So how do you overcome the dreaded “loss of motivation” syndrome and avoid being one of the guitar playing causalities?

Here’s my top 7 ways to stay motivated and play like a professional guitarist

1. Maintain a positive practice experience: There’s nothing worst that a bad practice session, it’s the fastest way to lose your enthusiasm and motivation, diagnose what went wrong: was it the practice material, the equipment or practice environment, whatever the problem is change it immediately, too many bad practice experiences are fatal!

2. Rekindle your passion: Listen to the players who inspired you to take up the instrument in the first place and remember the only way they achieved their ability on their instrument is through PRACTICE, if you are as dedicated and practice as much as they did you will be able to achieve your dreams.

3. New strings: Put some new strings on your guitar they will feel better under your fingers and your guitar will sound a whole lot better.

4. Play with other guitar players: You can’t beat playing and sharing ideas with other guitar players, that’s what music is all about; caring and sharing with other humans. Computers are cool tools but they can never replace human interaction!

5. An instrument to die for: There’s nothing more motivational than having an instrument you just absolutely love to look at, it just dares you to play it … save up and get an instrument you just can’t stop playing, that does not mean the most expensive, just the most desirable!

6. Set goals: Most people give up very easy (not just guitar playing); to overcome this set goals and to achieve your goals remember you need two things (1) clarity of vision – write your goals down; (2) force of intent – guts!

7. Take lessons: Take weekly lessons from an inspiring teacher, just being around an inspiring guitarist will do wonders for your playing, remember the role of the teacher is to help guide you and help you overcome your mental and physical obstacles, they cannot do the practice for you, the best teacher in the world cannot help you if you are not committed.

We will begin our connected learning by identifying the most commonly used minor scales:
natural
harmonic
melodic

You may know many other minor scales however these are the essential ones to learn and master. The first step is to be aware that some of these basic scales have several different names, in fact you may already know how to play them and be unaware of their aliases.

Important: The natural minor is also known as the relative minor and the aeolian mode; the structure of the melodic minor in classical music is different to the melodic minor in jazz music.

In order to grasp how minor scales work and why we have so many of them we must start at the very beginning with the major scale, all my examples will originate from the C major scale.

Here is a two octave C major scale: C – D – E – F – G – A – B – C – D – E – F – G – A – B – C

The natural minor is created by beginning on the sixth note of the major scale, hence the name relative as the natural minor contains the exact same notes as the major scale.

Two octave C major scale: C – D – E – F – G – [A] – B – C – D – E – F – G – [A] – B – C

The “A” natural minor : A – B – C – D – E – F – G – A

By stacking the individual notes of any scale in a constant intervallic format e.g., 3rds, 4ths etc., each scale will produce it’s own unique set of harmonies; it’s helpful to think of scales as horizontal musical structures and chords as vertical structures.

Since the natural minor scale has the same notes as it’s parent major scale no new chords are created.

Chords created from the C major scale: C – Dm – Em – F – G – Am – Bdim – C

A minor chords: Am – Bdim – C – Dm – Em – F – G – Am

In fact endlessly practising scales can stifle your creativity, too much scale playing can ‘free your fingers and freeze your brain’. To put things in the proper perspective playing scales is like a boxer skipping rope or punching a bag. It’s not the thing in itself; it’s preparatory to the activity.

Here’s three tips that will help you overcome scale paralysis, lock-jaw of the wrist and frozen brain syndrome and help you develop your own individual guitar style.

Tip 1: Learn the 19 basic moves to playing guitar: just as there are basic moves (skills) that a person must learn to play tennis, drive a car or learn to type playing the guitar involves 19 basic moves that when combined will enable the guitarist to play any guitar style.

Tip 2 : Learn to balance the three basic music resources : music consists of three basic structures (a) horizontal structure is a melody; (b) vertical structures are chords;(c) oblique structures are called arpeggios.

Listen to your favourite guitar player, study how they blend these music structures to create an interesting well balanced solo, too much of any one of these musical raw materials will spoil the solo.

Tip 3: All the material you will ever need is in the song: think about this for a moment; it seems like I’m stating the obvious … but how many players are aware of this, learn to play the melody of the song, use the intervals of the melody and capture the sentiment of the lyrics and your solo will be a natural development of the song not some random pile of disorganised notes.

On the other hand some guitarists specialise in playing melody or single string notes usually played directly from the written sheet music, while this is the best option to clearly state the melody unless there is a rhythm guitar accompaniment the performance can be quite empty and dull.

The third option is to combine both the melody and rhythm parts of a composition into a solo guitar chord – melody style, whereby the guitarist plays all the parts of the composition without any need of other musicians to present a satisfactory performance.

