How long before I notice an improvement in my guitar playing?
David asked:
I’ve been playing guitar for a few years and have recently started playing the electric guitar. I’ve gotten stuck on stairway to heaven and m+ms due to not being able to play the bends fast enough etc and over the last week nothing seems to have improved!! If I practice an hour a day how long will it take for me to notice an improvement? I’ve also been practising pentatonic scales.
I’ve been playing guitar for a few years and have recently started playing the electric guitar. I’ve gotten stuck on stairway to heaven and m+ms due to not being able to play the bends fast enough etc and over the last week nothing seems to have improved!! If I practice an hour a day how long will it take for me to notice an improvement? I’ve also been practising pentatonic scales.
Dont try to learn 1 song at a time. Youll tire of it and become stagnant. Mess around and make up stuff too. Learn the chord names and formations, how to use a capo, and how to play scales. This stuff isn’t too hard. Get an intro music theory textbook for like 90 bucks and actually read it itll help alot.
Any 5 year player can learn stairway to heaven in a few hours. not very impressive, nor do I think it was even worth learning (though I did). Just take the songs off your ipod and find the tabs for them online and play along with the song until you can play it alone. Bob Throbber
Honestly, you probably won’t actually NOTICE an improvement.
You’ll keep going and suddenly you’ll be able to nail a song effortlessly that you’ve been struggling with. It’s a slow process, and a week really isn’t enough time to expect an improvement. It sounds like it’s more of a physical limitation than any difficulty learning what notes to play. For an example, you wouldn’t expect to go from lifting 100 pounds to lifting 250 pounds in a week would you? Your muscles need to develop before you can do some things. My nemesis was “Master of Puppets” by Metallica, I knew what the notes were, I just couldn’t downpick fast enough to play it correctly. I got frustrated, much like you are now, and just played some power chords for a while, just making stuff up. Then one day I picked up my guitar and played the song note-perfect at the correct tempo.
Also, instead of just learning one song at a time and playing scales, start screwing around with it, just making stuff up off the top of your head. Take a break for a day or two now and then, so when you go back to it, it feels fresh again. Chances are you won’t actually notice yourself getting better, you’ll just be able to do something you couldn’t before and be like: “Whoa, that’s pretty cool, I didn’t realize I could do that”
That’s the kind of stuff that keeps me playing. cnewshadow