There may be times when you may feel your interest in playing start to wane a little bit. There are a number of things you can do to get back on track.
Take a week off. This doesn’t mean to fiddle with your guitar five minutes a day. Don’t touch your guitar for the entire week. When you pick it up again, it will feel and sound better than ever. Plus, you’ll find that you have a number of new ideas to try or you may hear a song that you’d really like to play.
Find new music to play. It’s easy than ever to find guitar music. And if you can’t find something, take a song you’ve already learned and play it in a different way. The song you learned to finger pick will sound quite different when being strummed.
Put together some loops / backing tracks to play with. You can find background tracks fairly easily online. In some cases, there will be a small fee to join a website. If you find a website that you like, make sure they have a good selection of loops and backing tracks to choose from.
Find one aspect of playing guitar and focus on that for a few days. It could be finger picking, bar chords, scales, learning new rhythms or working on your speed licks. If you’re at the point of losing a little interest in playing guitar, make sure the aspect of playing you focus on is not too difficult or challenging. It may only add to your disinterest.
If you really feel industrious, take the aspect of playing guitar that gives you the most trouble and work entirely on that. It may be a little difficult and frustrating at first but you’ll be glad you stuck to it and mastered it so you can move on as a player.
Take a look at your guitar as an instrument. Find out how it was put together, what kind of woods are used, what the electronics do or how you can customize your guitar so it’s one of a kind. For electric guitar, there a number of different types of pick ups available along with a myriad of effects pedals that can make playing a lot more fun. You might find just the sound you are looking for and the inspiration to get back to practicing.
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Take a shot at being a songwriter. You don’t have to come up with a hit song right out of the gate, you can do as little as choose a few chords and put them together in an interesting way. One of the things I ask my students to do is come up with a melody, a signature riff or bass line they’ve never heard before.
Find another guitar player to play with. You might be surprised how many people play the guitar. The person a couple houses down from you or someone you say hello to every day in school might be learning guitar too.
Try a different guitar. This has always been a good way to renew interest in playing. You may find that the guitar you’ve been using is more difficult to play than it should be and is part of you losing interest. Guitar necks vary quite a bit and sometimes it’s a matter of finding one that is a good match for the size and strength of your hands. Even properly setting up your current guitar and putting on a set of new strings can really make a difference.
Teach someone else to play. One of reasons I’ve continued to teach for so long is it makes me a better player and really adds to my enjoyment of the guitar. You may find that you’re not really cut out to be a teacher or that you really enjoy helping someone learn to play. Either way, it will give you a new perspective on the guitar.
Take some lessons. A good guitar teacher usually charges between and 5 a month (four half-hour lessons) so it’s very important that you do a little research on local teachers before deciding.
Dale Schmidt is a guitar, banjo and mandolin teacher in Washington state and author of Your Private Guitar Teacher and Sheet Music Magic for Guitar. For more information: http://www.yourprivateguitarteacher.com and http://www.daleschmidt.com
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