Don’t Ask Your Guitar Teacher!
Questions NOT to ask when learning guitar
You want to be a great guitar player. That’s why you’re taking lessons, practicing, and learning all you can about the guitar and playing. You have a plethora of questions for your teacher, the guy in the guitar shop, or anyone else who has guitar knowledge. But you may be asking the wrong, or incomplete questions that are damaging to your musical progress.
These questions come from false assumptions and conventional wisdom that is often wrong and misleading. Asking these questions will keep you from identifying the true causes of your guitar-playing problems. It will also and slow your progress. Here are some examples to the most common incomplete questions you might be asking and what you should be asking instead.
How do I find motivation to practice guitar and become great?
Lack of motivation to practice guitar is never the problem. It’s a symptom of another problem: not seeing results from your guitar practice efforts. To solve the core problem, you must make your guitar practicing highly effective. When you can see, know, and measure your guitar playing improvement, your motivation to practice guitar will go through the roof!
Two ways you can make your guitar practice more effective and improve your motivation to practice guitar are to use the most effective guitar practice schedules possible. You can make much faster progress, even when your practice time is limited. The other way is to consistently track every element of your guitar playing progress. Identify the elements of your guitar playing that are holding you back. Then, you can easily make changes in your practicing to accelerate your progress.
How long does it take to reach (insert specific musical goal here)?
There are two huge problems with the question. First, this question is impossible to answer. No two players progress at the same pace…never. It doesn’t matter if they start at the same level and have the very best tools, materials, and support they need to reach their goal. Even when you study with the best guitar teacher, half of your progress is determined by several things. Fifty percent are the things your teacher does for you. The other half is by your own motivation, work ethic, and desire.
Second, this is a dangerous question to ask. Focusing on the amount of time needed to reach a goal takes your focus away from doing what must be done to reach the goal. What you should do to reach all your musical goals as quickly as possible is this: don’t waste time learning guitar on your own and do everything your teacher tells you.
You will make faster progress when you seek out an expert guitar teacher who will create a specific strategy that you need to follow to reach your musical goals. By focusing on the thinks that matter for your goals, you will master the guitar a lot faster. By doing everything your teacher tells you and doing it consistently and for a long enough period, you will yield results. When you do both things, you will reach your goals in the least amount of time.