Alot of good things have already been said.
One thing I’d add. Use a pen and paper wherever possible - when writing out songs, progressions, scales, chords, arpeggios, neck diagrams, writing out your practice routine, making notes etc.
While technology is tremendous, and I use plenty of it myself, there’s something about both the tactile and personal nature of your own hand written material that seems to be particularly beneficial for guitar learning.
Cheers, Shane
I agree with this. This is how I combine “digital” tools with old fashioned learning. I work on the principle that any digital platform could go away overnight (eg go out of business, or do a massive price hike) so I look to preserve the knowledge, which also has the benefit of helping it stick in my head.
In fact it’s no bad thing to have a digital copy of this information and a paper one… if you rely solely on a paper copy it could be lost to fire, water, rodents, children etc!
That’s what I’m now regularly doing for my upcoming jams. Just writing down song structures and chord progressions when needed with some additional clues. More often than not I don’t even use it while playing, but the process of writing it all down helps to memorise these things much better.
I arrived at the same conclusion by playing Rocksmith 2014 - I was learning to play the game with the guitar instead of the guitar itself. So I stopped and started playing guitar on its own. It’s much more fun this way too.
Recently when learning/practicing scales I have taken to closing my eyes and slowly it all done and focusing on 2-3 strings, and playing the scale from root to root. I start in one position and when confident move to more strings or up or done the neck. I listen closely for the accuracy of each note when struck and if I’ve hit the right one. It seems to improve engraining it in my brain, fretting and pluck fluidity.