Awesome guitar advice from Mike Phillipov

[Lopyt]

I went to a guitar forum today and saw an interesting thread.
It was about this guy who couldn’t play Sweet Child Of Mine solo after more than a decade of playing.
The post read (paraphrased):
“How the hell can this be? No matter how much I practice, my hand simply cannot keep up, is super tired by the middle of the solo and I can barely play after cause my fingers are all shaky and tired. This solo sucks and I hate it more than anything in this life, I've been trying to play this for years and still can't play it at speed and even at half speed. I've been playing guitar for more than 10 years. “
Yikes!
Many people replied with good, common sense advice. (About isolating problem areas, relaxing excess tension and how the time you spend practicing means a big fat ZERO if you practice the wrong way.)
My over-inflated 2 cents?
No solo you play is either “hard”, or “easy”. It simply is what it is.
It becomes hard, if you:
- focus on all the mistakes you are making.
- blame the solo for being hard and wish it was easier.
- view practicing as a chore you “have to” do so you can play the music you want.
It becomes easy, when you:
- see the solo as a set of puzzles to be solved. (puzzles can be mental or physical)
- realize that the music you play is not a villain out to “get” you. The solo doesn't care how well you play it.
- enjoy guitar practice as a process of self-discovery & self-improvement. Not as a price that must be paid to play a piece of music.
The former sets you up for failure as you beat yourself over every mistake, like you’re competing for the world’s angriest guitar player award.
And you only work just hard enough to “nail” the music once.
The latter puts you into a Zen-like state where practicing feels like “fun meditation”. And that’s when you practice something well enough to “never get it wrong”.
And the irony? The less you focus on playing “hard parts perfectly”, the faster you make the hard parts feel easy.
Because you focus more on the process and not the result.
And that’s when all the tools of tension control, isolating the “hard” spots etc. begin to work their magic.
Change your mindset and change your results.
Here endeth the lesson.

[Lopyt]

Guitar practise MYTHS: (don't keep this kind of practise)

bad 1. Slow practice is always good (or even necessary)


bad 2. Learning songs is a good way to improve your skills


bad 3. You build guitar speed using exercises.


bad 4. Finger independence exercises work


partially true but not a great way to play 5. You play much faster when you have lower guitar string action


really bad 6. Repeating something over and over nonstop is a great way to practice


no 7. Always use your elbow to change strings when you pick


not all the time, use force if you need to, use the minimal amount of force for the note 8. You need to play with a light touch all the time.


distortion covers up mistakes in dynamic consistency. distortion also makes every string noise really obvious 9. Distortion covers up mistakes

[hegefabi]

Thanks for all the advices you wrote here. I also have a similar problem. I play guitar for more than three years and I still find some difficulties, when trying to play specific melodies. And some of the points you showed in your post are exactly the same for me. Apparently I also concentrate to much on the mistakes, whether I should think more about the good parts when playing the guitar. I tried asking for advice on classical guitar tab, and I was recommended to start losing stress, and think positive. I believe that those tips may help me to concentrate better when playing a guitar, and thanks for reading my experience.

[Lopyt]

You need to focus on the mistakes, not the good parts.

What practise is, is looking for what makes your playing bad, and correcting it.

To be the best at guitar, you need to be as efficient as possible, no extra tension in your muscles, no unneccessary hand movements, and a good muscle memory and mental image of all the notes on the fretboard.

I would NOT use that advice you were given, if you promote mediocrity you will remain mediocre. Instead of trying to convince yourself you are good, seek and destroy your problems! You will actually improve then.

YES focus on the mistakes, YES try to fix them. NO, don't convince yourself you are good when you know you aren't as good as you could be. NO don't think emotionally about how you are bad and everyone else is so good and jealousy and envy consume your soul and make ytou want to quit guitar.

I strongly recommend Mike's E-Mail newsletter, has really helped me improve lately, and he has some great videos about certain techniques too