Guitar practice mistakes that are holding you back

7

Practice without these mistakes

The brain needs time to learn after practice ends. Forcing too much practice stops the neurons from settling down and fatigues muscles. Take breaks.

Mistake 1: Practicing too many hours every day non-stop

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New challenges help you imagine yourself better and reach higher levels. They give motivation and healthy rivalry.

Mistake 2: Not taking up challenges

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Sometimes when you are stuck, you don’t need more practice. You need breaks and let the brain continue doing its automatic learning processes via sleep and rest. When you are stuck, move on to a different lick or exercise.

Mistake 3: Thinking you need more practice when you are stuck

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Music is contextual. So study your scales and exercises in a way you make music using them, not just learn and memorize shapes. Play scales to chord patterns and drums.

Mistake 4: Practicing scales and exercises to perfection with no musical context

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All scales, chords, styles, support each other. Specialize when you can do a little bit of many things. Not 1 thing perfectly. It's music. it's variety.

Mistake 5: Practice one thing and ignore everything else

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Improvisation is using all your knowledge in music in the moment to make music. It's a skill, so practice spontaneous changes to planned music. Improvisation births creativity.

Mistake 6: Ignore improvisation

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When you focus your eyes and ears too much on your hand movements and sound, you are preventing yourself from trusting muscle memory. You need muscle memory for your playing to be automatic. Look away and wander while your hands move.

Mistake 7: Pay too much attention to what you are doing

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