The Three Mistakes You Make That Hold Back Your Guitar Playing Creativity
To become a super creative guitar player, you must learn the right skills and understand how to integrate them together… all while avoiding the common mistakes other guitar players make.
The following are frequent mistakes that hold guitar players back from becoming creative. Your potential to become highly creative goes up when you avoid these mistakes:
Mistake #1. Learning Music Theory Or Guitar Techniques But Never Integrating Skills Together
Some guitarists focus all their efforts into learning how music works or developing the best technique. It’s common for these types of players to neglect practicing integrating their skills together. When you neglect this, you are unable to creatively use the skills you’ve developed in actual music. For example, many guitarists have excellent technical playing skills but a total inability to create good musical phrases. This leaves you frustrated because you’ve worked so hard in your guitar playing but can’t play anything musical because you lack the creativity to do so.
Mistake #2. Learning As Many Scales As Possible
Learning scales does not make you a more creative guitarist. By learning tons of new scales, you are much more likely to overwhelm and frustrate yourself than learn anything about becoming creative. This is because learning scales have nothing to do with learning how to play creatively.
Yes, learning more scales can be helpful in the long run, but it doesn’t help you learn how to play creatively (which is a separate skill altogether). Learn how to be creative with what you know now before adding tons of new scale patterns into your repertoire.
Mistake #3. Learning Tons Of Licks By Your Favorite Guitarists
Many guitar players think this is the best way to become creative. They believe that play licks from their favorite players somehow transfers creative ability over to them. Unfortunately, when you focus only on learning licks by other people, it often has the opposite effect. This makes you more dependent on using those licks while soloing rather than thinking creatively to play your own licks. This holds you back from becoming creative in your guitar playing.
Learn the easy step-by-step process for becoming a creative lead guitarist by reading this article on how to create badass guitar licks.
About The Author:
Tom Hess is a professional touring musician and guitar player. He also teaches and trains guitarists from all over the world in his online guitar lessons. Learn more by reading the Tom Hess wiki page and following him on Twitter for free guitar tips.
