bad Sign by Albert King (Eric Clapton covered it in Cream). For blues learning some of the 3 Kings (Albert, BB and Freddie) is a good start.

I've also got some great advice from someone about learning songs. Practice very slow and move up the speed bit by bit, only so long as you can play it perfectly before you move on. My Tascam GT-CD 1 helps a lot in this. It is one of those "slows down the song without changing the pitch" thingies. Now you can do it with computer programs like 7th String or even free one Audacity. Another piece of advice I got was "don't just keep starting at the beginning of a song", that is, you will learn the beginning really well and the rest of the song not so well. Instead try learning from the middle, and maybe even another advice saying Learn the Hardest Parts First. That way when you accomplish that, the rest of the songs are easy.

And all the best players learned from their predecessors by playing their songs! Blues, rock, metal, everybody!