Stop Practising The Guitar!!!
Did you know you should actually stop practising if you want to improve your guitar playing? I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true.
Let me explain…
Think of all the times you’ve wasted playing the same thing over and over, and not getting anywhere.
Think of all the times you got so frustrated or disheartened because you felt like you were playing worse by the end of the practice than you were at the start.
And don’t forget the (probably thousands of) times when you didn’t practise at all because the thought of struggling through the same song again, mindlessly running through the same scales for the millionth time, was just too much to bear.
Did you make progress in all those times? No.
Sure, you might have seen some progress over time, but I’m willing to bet that was in spite of your practising, not because of it.
Practising – that is, playing through ‘exercises’ or repeating the same song a hundred times to ‘get it right’ - is useless bullshit, to be perfectly honest with you.
It’s a lie we’ve all imbibed from our school days, when our teachers (who probably weren’t that good at it themselves) would tell us to ‘just keep practising’ or ‘practice makes perfect’.
Well I’m here to tell you, they were wrong.
They weren’t lying to you exactly, because they probably believed it themselves: but they were still dead wrong.
Not just because practising and repeating over and over is mindless and mind-numbing. Not just because it becomes a huge barrier to practising. Remember all those times you felt like ‘being a guitarist’ was something ‘out there’, in the future?
Remember when you had these dreams of being a guitarist, just picking up the guitar and playing amazing solos or running through songs like they were nothing, but somehow that dream always seemed just a little out of reach?
You probably thought ‘I need to keep practising’, or ‘If I just learn this one thing I’ll be ready’.
But you weren’t.
Just like you weren’t ready when a friend (or maybe a potential boyfriend/girlfriend) found out you were a guitarist and asked you to ‘play something’, and you didn’t feel any confidence in actually sounding good, because there’s no spontaneity in your playing, no real connection, so everything is from memory, not from the heart.
Maybe you fumbled through something, or mumbled your way through an excuse (I play left-handed guitar, so that was always a life-saving excuse for me!). whatever the case, you knew you’d missed an opportunity.
Practising didn’t help you then, did it?
And practising hasn’t helped you with that feeling of not being ‘good enough’ and not knowing why or how to fix it. You hate getting things wrong, and mindless repetition just makes that worse; the mistakes pile up, your frustration grows, until you’re completely fed up. Or maybe you feel you have to ‘struggle through’.
Is that what guitar playing is about? Struggling? Being disheartened? Feeling like you have a whole bunch of ideas in your head, but when you pick up the guitar something seems to be blocking those ideas, stopping them from flowing out onto the guitar?
Is that why you wanted to learn guitar in the first place? Of course not.
So what’s the solution?
That means not worrying about progress or getting things perfect; it means letting go and letting the music flow.
Playing the guitar should be a personal, musical, creative experience every time.
You should be expressing yourself – who you are, what you’re thinking and feeling – every time you pick up the guitar.
The guitar should be your avenue to connecting with other people through that universal language – music.
SO STOP PRACTISING.
How do you do all this?
Glad you asked:
Specifically, by focussing first and foremost on rhythm. To be clear, by ‘rhythm’ I DON’T mean ‘strumming patterns’ or ‘bars’ or ‘beats’, or any of that stuff. So many guitar students learn strumming patterns and they end up getting stuck in them, because they never work on their rhythmic IQ.
If you never develop your rhythmic IQ, you’ll always sound like a guitar student, not a guitarist.
The second thing to focus on is chords & harmony. Again, this is not your usual ‘learn some chords’ approach. It’s about an integrated learning style that builds on the rhythmic IQ you’ve already developed to combine it with fluid movement of your chords.
It’s about being creative with the chords you play (and the way you play them).
It’s about knowing, understanding, and hearing the connection between all the chords of a song, and being able to move in and out of that connection, weaving your own personal signature into the song each and every time you play.
After this you need to look at melody. Just like every other step of the journey, this isn’t about learning a few tips and tricks, or learning some skill disconnected from everything else.
Instead, it’s about integrating melody with the harmony and rhythm you’ve already covered, so that
The good news is, if you focus on them for just 6 weeks, you’ll be able to play with more confidence, more comfort, more independence, and more music than ever before.
That doesn’t mean you won’t have anything new to learn, of course, and it won’t mean you’ll have completely mastered them either.
But by exposing yourself to the language of music, opening yourself up to it, you’ll find it starts to sink in super quickly, and start flowing through you – it’s an amazing experience!
That’s why I created the 6-week Creative Guitar Bootcamp, to give you the tools to stop practising the guitar, and start playing it.
With these tools you’ll become a better guitarist no matter what your current skill level, and you’ll have a solid foundation and ‘big picture’’ ability that will help you with any style of music or guitar playing.
Now, you might be feeling a little sceptical about this.
Maybe you’ve tried other courses or books before, and they haven’t worked for you: I get it, believe me.
