Hey all, got a guitar late last year and in all honesty… I was getting into the beginner courses but then alot of overtime came up at work and I’ve lacked motivation to really pick my guitar up since.
I’ve tried getting back into it but I feel like all I do is practise A, D and E chords and chord changes as my muscle memory has faded abit cause I’ve not really been using the guitar… But then I just lose interest again cause I feel like it’s one step forward and three steps back and I’m not progressing.
I guess I’m just lacking structure for practise… At this stage of the game, can someone give me a practise routine that’s going to work on the things like muscle memory, chord changes etc but also move me forward and feel like I’m making progress?
It may sound a bit simple, but how about playing songs… there are so many grade 1 songs and this way you can “practice” your chord changes in the most fun way… you can also fill in the chords and Justin will find the songs that match it…
I think it’s the simplest and most fun way to learn and get back into the mood…playing songs
Hi Craig, have you tried the Justinguitar Begginer Songs App? It really is a fun tool, it helped me a lot in my beginner stages not to lose my motivation, as playing songs by my own always felt like a big challenge to me. Playing along with the App helps to consolidate your chord changes, forces you to keep time, just keep it simple with only downstrums on the beat, add strumming patterns later on when you feel ready. I remember it gave me the feeling of being able to play, when I felt I wasn’t if I had to play the same song without it.
It’s a paid product with a monthly or year subscription.
Hi Craig,
You only started a couple of months ago, took a break due to a heavy workload and now are finding motivation difficult?
Why not put the guitar completely aside for a while and see whether your desire to learn grows or dwindles? Motivation has to come from within.
It’s hard work. Your desire to play, and the enjoyment you get from the learning are the only real motivators. It’s highly unlikely someone else’s practice routine or suggestion will prove to by your solution.
Good luck
So I guess where I’m struggling is, when I pick it up I feel I need to back track and touch up on where I left off… But then I just feel like I’m stagnant doing the same things.
In truth, aside from following the videos… I’m not really sure what I should be doing in terms of practise on a daily basis and what’s best to get the most out of the time for advancement.
What’s the destination and what road map do you need to follow to get there?
What music do you want to be able to play?
Do you like acoustic fingerstyle, heavy metal, grunge rock?
What skills do you need to learn to play your type of music?
Once you have answers to these questions you then want to come up with a practice routine to work on the skills that you need to get to your destination.
As @roger_holland mentioned, find some A, D, E chord songs that you like and play those. It is far mor interesting that one-minute changes!
As @Silvia80 mentioned, I used the app for about 2 years and eventually outgrew it. It did help me to apply the lessons to actual songs.
As far as long work hours goes, I am dealing with that now myself. By the time I am done for the day, I don’t feel like doing much thinking, so I do the heavy mental stuff first thing before work and then something mentally simple in the evenings. Mentally simple (for me) can be playing something i already know how to play - and I did do this with the app back when I used it. It may be fiddling with my amp settings, which means I am doing a riff over and over while I experiment. It may be working on a difficult change for a song I want to play, just isolating that short difficult part. Once you get a bit further in, you can use listening to music as a part of your learning by picking apart the guitar section and thinkning about how it needs to be played. You can start that now by trying to isolate the guitar part in your mind so you can better identify the guitar you want to play versus the vocals or other guitar that may be stealing the listener’s attention. Listen for the beat, listen for the chord changes and get so you know well a song you want to eventually play.
What kind of music do you like? I would do a google search for
Easy 3 chord (shoe gaze, punk, county, blues) tunes for guitar.
Or better yet use Justins songs search and open the options and select 1 grade songs. They almost all have only 2 or 3 chords. Lots of great songs in there. Thats probobly what I would do.
Good luck. A combo of practicing practice lessons from justins videos and song practice would most like give you some good fuel. Keep you head up and keep plugging away. One you get the basic chords the world opens.
Everybody learns a little differently, so what works for me may not work for you. I myself tried to learn guitar 20 years ago and failed, but succeeded on my second attempt. I’m retired now but when I was working as a network engineer, fifty hour work weeks were the norm, sixty and seventy hour work weeks were common. Here are a few axiom’s that helped me the second time around. It is better to practice 10 minutes everyday than hours on the weekend. Don’t hide your guitar. Place it on a guitar stand or hang it on a wall. Make it visible and convenient to pick it up when you have 10 minutes to spare. Make half your practice time fun. Play simple 2 or 3 chord songs and slow them down until you can make the chord changes smooth. I did a search on YouTube for “guitar play along” and saved the shortcuts to my desktop. And the most important thing, congratulate your self when you get it right.
For me, heavily structured practice routines suck my enjoyment out of guitar. The one highly structured thing that does benefit me is picking up the guitar regularly. If I’m super busy or not feeling like working, then picking up the guitar to play a few songs is enough to keep the muscle memory and keep me from sliding back too much (though skills I don’t work on in those songs will slide some). It’s happened often enough that I pick up my guitar with the intent to just play for 10 or 15min and that turns into an hour or two because I start feeling it. For me, sometimes the biggest challenge is just picking up the guitar.
And sometimes when I pick up the guitar, nearly the whole session is about working on something. For those sessions, I do try to finish on a couple songs that are fun.
Sometimes I do need some external motivation, though. Taking lessons or attending jams that happen at specific times. Those check-ins do help. Sometimes a lot.
