Many students who take guitar lessons tell me that they practice every day, but they don't have their assignments mastered by their lesson time and they are not satisfied with their rate of improvement. Here is what I tell them:
There is a difference between practicing your guitar and playing your guitar. Playing is a very good way to spend your time, and you will definitely build some important skills if you play your guitar everyday. But when you play guitar, you are not necessarily practicing. Remember: Play is what we do for fun.
Practicing involves working on something that does not come easily. Often times it makes you feel frustrated, inadequate or board. If you experience some of these feelings, you have no doubt found an area that needs work. To address the challenge, break it down into smaller parts. Ask your teacher to help you isolate the problem if you cannot find a solution right away.
Because practice takes so much energy, mental focus and determination, I encourage my students to practice with full concentration for only 10-20 minutes a day, and then play music for about 30 minutes a day. You won't necessarily become a better guitar player by practicing more; it's the combination of practicing the tricky parts until they become easier and playing a lot of music that comes easily and gives you enjoyment that leads to better playing.
Daily Practice
Studying for your guitar lessons is not exactly like studying for your other classes. You may be successful in another class by simply cramming the night before a test, but because you need to develop small motor skills and muscle memory to play the guitar, daily practice is crucial to your progress.
You will be much better off if you practice 20 minutes each day than if you practice for three hours right before your lesson. That's because your muscles need to learn the music, and to do that, you need to give them breaks to properly absorb each task. If you want to improve at the fastest rate, practice for short amounts of time, several times a day.
On the days when you are extremely busy, practice for 5 or 10 minutes; but make it quality practice. Work on the areas that need the work, and don't spend your time playing things that you can already play well.
There is a way that practicing the guitar is similar to studying for your other classes: If you are reading and you do not understand a particular word, you don't simply reread the paragraph with the hope that you will magically understand it the second time. You stop reading, find the definition of the word, and then reread the paragraph. If you are working on a piece of music and you cannot play a particular section, you should stop and work on that particular section until you can play it, then go back to the top.
Frustration!!!
Many guitar students tell me that they feel frustrated when they practice the guitar. That statement actually makes me pretty happy because it tells me that they really want to learn how to play the guitar. The students who do not occasionally feel frustrated actually frustrate me because of their lack of desire.
It is important for students to keep learning new and challenging material. A lot of guitar players become comfortable with a handful of chords, a scale pattern and a few cool-sounding riffs. After a while, they may try something that demands a new skill, but they give up because the frustration overwhelms them.
These players forget what it was like when they were first learning how to play the guitar. It was not all fun and it didn't come easy. There were sore fingers, complex diagrams and the fear that no matter how much time they spent at it, they had no idea if they would ever be able to play anything at all. But they worked at it anyway because they had a strong desire to learn how to play.
Those players need to remember how frustrating it was when they couldn't "get it," and they need to remember how good it felt when they did "get it." That's the process that all musicians go through when they are first learning how to play, as well as when they have been playing for 20 or more years.
I believe there are a few very important skills that good musicians develop over the years. Here are a few: A strong desire to play an instrument, the ability to concentrate for long periods of time, and a way of dealing with the frustration of not being able to perform new skills immediately or consistently.
Good teachers welcome a certain amount of frustration because we all feel it. It can be helpful for students to talk about it and to be reminded that the learning process involves feelings of frustration from time to time. But if a student has an overwhelming amount of frustration, it might be a good idea for the student to take a break for a while. The student can then see if her/his feelings can be better understood and managed so that playing the guitar can still be a fun activity.
You Are So Talented, You Don't Need to Practice
Some students think they are fooling their teacher, or they must be very talented musicians if their teacher doesn’t notice that they have not practiced their assignments. What it really means is that the teacher doesn't care, as long as tuition is paid.
I have seen guitar teachers laugh at their students who keep coming back when absolutely nothing is being accomplished. "I just keep wondering when they'll notice," one teacher told me.
These students think they are fooling the teacher, but really, the teacher is fooling the students. Stop taking lessons or find a teacher who will hold you accountable to your assignments.
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