I’ve been there, and I spent literally years trying everything I could find, until I realised that my mistake wasn’t my material, but my approach.
Let me give you an example. If you ever went to high school, you probably studied a book in your English class – maybe Animal Farm, by George Orwell, maybe another book. Think back to that experience, and take a moment to answer these questions:
If you answered ‘yes’ to ANY of those questions, then you’ve just found out for yourself the first problem with practising (and the way most people learn in general): they over-analyse.
This effectively kills all interest, and creates a barrier between you and the thing you’re trying to learn.
And yet, we all keep trying. In music we learn scales, arpeggios, theory, we practise finger drills, and so on. And then we wonder why we’ve never reached our goal of actually playing the guitar, or why we’re losing interest.
It’s a lot like learning a language, actually. At the start you don’t know a single word of the new language – let’s say you’re learning Spanish. So when you go to your first class, by the end of it you can speak and understand a few simple sentences, and it feels AWESOME.
All of a sudden, you know some Spanish! You can actually speak it! You can understand it!
So you race back for your second class, but soon you’re learning about conjugations, vocabulary, grammar, etc. – and all of a sudden you’re not learning the language anymore, you’re learning about the language, and you’re not getting any better at speaking it.
This gives us the second mistake people make when learning (including learning guitar):
They don’t immerse themselves in the content.
In the case of language, if you read and speak and listen to Spanish a lot, you’re going to learn it, even if you don’t know a word of grammar (how do you think Spanish babies learn?).
In the case of guitar, if you jump in and start creating music every time you pick up the guitar, you’ll start improving very quickly, because you’re giving your brain and your body the exposure it needs to adapt and connect with the guitar.
I know that sounds incredible, but it’s true. Playing guitar really isn’t that difficult… in fact, Module 2 will show you…
How to Improvise Entire Songs or Write Your Own Easily
This is no joke.
In fact, if you want to be able to write songs and say goodbye to running out of ideas… then jump immediately into Module 2 and learn the solution!
Here are even more great secrets inside the Bootcamp…
Speaking of working out melodies by ear… Module 8 shows you a number of melodic ‘games that show you…
How to recreate any melody on the guitar almost instantly
For most guitarists, this has been their dream for as long as they can remember… so if that’s you, jump in and start discovering!
Let me show you what else you get access to when you sign up for the Creative Guitar Bootcamp:
Playing songs on the fly is really the ultimate goal for a creative guitarist because it gives them freedom and independence. That’s why in Module 10 I show you…
How to make your own fingerpicking arrangements of a song in two different styles
Seriously.
In fact, if you want to play impressive and awesome-sounding guitar but you don’t want to sing… then the advanced fingerpicking ,module is for you!
Why ragtime is the best foundation for classical guitar… Easy exercises to read sheet music… 12 classical pieces to impress your friends with… 4 variants of the blues shuffle… Introduction to solo blues… basics of slide guitar… advanced chords to take your playing to the next level… And more!
I’ve distilled twenty years of guitar playing and ten years of teaching into this course.
If you’re motivated, you can even finish it in as little as 6 weeks (but you don’t have to – it’s up to you)!!
Anyway, here’s the bottom line.
You can get lifetime access to the Creative Guitar Bootcamp for just $197 USD.
You can also get it for 3 payments of $67.
This is an absolute steal compared to what you’d pay in years wasted trying to figure it out on your own.
It’s also a drop in the bucket compared to how much it’d cost you to learn it from me one-on-one: if you came to me to teach you this stuff directly it’d set you back a good $1,200.
Not kidding.
Plus, in person you couldn’t get a refund if you didn’t like the lessons, so all that money would be wasted, right?
But when you purchase the Creative Guitar Bootcamp, you get a full 30 days to try the course out, and if you don’t like it for any reason, just shoot me an email before 30 days have passed, and you’ll get your money back, no questions asked!
But look, I know this course isn’t for everyone.
It’s not for the victim-mindset guitarists who are always blaming everyone else for their failure to make progress.. the people who call everything that disagrees with them ‘scams’… the guitarists looking for a hack or trick or ‘secret technique’ that will suddenly make them guitar gods without playing a single note…
Yeah, if any of that’s you, this course isn’t for you.
I mean it, don’t buy from me, I’m not interested.
There are other courses out there for you, but it’s NOT MY COURSE.
But if you’re a guitarist who’s willing to put in the time actually playing the guitar,; if you’re willing to put up with some difficulty, some frustration… If you’re willing to really give things a try and work things out for yourself when you need to, then this is the course for you.
So which are you? The tire-kicking guitarist or a real guitarist?
Once you’ve answered that question correctly, go sign up below!
What is the Creative Guitar Bootcamp?
Today's incredible price: $197 USD!!
(or three payments of $67)
Copyright Alexander Westenberg. All Rights Reserved.
SUPPORT: alexander@creativeguitarcoach.com