How to Stay Motivated when Learning Guitar

Hey! It's Aaron from freeandeasyguitar.com. In this lesson right here, is going to be on staying motivated and kind of practice techniques. One of the things that I can remember most about playing the guitar is its frustrating. It's just like anything that first time through especially if you’ve been successful in a lot of things in life or you haven’t. It's really frustrating to try something that you understand what you’re suppose to do but your fingers or your coordination doesn’t line up and you can’t do it. So what I want you guys to know now is these are the things that I used to do to kind of keep myself motivated and keep on the right track of learning without wanting to quit, and get burning out on it. So the one thing that I would do is—the first thing I found something that I liked. One of the first things I learn to play was free falling that I thought you guys earlier by Tom Petty. So when I was trying to learn stuff that is a little more complicated, you try to learn something. Say I was trying to learn Greenday, Time of your life Good Riddance. Tough song and I was having trouble where it is fumbling around and I couldn’t play it. I was getting really frustrated. When you get frustrated, go back to something that your E note sounds good even if it’s a strum chord. This is a D chord to a G chord and just remember that a couple of months ago, you could not play the guitar, all right. You wanted to play the guitar so bad. It's such a cool instrument but you couldn’t play it and now—I mean now your playing chords so that’s—if you can play chords I mean that is what most songs are. So don’t sell yourself short if you’re playing chords and even you’re playing a bad lead. It takes time to practice but if you’re playing the guitar and you’re making an effort, that’s a lot more than a lot people are doing. Just think you’re making an effort to try and learn something new. You’re doing good, if you’re playing the chords, that’s awesome. Do little drills, just play the notes. You’re going to make errors once in a while but the big thing is practicing. So the step one, if you get frustrated, go back to something that you can do easily. Whether you strum to single chord, you get to strum your D chord. [Demonstration] All right but do something that’s going to keep you motivated and thank yourself. You’ve been—you’re learning to play guitar. A couple of months, you’re going to be playing songs and I will teach you songs. So don’t think, don’t down yourself. I will teach you how to play. So that step one is you know if you get frustrated, go back to something you’re used to. The second thing that really helped me stayed motivated is when you do—when you’re learning the songs in practice sessions, it's important that you have your guitar sitting out, okay because in my personal opinion, if you practice four times a day for 30 minutes even if you’re not even strumming, even if you’re watching your favorite TV shows. Say, like American Idol or you like Grey’s Anatomy or anything else, if you just sit on your couch in your door room, you don’t have to mess with anybody or ruin anybody else’s time and you can just sit there and just practice your chords just like this, and move them from chord to chord. I’m watching TV. In college, I’d watch comedy central and just sit there do the chords in my bed or in my desk chair anything like that. And just move from chord to chord. After a while, I was starting doing it. Another thing too is even if you’re messing the chords up a little bit, you’re not going to know it. But it's going to teach your fingers to move independently even if you’re moving the chords. So that’s good and you want to have a couple practice sessions a day because it keeps it fresh. Four—I’d say four to 15 minute practice sessions a day is great. It’s better than sitting and playing for an hour straight. If you want to play for four different sessions and an hour straight, that’s great. But if you only have an hour to play a day, I’d suggest, play it four to 15 minute sessions instead of playing for hour straight. It's going to keep you motivate and fresh and you’re not going to get tired of playing the guitar. You’re going to get—feeling it does kind of revert. So that’s the second thing I would do. Another thing for staying motivated with the guitar is your going to reach plato’s and just like. I don’t know if any of you guys are familiar to weight lifting or anything like that in your life where you’ll start learning or start lifting weights and then you climb up. And then you hit an plato or you hit a wall, or it feels like your making any improvement. I’ve hit those. I’m sure that you guys are going to. If you haven’t hit them yet but you’re going to be—everything is going great. You’ve been learning and then after a while, you’ll feel like, “Man, I’m just not learning anything recently” When you get to something like that, take something that you think that it's too hard for you to play and practice it. Start slow and then faster. For me, the song was Here Without You by 3 Doors Down. I was playing it for about a year. I was playing the songs. They were great chords. I think I’ve even started teaching in YouTube videos but the one song I always want to play is Here Without You by 3 Doors Down. I couldn’t play that song for me so I made up my mind. I was going to learn it no matter how long it took me. That was one of the most frustrating points in my guitar career because—so you know I try to lean that song. It was so difficult. I could probably get three to four notes through before have in a stop because I’d mess it up. It’s was too fast for me but you know, I kept that for a couple of weeks and before I knew it, I was playing the song slow and I was playing all the right notes. So I’ll play this slow maybe. [Demonstration] Okay, but I was playing it. As you keep practicing, you get the muscle memory develop. You don’t even think about your doing. It's just second nature. And soon, I was playing that fast stuff. So once you’re playing a song like that or something that is tough for you. Say, for you is tough to just to switch from a G to a D, and G to D then just keep practicing that. Sooner or later before you know it, it's going to be something that you accomplished, you’ve reached your goal. And then there’s lots of stuff there it was in the middle that was kind of tough for you before. It wasn’t as hard as this stuff you’re practicing or maybe it was kind of tough for you before. You kind of avoid it if you could. And now that stuff that was tough before is cake and the stuff that used to be hard for you before is now your standard stuff and that’s how you improve. So you really got to push yourself but you just need to know the back of your head that you’re going to get frustrated. It's natural. It's part of life but you got to keep a positive attitude about it. Guitarist in the world like John Meyer, Clapton, Stevie Ray, and all the popular guitarist you can think of. All those guys have started just where you started. They all started with the first time they picked up the guitar and started the lesson. So you know, guitar is really up to you and how good you want to become. It's going to be directly correlated to how much you practice. So good luck. I hope this video kind of helped—maybe help motivates you if you’re getting a little frustrated and I hope it motivates you to practice harder and to keep enjoying this instrument. So like what I’ve said before, it brought that color of my life once couple of years and I get even more than playing it than helping your guys and to learn ton play as well. So whenever you ready, take it with the next lesson. As always, if you have any questions, comments, anything you want to let me know, you can always send an email to questions at freeandeasyguitar.com. Or log in the forms. I’m really active in the forms, talking with all of you and there are also thousands of other people that they like to get in there that opens their questions as well. So, good luck for the guitar. Keep on picking and remember to tell your friends. It's a great thing to spread this music and I appreciate all the help that you guys can give me with—spread the website. So stay motivated and you’re going to be fine. Take care and—as always, know I appreciate the time you guys are—check out the forms. There are lots of people that I’m going to help and things that you guys are really going to enjoy. So check out the other aspects of the website and as always, you can send me emails if you have any questions and comments or you know just keep motivated. All right guys, so I hoped that helped motivates you a little bit. If you’re getting frustrated about this time of learning the guitar and the whole process I hoped this has helped you out a little bit. If you work frustrated and you’re doing great and that’s awesome and I hope that you guys continue to play and continue to advance on this instrument. So, I want to wish you guys the best of luck and whenever you ready, we’ll go on the next lesson. Take care.