How to progress on the guitar

Contents

1. Warming up on the guitar: an essential prerequisite
2. The metronome: your best ally as an apprentice guitarist
3. Hold back and play slowly!
4. Learning chords: an important step in your progress
5. Nurturing your desire and staying motivated
6. Practise regularly
7. Record yourself and listen back
8. Practise the acoustic guitar without a backing track
9. Leave your comfort zone: a way to challenge yourself and improve
10. Join a band and boost your motivation

Starting the guitar means opening yourself up to every possibility! It is a bit like a new birth, a whole new world opening before you, with so much to learn and discover.
Of course it makes you dream, but it is easy to feel a little lost in that universe. That is why we are sharing our ten best tips for progressing on that magnificent instrument, the guitar. Ready? Here are the ten secrets that will help you become the best!

1. Warming up on the guitar: an essential prerequisite

This advice doesn't only apply to guitarists. Any musician who plays regularly knows how important it is to warm up the body before practising. A good warm-up protects you and spares you many injuries, tendinitis and more…

There are many exercises, and you will find plenty online. None is really better than another. The essential thing is to mobilise and stretch the parts of your body that are going to be used. For the guitar, exercises for the arms matter: neglect nothing, from the shoulder to the forearm, through the elbow and right down to the fingertips. Stretch, loosen, mobilise!

The first aim of warming up is to let the muscles relax. As we know, quality of playing comes with relaxation. Speed and precision only come to those who are relaxed.

But don't think that is all. True, you won't dislocate a shoulder or break a shin playing the guitar. But the risk of injury from intensive practice is very real! A good warm-up will keep you safe from this kind of problem.

So how do you warm up? Start with the upper body: your shoulders and neck. Stretch and mobilise! This will help you be more relaxed when you hold your guitar. Warm up both arms as well: start with the fingertips, the wrists, then stretch the different muscles of the forearm (stretching the hand upwards, then downwards, with the arm held straight).

When you play, pay special attention to your posture, especially at the beginning, so as not to pick up bad habits. Your back should be straight.

How long should you warm up before practising? Generally 5 to 10 minutes is plenty. With practice you will become better and better at feeling the right amount for you.

Once you have warmed up, you can do exercises to loosen your fingers, which is also very important if you want to gain speed. These are simple exercises that you start slowly and gradually speed up. You will find many examples on YouTube.

2. The metronome: your best ally as an apprentice guitarist

Why practise with a metronome? Is it really useful? And what is a metronome, anyway?

A metronome is a device that gives a tempo, a steady one, which means it does not vary. It is set in "BPM", short for "beats per minute". A metronome set to 60 BPM gives you one click every second. Of course, the BPM, in other words the speed, can be set to suit what you are working on. Metronomes generally offer a range from 20 to over 300 BPM.

So what is the point of a metronome? It stops you speeding up or slowing down as you play. That is an essential quality for any self-respecting musician. You can be super-gifted in harmony, but if you don't develop your sense of rhythm and tempo, you won't get far.

The metronome is the foundation of all your rhythmic work. When you practise alone, it is the only thing that can confirm the rhythmic accuracy of your playing.

Because, let's face it, every beginner tends to speed up. Keeping time may seem simple, but it actually takes work. Using your metronome regularly lets you forget it quickly, though. After a few days or weeks you will follow the tempo without giving it much thought, and your ability to play at a steady tempo will gradually grow.

Every guitar teacher will tell you at some point: practise with a metronome! You can get one at any decent music shop, at an affordable price. So don't wait: start practising with a metronome from the very beginning!

3. Hold back and play slowly!

The more slowly you play, the more time your brain has to analyse your movements, and the faster it will absorb them. It sounds logical, yet the beginner almost always has a natural tendency to want to play as fast as possible.

Psychologically, you feel you are working faster when you push the tempo up a little, and it feels a bit less tedious. In reality, though, your playing will first be of lower quality, and second, your brain will have more trouble absorbing it. The result: you progress more slowly.

So for every new piece you work on, your metronome should be set to a minimum tempo, which your guitar teacher can suggest.

It has to be said: playing a piece fast and cleanly is impossible if you can't play it slowly. Yet a curious thing often happens: practising an exercise slowly is harder than doing it at a slightly higher tempo. Don't be fooled: the fact that you can't manage it slowly is precisely the sign that the exercise isn't mastered, even if it seems a little easier at speed.

4. Learning chords: an important step in your progress on the guitar

What is a chord? A chord is several notes stacked and played at the same time. On the guitar this is a very important subject, because the guitar, along with the piano, is among the instruments most used to play chords.

The guitar is a polyphonic instrument, meaning it can play several notes at once. That is not the case for other instruments such as the saxophone, the trumpet or the flute, which can only produce one pitch at a time. These are called monophonic instruments.

The guitar has several systems for writing chords. They can be written on a standard staff (on a score), in which case you will need to know music theory to get by. But the good news is that there is another language: the chord diagram.

