In this lesson, we explore how and why you should set guitar goals. An essential part of practicing effectively and staying inspired! :)
View the full lesson at Set Your Guitar Goals | JustinGuitar
Hi - I tried to enter this comment on the ‘Goals and Destinations’ lesson, but for some reason it wouldn’t let me.
Anyway, as Justin has suggested here’s my main goal.
I’m getting on a bit, so I think ‘Rock God’ is going to be beyond me. After a lot of thought, I’ve settled on ‘being able to play for my own enjoyment’.
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Hi,
My mid term goal is to improvise rock solos over a backing track. I play the guitar mainly for myself to unwind in the evening. Since my childhood I’ve bee passionate about rock and heavy metal music and I would love to be able to improvise on the fly in this genre.
In order to reach this goal I have set myself the following short term goals:
- practising scales
- mastering the finger gym exercise
- getting good at vibrato and string bending
- learning licks and riffs
If anyone can think of other skills worth developing to reach this goal, I’d appreciate a comment!
Bye!
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To get specific:
I want to record a song and put it up here by the end of May (maybe sooner)
I want to be able to play Hurt by Johnny Cash - with some chord joiners etc included by the end of June.
I want to have 6 camp fire songs that are recognisable, that build, and I’d be happy to play by the end of year. (A little over 1 a month)
I want to learn to add a little solo into a song.
I want to find a jam buddy and have 2 jam sessions by end of year.
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hi im having trouble setting goals as i tend to overthink and stress im making the wrong choices. does anyone have any suggestions that could help me set goals easier? thanks
Welcome to the forum Tyler. It would help to know what level you are are in Justin’s courses. It hard to give advice without out knowing where you are on your guitar journey.
I am in about grade 4 of Justin’s lessons but I haven’t been sticking with his main lessons as I tend to use his blues lead/ rhythm course and theory course. I am also in the beginning of his ear training and transcribing courses. I like playing blues and I want to get great at improvising and understand the guitar more. Just having trouble on what goal to set to get there
Start by narrowing down the the style of Blues you like. The term Blues covers everything from acoustic finger style to full on electric soloing.
Seeing that you’re sticking to the Blues rhythm/lead I’m quessing your using an electric guitar and prefer SRV, Johm Mayer, Joe Bossamana styles. That would be a good place to start. Pick a few song (start with the easy ones) from your favorite Blue artists and learn them. Learning from the masters is a tryed and true method of achieving you fisrt goal. Which you have already set.
The good news is Justin has 100’s of lesson for playing blues songs not just lessons on the technique.
He also will be starting another Blues study course in Jan. Its a paid 6 month course
Okay thank you for the advice.
Another question I have is if I am learning the blues should I just stick with that for now and focus primarily on that or should I also keep going on my theory course and incorporate other things than just blues?
Theory covers all music so will help you understand why things work.
This is a double edge sword. If you specialize in the Blues you will become very good at a faster rate but the down side is you pigeon hole yourself in one style.
Which in itself isn’t a bad thing. John Mayer has done very well in both acoustic fingerstyle and blues improvising.
It’s up to you if you want to specialize or branch out you, can always specialize for a year or so and branch out later if your interest change or you get bored.
Yeah that’s true, I think I will stick for it for a year or so and maybe slightly branch into other things if I wanted by learning whatever songs I wanted.
If it’s okay I was going to make a practice schedule tonight and share it with you and see if I’m headed in the right direction? Because recently my practice routines have been sort of repeating things I already know. I struggle knowing when to move on to the next thing
This comes up a lot. The only advice I can give is when you can use a skill to make music. This is where learning songs comes in. It doesn’t do anyone any good knowing 100’s of licks and every scale if you can’t play them in a musical way.
Do you have any songs or solos in your practice routine? If not that’s another goal to set.
Yeah I am trying to learn some solos and some full songs, like Eric Clapton, srv and John Mayer also trying to transcribe some Albert king solos
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