Although this sounds complicated (or impossible) it’s really quite easy once you understand the concept, here are three tips to get you started in this style of playing.

Tip 1: Learn to play the single note melody, take great care to learn the melody correctly, if you can read standard sheet music it is a good idea to learn the melody exactly as it is stated in the written score; you can always embellish the melody later, the trick is to make certain you are playing the correct melody before you start improvising on the it.

Tip 2 : Play the melody an octave higher than the written piano score. Most guitarists don’t realise that the guitar sounds one octave lower than written; therefore in order for the melody to ‘cut through’ and not get tangled up with the chords it’s essential that you play the melody one octave higher, playing on the first or second strings will give you the best results.

Tip 3: Strum the chord on the first beat of each bar making certain the melody note is the highest note of the chord, in most instances the melody will be a note that already exists in the chord the trick is to make sure that the melody note is not lost amongst the other chord notes; sometimes you may have to slightly alter the chord shape to accommodate a melody note that is not contained in the chord.

Take your time working on only four to six melody notes at a time, aim for precision and make sure to really bring the melody out in your playing, like everything it takes practice, patience and perseverance but the result is well worth the effort.

Guess which group feels the pain and frustration of trying to learn the guitar?

You got it … group ‘b’.

But what if there was an easier way to overcome the frustration and musical stagnation that so many players encounter? Well, the good news is there are many alternative ways to approach learning the guitar, here are my three tips to accelerating your playing, without these the newbie guitarist (or not-so-newbie guitarist) will be destined to remain forever struggling in group ‘b’.

Step #1: Set Goals – Pretty obvious, everyone recommends it (especially the successful players) but how many people do it?

Here is how I would go about setting goals for guitar.

(a) Decide whether you want to be a professional, semi-professional or non-professional … begin with the end in mind, clearly see how you want your relationship with the guitar to be.

(b) Determine your time frame

(c) Do it!

Achieving your goal ultimately comes down to two things: 1.Clarity of intent; 2.Force of will

Step #2: Learn the language of music – Music is language like French, English or Spanish, it has it’s own symbols and punctuation etc., once you learn and understand these rules you are halfway there, without them you are lost without a compass.

Step #3: Learn the names of the notes and their location on the fretboard: It is essential that you know the names of the notes and their location on the guitar fretboard so that you can apply the language of music to your chosen instrument.

I’m going to show you how to play “Before You Accuse Me” from the
Eric Clapton “unplugged” album; it’s a great album for playing
along with as most of the instruments are acoustic and there is
not a lot of heavy studio production so the instruments sound
quite natural.

Essentially music is “pitch in time”; if we dug deeper into this
thing called music we would also discover that music has “form
and content”.

Now it’s time to apply these fundamental principals to learning
and remembering the blues

Step 1: Learn the form of the song: There are various formats or
musical structures for the blues e.g., 8, 12, 16 and 24 bar blues
are the most popular blues song forms; the 12 bar version is by
far the most frequently used blues template.

Our first decision is to identify the correct ’song form’ for
“Before You Accuse Me”.

Before You Accuse Me is a 12 bar blues song form.

Let’s set up the bars for our song; the key to remembering songs
is by laying out your song in a “four-bar-to-a-line” template.

|//// | //// | //// | //// |

|//// | //// | //// | //// |

|//// | //// | //// | //// |

Visually, the ‘four bar to line’ format makes it easy to spot
similarities in the chord progression, many times songs have
identical chord progressions however, because of various printing
considerations in printed music books it is extremely difficult
to identify the recurring patterns; sometimes there will be three
bars to a line, the very next line may have five bars and so on.

Step 2: Identify the content of the song. Most 12 bar blues fit
nicely into one of four blues ‘content’ templates.

“Before You Accuse Me” is no exception, here is the 12 bar blues
song ‘form’ presented with it’s correct musical ‘content’.

Before You Accuse Me

|E7 /// | A7 /// | E7 /// | E7 /// |

|A7 /// |A7 /// | E7 /// | E7 /// |

|B7 /// |A7 /// | E7 /// | E7 /// |

And there we have our song ready to play along with Eric Clapton!

I’ve presented the song in the same exact key as the recorded
version and even though the song will play for 3 to 4 minutes
it’s just this same simple progression played over and over; even
while the solos are being played; just concentrate on tapping
your foot and keeping track of where you are in the chord
sequence.

The trick with playing along with the recorded version is to
remember that the chord progression we have just learned begins
when the vocals start.

Your first strum will coincide with the lyric “Be-fore you accuse
me” etc …

Strum your first “E7″ chord on – “fore” ; (Be) – fore you accuse
me etc.

BTW: If you do happen to have the Eric Clapton “Unplugged” album
there’s another song on that album that uses the exact
progression … try playing along with track 12 “Malted Milk” and
you will have already learned how to play two songs; baby steps
really do work!