The chord diagram is a very visual notation that lets you see instantly where to put your fingers to play the chord you want. Rejoice: such a handy notation doesn't exist for the piano!

Spend time on chords regularly: 10 to 15 minutes a day will let you progress quickly. The brain learns faster with short regular sessions than with long occasional ones!

Of course, working on the guitar will take you deep into the world of harmony. Even if you start with chord diagrams, some music theory will soon become necessary if you want to progress beyond the beginner stage. Theory lessons can be a precious help, even though they are not compulsory.

Once again, taking guitar lessons with a qualified teacher is your best chance of progressing effectively and quickly. The teacher will guide your efforts to make them as efficient as possible. They can also bring in music theory as you go along, which may well be more than enough.

As for theory lessons, they are not necessarily required as long as you are not aiming for a professional career. So discover our guitar classes now!

5. Nurturing your desire and staying motivated is essential to progress on the guitar

Finding the source of your motivation will be your engine as you learn the guitar. At the beginning you may be excited about starting something new, about buying a new guitar, and so on.

But these motivations are short-lived: very soon you will need to find something else. Don't forget that learning is much easier and faster when you want to do it!

Of course you can't be at full throttle every day. Everyone has ups and downs, and that is perfectly normal. But in general, you need to learn and discover what motivates you.

It may be setting goals, making progress, showing your latest achievements to friends and family, playing on stage if you are in a band. Discovering great guitarists can also be an important source of inspiration and motivation.

Taking guitar lessons is a sure source of motivation. It feels good to show your difficulties to someone more experienced and get immediate solutions from them. A good guitar teacher is a precious asset in that respect. Experience shows that a motivated student progresses faster, and that progress itself brings motivation. It is a virtuous circle: the more you practise, the more you progress, and the more you want to practise.

6. Practise the guitar regularly

Joe Satriani, an outstanding guitarist, worked enormously hard to reach the level he has today.

Regular work is the key to your progress! We often say it: it is more effective to practise 15 to 20 minutes regularly than to do one big session every 10 days. For children, 10 minutes a day is plenty if they apply themselves Monday to Friday. For an adult, the ideal is at least 30 minutes, three to four times a week.

Don't forget to take breaks: the brain sometimes needs time to digest and absorb the work done. To help yourself, plan your practice times and note down the work you actually did. Seeing your efforts add up will motivate you further.

7. Record yourself and listen back to develop your guitar playing

Recording yourself, in any discipline, lets you observe yourself. You can then spot details, good and bad, that you cannot perceive in the moment.

When you play the guitar, you are focused on the playing itself. The brain is busy coordinating the hands and putting together all the information it has to handle at once: reading, transcribing, hand position, rhythm, and so on. It becomes hard to observe what you are doing. Filming yourself lets you watch yourself back and see lots of details with a critical eye.

It is not only about spotting the "negative" points to improve, but just as much about noticing the progress made from one session to the next. Recording yourself will let you correct your posture, your fluidity and your guitar playing. Both video and audio are worth recording and reviewing!

8. Practise the acoustic guitar without a backing track

Some guitarists practise a great deal with backing tracks: pieces recorded without the guitar part, which let you play along as if you were in a real band.

This practice is extremely beneficial for learning to play at a steady tempo. The track won't wait for you or catch up with you if your speed is uneven: it is up to you to adapt and keep up! On the other hand, playing over music reduces your ability to hear the sound of your own guitar, especially on an acoustic.

Getting a good sound out of an acoustic guitar is not so easy; it takes some work. So also practise without a backing track at times, to work on that side of the instrument.

Improve between your guitar lessons!

9. Leave your comfort zone: a way to challenge yourself and improve on the guitar

Interaction with another guitarist is a powerful driver. Once you get past the complete-beginner stage and can play a few chords and a few melodies, it becomes interesting to measure yourself against other guitarists.

Hearing others play and showing what you can do is a way to challenge yourself. All your mistakes will seem more glaring, and more experienced guitarists will be a sure source of motivation.

It is not about beating yourself up, noticing only what is wrong with your playing and telling yourself you will never reach the level of so-and-so. Quite the opposite: it is about putting the work you have done and the level you have reached into perspective. Practising alone at home, without interaction, tends to settle you into a comfort zone and to leave out certain points that need improving, filing them as secondary when they are actually essential.

10. Join a band and boost your motivation

Do it as soon as you get the chance! As written above, measuring yourself against and playing with other musicians forces you to question yourself and improve, while drawing extra motivation from the group work.

To improve your guitar playing, being part of a band is essential. Music isn't played alone in your bedroom: it is an activity of interaction, a group activity, social by its very nature!

Besides, and obviously, some qualities essential to a good musician, listening to others in particular, can only be learned by playing with other artists.

Enjoyed this article? Find guitar classes in Lausanne now! Or learn more with our article the history of the guitar.