Being a better guitarist is not just about practice
Samiul Bashar Samin
These days, if you throw a stone out of your window, it would hit either an aspiring guitarist or a BBA student. This alone should go on to show how vast the number of people interested in guitars has grown.
However, the immediate problem this poses is on the mind of every aspiring guitar player out there. As the number of guitarists grows, one is forced to ask himself about the methods he can use to differentiate himself.
And here, is the mistake most musicians make. Instead of learning all of the proper basics, they move onto the stuff that makes them look flashy in the eyes of those they try to impress. The biggest of those mistakes, is the urge to try to play faster.
A good way to get rid of this urge, which ultimately leads to the demise of creativity, is to take a deep breath and to think of music as an element as you would think about air or water.
Once you do that, you can start thinking of music as less of an ability that you can use to impress others and more as a medium to express yourself.
This is the point where you unlock the secrets of music. That is when your music has soul and it becomes a part of your subconscious. When you reach that elevated state of mind, practice will not feel boring anymore, you will be able to feel musical ideas, and streams of symphony run through your veins.
The key element here is practice. Like every other activity that requires proficiency and quick wit, practicing the guitar is about developing your muscle memory. And the more you practice, the more your muscles will be able to work to create sonatas and symphonies without more than a moment’s notice.
Many guitarists face problems with timings and tempo.
They are either too fast or too slow to match the beat. Sometimes, all you need to do is slow down and get a metronome, which you can use to time the notes you play through your guitar. You can buy one or you can just download the countless metronome apps there are on the internet.
At the end of the day, to become a successful musician and more importantly, to be able to love your music, you must have an open mind.
We must recognize that before we can get into the mechanical aspects of music, we must delve into the philosophical aspirations involved in order to inspire ourselves. As the great Mr. George Harrison of the Beatles fame had once said, “It’s all in the mind.”