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Do You Know That 99% Of Guitarists Keep Making These Same Mistakes? (are you?)
By Mike Hayes | June 29, 2010
After thirty five years of professional guitar teaching it’s
obvious to me that the majority of would – be guitarists keep
making the same mistakes year in and year out. It’s these very
same mistakes that actually prevent them from becoming the type
of guitarist they want to be.
What usually happens is the guitar player takes up the instrument
full of enthusiasm and attacks the process of learning to play
like a “bull at a gate” without actually taking the time to
really understand the process of learning a musical instrument.
Oddly enough if the guitarist spent five minutes thinking things
through they could easily save themselves five hours of haphazard
practice.
Here’s the top three mistakes I see guitar players repeatedly
make trying to learn the guitar; learn to identify and rectify
these errors in own your practice sessions and you will join the
small number of successful guitar players (the elite 1%),
overlook or fail to rectify these learning hazards and you can
forget it … take up golf or swimming you ain’t going to make it
as a guitarist!
Top three mistakes
Mistake 1. practicing too fast – this has to be the number one
mistake! Remember speed comes as a by-product of accuracy; there
is no award for fast and sloppy players.
Solution: Use a metronome when you practice, never play faster
that perfect synchronization of both hands will allow.
Mistake 2. allowing overtones to ring on – overtones are little
faint ghost notes that play by themselves, they are caused by
open strings vibrating in sympathy with certain notes that are
being fretted in a piece of music. These unwanted notes
(overtones) make your music sound, sloppy, out-of-tune and messy.
Solution: make sure you are dampening all other strings that you
are not playing, sometimes you have to use both hands to mute
all the unwanted overtones. Record yourself often and pay
particular attention to the overtones, you should only hear the
notes you intended to play. This technique of dampening all the
strings is also essential for playing particular types of music
e.g., funk and R & B.
Mistake 3. guitarists who don’t know what they are playing – very
common mistake amongst guitarists who learn exclusively via TAB;
there’s no getting around this one, if you doing know what you
are doing why bother doing it in the first place?
Solution: Learn the names of the notes on the guitar fretboard.
There can be no forward movement in your guitar playing career if
you don’t address these problems you will spend the rest of your
guitar playing days like a man running very fast in one spot …
there will be a lot of activity but you won’t be going nowhere!
There are some other common musical banana-peel issues that pop
up amongst guitarist but these three need to be addressed first
so now you know what to do it’s totally up to you to decide if
you want to do anything about it; if you make a conscious effort
to overcome these next problem will be well on your way to a
successful playing career on guitar.
Topics: Beginner Guitar Lesson, Guitar Tips, Learn And Master Guitar | No Comments »
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