It’s true! Thousands of Guitar players glued to their computer
screen surfing the Internet looking for shortcuts, parroting off
licks from YouTube and studying hour after hour hoping to master
their instrument haven’t got a chance!

The horrible truth of the matter is there’s no problem with
information, in fact we have the opposite problem: information
overload; where would-be guitarists practice relentlessly but (a)
can’t remember what they have learned and worst still (b) don’t
know what it is they have learned.

There’s no point doing something if you don’t know what you are
doing?

But what if there was a different approach; one that actually
works WITH your nervous system not against it? Well the good news
is there are numerous ways to go about the business of learning
the guitar here are three ways to overcome the major problem
areas.

Be aware of …

1. Two types of memory – muscle memory and data memory: muscle
memory (motor skill training) requires repetition, this is where
you practice something that you have already learned in a
previous practice session.

Muscle memory training session can be 20 minutes or longer.

On the other hand data memory sessions need to be very short, 3
to 5 minutes maximum.

2. the overload problem – short time frames: It is essential to
monitor your practice sessions, the majority of guitarists just
sit in a room and practice themselves silly hoping that it will
“all come together” somehow.

The problem with this approach, which by the way is the
traditional method, is that the student is only developing ’short
term’ memory skills in much the same way as the majority of
students prepare for an exam; they study hard just before the
exam, get the grades and promptly forget most of the information!

With music practice we want to develop ‘long term’ memory skills;
so keep an eye on your practice time frames.

3. quality not quantity – This is where someone, usually a friend
or guitar teacher suggested you practice a particular exercise or
guitar scale or you have read somewhere that a famous guitarist
studied a particular practice program or something and you figure
if you follow it you will turn out to be a great guitarist.

There is however a more efficient way to learn based on the often
heard but little appreciated rule that states: a person learns
what they want to learn when they want to learn it. This is of
the up most importance in the selection of material; a person
must know exactly what they are working on and why.

Summary: remember it is not practice that makes perfect rather
“PERFECT practice that makes perfect!”

In twelve months time 80% will have given up altogether and sold
their expensive instruments (for a fraction of the original
purchase price.)

The remaining 20% can be accurately divided into three groups:

(a) 5% have been successful in unlocking the guitar fretboard and
have learned the language of music as applied to the guitar (5%)

(b) 10% practice relentlessly and make very little progress

(c) 5% pick up the guitar occasionally, mostly at parties playing
the same songs the same way year in and year out.

The reason for the tragic failure rate can be traced back to 3
brutal guitar mistakes that almost every newbie guitarist falls
victim of; these mistakes repeated over and over spell disaster
for the guitar hopefuls regardless of how dedicated, how focused
or determined they are.

But what if there was a way to overcome these mistakes and
accelerate past them, the good news is there are many ways to by-
pass these mistakes here are a few tips that will land you in the
top 5% successful category.

The first step is to identify the 3 most common mistakes.

Mistake # 1. Playing Too fast – because we always hear the
finished music product it is easy to get the wrong idea about
practicing and playing.

Remember, the public never gets to hear the countless hours of
practice it takes to achieve the finished audio product.

What to do instead: The key to practice is NOT the amount of
practice that you do rather the quality of the practice.

I do not agree 100% with the old phrase “practice makes perfect”;
I would change that phrase to “PERFECT, practice makes perfect!”

Since speed is a by-product of accuracy I cannot stress enough
the importance of practicing s-l-o-w-y.

Mistake # 2. Trying to Learn too many scales – with so much
information available to the beginner guitarist it’s easy to get
swamped and confused; you would have to spend every waking moment
practicing just to keep up with all the latest scale practice
exercises, fingering patterns and sweep picking techniques.

There’s 3,500 different types of scales not to mention the fact
that you should learn your scales in the twelve different keys
and then transfer this information across to the guitar fretboard
in a multitude of finger patterns.

What to do instead: Drop 99.9% of the stuff and focus on
information that will help you achieve your goals.

The average professional guitarist uses about six to ten
different types of scales the trick is they know many different
applications for these scale.

Mistake # 3. Overloading your head with too many chord shapes -
If you want to send you head spinning pick up one of those 1001
chord books, it’s a sure-fire way to lose interest in playing
guitar.

When confronted with page after page of thousands of seemingly
unrelated chord shapes the first thing that comes to mind is to
make a run for the nearest exit.

What to do instead:

(a) learn the basic two chord progressions in the guitar friendly
keys of G, D, A & E

(b) learn the basic three chord progressions in the keys of G, D,
A & E

(c) learn chord construction that way you can design your own
chord shapes.

