Are there any guitar tricks/secrets that really help you improve?

i always see ads and stuff that say click here to learn guitar tricks and secrets! but i don't wanna click them incase they come with a virus or something. but i was wondering if anybody knows a real tip that works and helps you improve significantly?

Thanks.

Practice, practice and more practice. Just like everything else in life, the only way to get ahead is to put in the work. There are shortcuts to make your learning easier but unless you actually put in the time you're not going to get there. My former live teacher used to say something like this: I'm going to show you how to play this chord and when you're practicing on your own you're going to find a way that works best for you, regardless of how I show you. That's pretty much it, you need to find what works for you when it comes to technique but unless you practice, you'll not get any better. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Rock On!

Tim

Originally Posted by: treederPractice, practice and more practice. Just like everything else in life, the only way to get ahead is to put in the work. There are shortcuts to make your learning easier but unless you actually put in the time you're not going to get there. My former live teacher used to say something like this: I'm going to show you how to play this chord and when you're practicing on your own you're going to find a way that works best for you, regardless of how I show you. That's pretty much it, you need to find what works for you when it comes to technique but unless you practice, you'll not get any better. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Rock On!

Tim

thanks for your tips, ok from now on I will be more diligent to practice playing the guitar
thanks

If only there was some magic pill or technique to make it easy....but then everybody would be an awesome guitar player, and where's the fun in that :-).

Practice is important, but you need to practice efficiently and with focus. You also need realistic short term and long term goals.

There is soooo much ground to cover in learning music and the guitar, and it can be overwhelming. Without focus, you'll want to learn it all at once. If you do that, you will soon feel overwhelmed and will likely give up because you will feel like you are just spinning your wheels.

These are things I came to fully realize about 4 months ago. I've been playing guitar for 30 years, but never really progressed beyond an intermediate level.

I'll use myself as an example to help illustrate my point.

My overarching long term goal: be a good enough rhythm and lead guitar player to play in a cover band of classic rock, progressive rock, and hard rock.

Notice I didn't say I want to be the next Joe Satriani or Steve Vai. Those are legitimate goals, but not for me.

My intermediate goals - learn songs, learn the notes on the fretbaord, learn some music theory to help my improvisation, develop my ear, and learn to read tab more efficiently.

My immediate short term goals:
For this I would write out a monthly plan 3 months at a time. I had decided that learning a song a month was a decent goal. So for each month, I identified a song to work on. I had bought a book (The Fretboard Workbook by Barrett Tagliarino) to help me with learning the fretabord. Chapters from that book were made into part of my plan. Each week I would concentrate on a particular note across the fretboard.

My daily routine:
I can set aside 1 hour a day to practice. I mapped out how much time of that hour would be spent learning the fretboard, learning a song, practicing improvising, etc.


There is another and equally important benefit of mapping out your practice in this way - it helps your motivation!!! It does this by showing your progress in a very tangible way. You will accomplish your monthly/weekly goals and you can tell because they are small and measurable. You'll have success to celebrate.

There is also great benefit to recording yourself playing often. This gives you more feedback on how well you are progressing. I did this at one point and was shocked at how well good playing sounded over a particular backing track. It was very motivating!

And one last thing...you need to be flexible with your plan. Treat your plan as a guideline and make adjustments as needed. Some things may come easier to you than initially thought...sometimes the reverse is true. You may decide to modify some longer term goals as you move on because you suddenly find you love to play the blues and want to focus on that!! This is all fine!

Life can also get in the way. You lost a week, or a month because of a family matter? No worries, scratch that week or month off and move forward without looking back.

For me, I had an opportunity to join a band at a local music store. So now my focus is learning the parts I need to learn for the songs we are playing. Once the band thing is done, I'll go back to my original plan.

So even though things are changing, I still have focus because I have a plan. Actually, the band fits into my long term goal, so I've only made some tweaks to my near term goals.

So, in summary:
- Set realistic long, intermediate, and short term goals.
- Write a monthly plan incorporating your goals.
- Lay out a daily practice routine.
- Record yourself often!
- Celebrate your successes as you accomplish your goals!
- Be flexible and make adjustments as necessary. Keep moving forward regardless of what has happened in the past.

I can tell you from my own experience and from what I've observed of others in the is forum - it works!

Hope that makes sense!!

Originally Posted by: maggior
...Practice is important, but you need to practice efficiently and with focus...

+1!! [U]Efficient[/U] practice is sooo important. I think it ranks as my number one tip.

