10 Guitar Practice Motivation Tips That Massively Improve Your Guitar Playing Today
You already know about the frustration that comes from practicing guitar while feeling unmotivated. On days like this you end up finding reasons not to practice or simply quit practicing much earlier than you originally planned.
Here’s what to do about this problem: Use the 10 amazingly effective tips below to increase your overall guitar practice motivation (even on the days you don’t feel like practicing).
Tip #1: Determine A Variety Of Ways To Play Familiar Guitar Licks/Techniques
Working on the same guitar practice items continuously becomes stale after a while. discovering new ways to practice something that is already familiar, makes practice much more enjoyable.
For example: Think about string bending technique. how many ways do you know to bend a string? If you know less than 10 ways, you still have a lot to learn in this area of your guitar playing.
This video shows you many ways to bend strings for cool and unique guitar playing:
Learn 5 more guitar tricks that make your playing sound better fast by downloading this guitar playing eGuide.
Tip #2: Ask Yourself One Tough Question…
What if…
…You were unable to play guitar ever again? Think about how you would regret not taking advantage of the time you have now to play and enjoy the instrument.
Or, consider this: What if you could only play guitar one last time today? Would you still put it down and go do something else? Or would you get as much enjoyment as possible out of every last second you had left?
Hopefully you won’t ever lose the ability to play guitar. But asking questions like these helps to keep your mind on your musical goals and push through to achieve what you want.
Tip #3: Use The 3-Minute Trick To Get More Guitar Practicing Momentum.
Pick up your guitar and practice it for only 3 minutes. Let yourself put the guitar down if you no longer feel like practicing more after 3 minutes. Most of the time, you will keep practicing for much longer than just a few minutes under these circumstances.
There are a couple of reasons why this happens:
*The most difficult part of accomplishing anything is simply getting started. Once you practice guitar for just a few minutes, it is much harder to stop playing than it is to keep going.
*Practicing guitar for 3 minutes is something anyone can do. You always have 3 minutes to practice — regardless of how busy your life is. This means you can always use this as a way to get yourself to practice.
Tip #4: Imagine Yourself Having An Imaginary Guitar Mentor
Imagine this situation:
It’s 5:30pm on a Tuesday evening. You are in a guitar practice session like normal. Then, the door opens and your favorite guitar player walks in the room.
What would you show them? What do you want them to motivate you to do better? Answer these questions and visualize a mentor in your mind that motivates you to practice when you need it most.
Tip #5: Make Guitar Practice A Game. Here is how:
A lot of guitar players don’t like guitar practice, because they don’t know how to enjoy themselves while doing it. But what if you transformed guitar practice into a game? Here are a couple of ways to do it:
- Track your progress with specific skills at the end of each week. See if you are able to make more progress each week than you did previously.
- Focus on different aspects of your guitar playing as you repeat the same exercises again and again.
This keeps you from becoming bored, helps time pass quickly and improves your guitar playing very quickly.
Tip #6: Go Back In Time Mentally.
Think about all the challenges and frustrations you experienced in your guitar playing when you were a beginner. Imagine if you had given up on your playing then… If that happened, you would never become the guitarist you are today.
This means:
- The more you put off your guitar practice today, the more unlikely you become the great guitarist you want to be.
- You already went through the most difficult and frustrating time of learning guitar (being a complete beginner). You did this and reached your current skill level.
Currently you are much closer to playing guitar the way you really want than you have been ever before.
Tip #7: Put Yourself On The Musical Success Fast Track
This means you put yourself around other guitarists who are dedicated to improving at guitar and becoming better musicians, just like you. Regardless of how advanced the guitarists in your group are, their enthusiasm to get better motivates you to practice more and achieve your goals.
(If you can’t find such musicians locally, search for an online music forum to become a part of)
Tip #8: Take Your Mindset Forward In Time
See yourself playing guitar how you want to play and others admiring your amazing skills.
How quickly you become the player you want to be depends on the actions you take (or don’t take) right now. Every practicing session is a single step towards becoming the killer guitarist you want to be.
Tip #9: Flip Your Guitar Playing 180 Degrees
This means working on skills you haven’t spent time on previously. Allow yourself the freedom to:
*Play guitar in a different style than what you are used to.
*Begin playing some new songs (or guitar licks).
*Check out old guitar lesson exercises, licks or techniques you worked on in the past. It feels great when you revisit them and are able to play them way better than before.
Doing these things makes your guitar practice feel fresh and exciting. This makes you more motivated to keep practicing.
Tip #10: Challenge Yourself To Do What Other Players Won’t
Work on combining many different musical skills together. When you practice integration, you really feel like a musician regardless of where your skill level is currently. This feels incredibly motivating and inspiring.
Tip: Don’t wait until you feel like you have mastered something before integrating it into other aspects of your playing. You can integrate anything you can play at a slow speed.
Learn 5 more guitar tricks that make your playing sound better fast by downloading this guitar playing eGuide.
About The Author:
Tom Hess is a professional touring musician, composer and successful rock/metal guitar teacher. He helps guitarists around the world learn to play guitar online. On his website tomhess.net, you can find guitar playing tips, free guitar resources and more guitar articles.