I guess it just comes down to those that ‘have it’ can do it and
the those who ‘don’t have it’ are never are able to do it.

WRONG!!!

It all comes down to ‘those that know how to do it’, can do it
and ‘those who don’t know how to do it’ can’t. It has nothing to
do with natural talent or any other ‘old wives’ tales about
learning music.

Early on in my guitar playing adventures I was often puzzled by
certain individuals who were ‘not the sharpest knives in the
draw’, yet they could play really neat solos on the guitar,
whilst I (who was taking music lessons) could only play a few
kiddies tunes.

It turns out that a particular five note scale is the secret,
which five note scale? The minor pentatonic scale.

Technically speaking any group of five notes could be called a
pentatonic scale but the one that interest us as guitar players
is the minor pentatonic scale.

Extensive research has revealed that the notes of the minor
pentatonic scale can be found in almost every culture on earth,
this is truly a universal scale and of course explains it’s
popularity (both on guitar and in music.)

Music of the whole earth:

Here’s something to think about … in days gone by, people all
over the world working in isolation (from each other) arrived at
the same (or almost the same) set of notes.

Why five notes? … easy, people have five fingers.

Why do the notes(s) in the scale vary (slightly) from country to
country? Again, that’s an easy one, it’s because of the size of
the individual’s hand.

When a person in India is making a wooden flute the distance
between the holes will be slightly differ to a flute made in
Africa – it makes sense doesn’t it? The instrument maker would
craft their instrument to suit the size and shape of their
hand(s), this accounts for some slight variations in the same set
of ‘universal’ notes.

The amazing discovery is that people all over the world have been
searching for a particular set of notes that all feel ‘right’.
It’s as if we all come to the planet with the music inside us,
it’s just a matter of working out how to get the music out.

Now, let’s take a look at the famous five notes of the minor
pentatonic scale; I’ll use the “F” minor pentatonic scale for
demonstration purposes.

The notes of the “F” minor pentatonic are:

F minor pentatonic scale = F – Ab – Bb – C – Eb – (F)

If you are familiar with minor scales on the guitar you will
realize that the minor pentatonic scale could be created by
modifying the ‘natural minor scale’.

F natural minor scale = F – G – Ab – Bb – C – Db – Eb – (F)

By omitting the second and sixth notes we produce the “F” minor
pentatonic scale.

Have ever wondered if you were really cut-out to play guitar,
after all the guy’s and gal’s on the videos seem to make it look
so easy!

Despite our best intentions the reality of guitar playing really
hits home once we get our guitar out of it’s case; there’s sore
fingers, impossible chord shapes and nothing seems to sound
anything like remotely like music.

But what if there was an easy way to play chords on the guitar,
well the good news is there are many ways to play easy chord
shapes on the guitar here are just a few to get you started!

Here is a sample of a few “one finger” chords:

G
-3–
-0–
-0–
-x–
-x–
-x–

G7
-1–
-0–
-0–
-x–
-x–
-x–

Gm
-3–
-3–
-3–
-x–
-x–
-x–

“One finger” chords, I can’t possibly get any easier than that
can it? How about a “no finger” chord!

Em
-0–
-0–
-0–
-x–
-x–
-x–

No kidding, that is a correct E minor chord without using any
fingers.

Moving right along …

Another set of popular chords that turn up often in songs are “E”
chords, here are a few “one fingered”, “E” chords for you to
try.

Em7
-0–
-0–
-0–
-0–
-2–
-0–

E7
-0–
-0–
-1–
-0–
-x–
-x–

E
-0–
-0–
-1–
-x–
-x–
-x–

You can make any difficult chord shape easy to play once you
understand which individual notes make up a particular chord,
e.g., a “C” chord is usually quite difficult to play especially
for newbie players, here is a simple one-finger version for you
to try.

C
-0–
-1–
-0–
-x–
-x–
-x–

Now, it’s time you to expand your chord vocabulary how about some
two fingered chords

Em
-0–
-0–
-0–
-2–
-2–
-0–

D69/F#
-0–
-0–
-2–
-0–
-x–
-2–

Don’t be put off by the complex chord name “D69/F#” this chord is
really simple to play and works well with the “Em” chord, in fact
these two chords are all you need to play the song “Horse With No
Name” by the group America.

Horse With No Name

Em /// | D69/F# /// |

Next I’ve included a couple of two finger variations of popular
chords for you to try.

C
-0–
-1–
-0–
-2–
-x–
-x–

D6
-2–
-0–
-2–
-0–
-x–
-x–

The “D6″ makes for a good substitution for the standard “D”
chord.

Summary: Chords are like musical words, once you learn how to
spell a chord you will discover many new (and easy) ways of
playing that chord on the guitar.