How to Play Guitar: Setting Goals

When you’re a beginner at guitar, you might feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount there can be to learn. In fact, this problem can happen at any point in your guitar playing career. I’ve answered questions from many guitarists who just get to the point of asking themselves “OK, what do I learn next?”. If you’re facing a similar problem, or you seem to have “hit a wall” and haven’t been achieving much lately, then you may need to start setting better goals.

What Kind of Guitarist/Musician do You want to be?

You may not be able to answer this question right away, but it’s what you need to start asking yourself if you want to move on. Whenever you start a journey it’s much better to at least have an idea of where you’re going, than meandering around aimlessly!

Which person do you think gets further: the man who says “I want to travel to the north pole” and then goes and does it; or the man who says “I want to go somewhere fun”? Well, the first guy gets to the north pole (with a bit of luck and determination of course!), but the second guy hasn’t got a plan of action and is likely to just end up slumped in front of the TV…after not being able to decide where to go.

You may find it helpful to break the above question down into smaller, more manageable sections:

• Which Musicians inspire you to play, what makes them sound like they do?
• Which areas of your own technique and sound are you least happy with?
• Which areas of your technique are sound are you most happy with?

- and MOST IMPORTANTLY…

• Are you being honest with yourself about your abilities?

Essentially, I’m asking you to look at your abilities and those of your favourite musicians and to ask yourself “Why don’t I sound like them?”. I really want you to break it down into tangible things- obviously it’s no use looking at your own abilities and saying to yourself “I just suck!”- what is it exactly that’s different? Do they have a better tone? If so, how do they get that tone? How could you get a similar sound? Do they play faster than you can? How can you increase your playing speed? These questions will help outline your roadmap to success, before you even start the journey.

Every Journey starts with the First Step

Simple, but true. If you want to be that guy who decides to go to the guitar playing “North Pole” -and makes it- you’re going to need to start with the very first step. If you’ve been honest with yourself, the answers to the questions above should provide you with a map to your destination, but where do you start?

This is where the idea of setting goals comes in: once you’ve decided on where you need to improve you should start setting yourself small, achievable goals. Each goal that you achieve is like taking a step, and (if you think back to our journey analogy) you need to be constantly taking small steps and keep checking back to the map to make sure you haven’t got lost.

So you need to be constantly setting yourself small goals (maybe each day), achieving them (taking the step) and then looking back at the map (the direction you want to go in) to help you set the next goal.

Practice Routine Example

Lets apply this strategy to an example. Say you wanted to increase your alternate picking speed to four-notes-per-beat (quavers) at 100bpm. You would then break the path down to this main goal (the destination) with smaller steps.

• First Goal- Perfecting Your Techniques

This means using the right techniques for alternate picking. How do you find out what that is? You could try getting lessons, listening to/watching/reading about others that you know have good technique, or subscribing to/favouriting informative websites.

How will you know when you’ve achieved this? When you can play in a way that doesn’t cause you to tense up when you speed up, or doesn’t lead you to making awkward hand positions or getting pain.

• Second Goal- Increase Speed

For this you’ll want to read my other posts on metronome use and how to practice effectively- which are both about how you should start slowly (getting things perfect) before gradually increasing the speed (to get as fast as you want without creating extra tension).

Summary

Yes, I’m sorry to inform you that the kind of ability that you probably want wont come overnight (just like a trip to the north pole isn’t as quick as a walk to the shops!), but if you take it in small steps and have a good (and honest!) roadmap you’ll get there eventually!

Discussion

What do you think? Have you used this method? How has it worked for you? Please share your experiences.

February 23, 2010 at 4:30 pm | Practicing and Practice Routine | No comments