Commit to a set amount of practice time and ensure each of those minutes are actual practice. My daily list of practice 'stuff' is written out in advance and includes the amount of time I want to spend on each item. Then I spend that time (or more if I run over) with hands on guitar. If the day's session is an hour then it's 60 minutes of fingers on strings. Tuning doesn't count. Bathroom breaks don't count. Waiting for GT lessons to start up doesn't count. Noodling around doesn't count.

Number two tip -- keep it fun. If you're not enjoying it, if you don't feel rewarded and motivated from your progress, then why are you doing it? Enjoy the lessons, enjoy guitar, enjoy the music.

All these points are good ones. To me, I went from an okay guitar player to a really good one when I learned the neck of the guitar. For example, if you're gonna play a song in the key of A, know where every "A" root note is on the neck. Learn it for every key...it's not as hard as you might think...you'll start discovering patterns as you learn.

While it's certainly important to practice a lot, I also think it's important to practice properly. Yes, there are some great guitarists who got where they are by practicing a lot every day, but you can be sure they also know how to do it properly.

I'm not really a Satriani fan, but in a book I'm studying, I noticed that he shares his professional advice on how to practice. I don't have the book at hand right now, but essentially, he says that when you practice, whether it's a new lick, scale or riff, make sure to practice it at a tempo where you can play each note cleanly in time. Repeat that riff/lick/scale at this tempo, until you feel you can play it a bit faster, then increase the tempo by very few BPM, and repeat. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if you've played the same thing 1000 times. If you practice slowly and increase speed only once you can play it perfectly, you'll learn to play it clearly. If you just play the same thing sloppily over and over, you'll be learning how to play it sloppily. Again, I'm not a big fan of Satriani, but his advice does help. I had a bit of trouble learning the phrases in Satriani's "Crowd Chant" (because my teacher said it's a good example of how to use the minor pentatonic scale), and after reading the advice he gave, the Arpeggio-parts seemed easier to handle.

Two other things that will help you improve and are frequently brought up on the Internet are:

1: Practice with a Metronome. This site offers one, there are tons others online, I'm pretty sure Google Play and the Apple App-store contain a few free metronomes you can download. Metronomes are so ridiculously easy to find and use, that it's almost unbelievable just how useful they are. The advantages to practicing with a Metronome are that you'll be able to track your progress when building speed, and they can help you learn to play in time (although a real drummer is better, provided he can keep a steady tempo... Drummers are usually easier to hear that the silent clicking of a Metronome). I don't know what your goals are, but if you want to play in a band, being able to play in time is very important.

Once you reach a satisfying level, you can try jamming to some backing tracks. GT has some, and YouTube has a couple of pretty cool ones too.

2: Warm-up exercises are important too. I know nothing about how muscles work, except that they let you do stuff, but I keep seeing people saying how utterly important it is to warm up before practicing or playing live. You don't need an electric guitar plugged in to do this, and if you have a tube amp (which I don't expect), you can do this while waiting for the Tubes to warm up as well. Different people have different ways of warming up, though. I know Slash used to just play what later became the intro to "Sweet Child O' Mine", and I actually find that works pretty well for me, along with a few other exercises. The general rule of thumb is that playing guitar without warming up first is like running a marathon with stretching first. You might be able to do it, but you won't be doing your best.

Keep those few things in mind and you'll at least be moving in the right direction. In the end, though, there are no secrets that help anyone improve on guitar, or any other instrument for that matter.

Have fun learning.

Originally Posted by: FlySelfi always see ads and stuff that say click here to learn guitar tricks and secrets! but i don't wanna click them incase they come with a virus or something. but i was wondering if anybody knows a real tip that works and helps you improve significantly?

Thanks.

As Treeder said the 3 p's

Originally Posted by: john of MT+1!! [U]Efficient[/U] practice is sooo important. I think it ranks as my number one tip.

Ditto... its always vital to know why you're practicing something. I think tons of players just start in, without really having a clear idea of where they are going, which is ok to start, but at some point, you need to set goals as suggested, and map out a plan.

and as far learning technics go,imo find one you really enjoy and stick with it till you have it down pretty good.without useing to much thought process,then go to ur next one ect.thats what helped me out allot.instead of bouncing back and fourth.

Pretty much Maggior summed up all of the greatest "secrets" perfectly.

I've found that learning songs by ear helps a great deal. Not an easy skill to master for sure, but it is a skill that will help you the sooner you start. For me learning songs by ear has made theory/fretboard/timing knowledge feel more meaningful and memorable.