Measuring your progress on guitar

Measuring guitar progressMany guitarists arrive a rut after they've been playing for erstwhile. It usually happens at around 1-2 years. It happened to me. I’m sure it happened to you. For one reason or another we just get discouraged. Mostly because we feel we stopped making real progress. So what should we do to motivate ourselves to keep playing guitar?

First let’s try and find out why we lost our flare.

Throughout the first year or two of your playing you are learning so many new things on guitar. You’re like a neonate learning all about your new environment. Every day you catch out fantastic new things. You learn what the string names are. You learn what a major chord is. You learn minor chords. You learn basic scales and their applications. Then again you hit a wall. Whereunto go now?

Here’s what I think: Throughout the first few years of your playing your progress is very trackable. Last week you didn’t know a 7th chord. This week you do. Last week you couldn’t play a major diatonic scale. This week you can. Last wee you couldn’t to a hammer-on. This week you’re trilling. Then again you get at a point where you know most of the basic guitar techniques. It’s much harder to notice results in your playing.

It’s gonna be hard for you to notice a lot the improvements on her own. That’s why you've to show yourself that you're indeed improving. Howdy that? Well here are three steps to help you track your improvement on guitar:

1. Asses your current skills
The initiative to getting better is knowing where you stand now. Asses your overall guitar playing skills. Get down chord groups that you know (Major, Minor, 7th, Minor 7th, Major 7th, diminished, augmented, etc…). What scales do you know? (major, minor, blues, harmonic minor, melodic minor, etc…)How fast can you cleanly play a scale with the metronome? (How many BPM on your metronome?). What techniques do you know? (bending, sliding, hammer-on, tapping, sweep picking, etc…). Think hard about all the skills you possess right now. Entertain everything guitar related: music theory, technique, tone, listening skills, ear training. Everything. Then write it all down in a notebook.

2. Define your goals
After you asses all your skills, anticipate areas where you prefer to improve. Maybe you prefer to lean 13th chords. Maybe you want to play 5bpm faster. The key is starting small. Don’t reach too far or you'll be discouraged. Set weekly goals for yourself of a few things you want to improve on over the week. Don’t have more 3 goals a week. The key is really centering on a couple of things to improve on. If you accept a bit much then you'll keep being mediocre at everything. And be sure you've allow regular time to practice (even if its only 30 minutes a day). Write everything down.

3. Track your progress
At the end of every week open your notebook and check the goals you've completed. If you didn’t accomplish everything you wanted to you'll be able to leave the outstanding goals for next week and replace the completed goals with new ones for next week.

This cycle will really allow you to track your progress and will help you see that all your efforts are not attending waste. Once you come back by the notebook and see everything you learned it will motivate you to continue to play and practice. The key is understanding that any progress, not matter how small, is still good progress. So if you improving from 90 bpm to 95 bmp that's even as good of an achievement as learning all the major chords.