I saw REAL quick, how learning the guitar, and also learning it by ear, was sucking up my time. Till I read up and had other well established players tell me how to save a lot of unnecessary time, playing the guitar all the time. I can save you that time, on this page.
Of course! More than that, you know me, you’re not going to walk away from me, without getting the BEST! Hands down advice there is. Well let’s get down to it.
The tips you’re gonna need are:
- Tuning
- Prepping
- 20 minutes
- Focusing
- Learning
Tuning The Guitar
How many times has that been your detriment in learning the guitar? Whether you’re playing the guitar by ear or not, you will burn up time. In wasted time, day after day in making the bad choice of not tuning your guitar.
How’s that? Well for one, you won’t sound good, so how’s that going to make you think you’re getting anywhere?
It will cause you to play the guitar more, thus wasting time trying to make a decent sound come out of your guitar.
I promise you, you will rip your ear out, (and you need that ear, to play by ear.) in frustration because you’ll feel like your not getting no where. Which will cause you to play MORE, trying to make yourself sound good.
So the solution is a easy fix thankfully. And that is, tune YOUR GUITAR!
That reminds me of a true story of one of my friends was playing nasty guitar, meaning his guitar sound basically “sucked,” because he didn’t tune his guitar. And this was in front of hundreds of people on the streets, in the downtown area.
He starts to play and this guy from the music store pops out and yells at him and says, “HEY!” “Tune your guitar!”
My friend says nonchalantly, oh, it’s ok and proceeds to play. AGAIN the guy from the music store yells for the second time, “TUNE YOUR GUITAR!”
Friend says again, no it’s ok. This goes on and on, in front of everyone, cause my friend thought everything was ok, when it wasn’t.
Not only was he wasting his own time, not tuning the guitar, but he was wasting the audiences time AND the musicians time, waiting for him to finish his set.
Yes, he finally listened to the music shop person after the third or fourth time of being told to tune his guitar. But I learned a valuable lesson that day, that he was WASTING TIME, not tuning his guitar.
Prepping Before You Play The Guitar
In order to not waste a lot of time playing the guitar, whether it’s by ear or not, is you should PREP before you play by asking yourself, “do I have a song in mind of what I want to play BEFORE I pick up the guitar?”
“And if I’m not going be playing a song, am I going be just practicing chords or scales or techniques or just work on other chops?”
Or am I just going to practice my standing and sitting habits of how I want to look like when I’m playing the guitar? Or what not, so I can look COOL!
In all seriousness, in order to save time, (IF you want to save time) you are going to have to decide what you want to do BEFORE you pick up your guitar.
And thus doing, you won’t waste time fiddling around when you grab your guitar, wasting time, trying to figure out what your going to do.
Am I going to play a song? Am I going to work on my scales? Am I going to work on the tonality of how I want my guitar to sound?
What am I going to do?……. You’re going to ALREADY know what to do by the time you pick up the guitar because you’re going to ask yourself BEFORE you pick up your guitar, what you’re going to do…. thus saving you ALL KINDS of time. ALL KINDS!
You’ll be surprised how much time you save by knowing what you’re going to do BEFORE you pick up your guitar.
20 Minutes Of Playing The Guitar Everyday
Whats this 20 minutes of playing the guitar all about? You ask. Well let me tell you another story. Well, I’ll tell you later, in this other section of page.
But BEFORE I learned about the twenty minute method, I used to bust my butt, playing the guitar. Sometimes it would work and sometimes it wouldn’t. Cause we ALL heard stories of musicians playing for hours upon hours, of playing the guitar, and on and on.
I could go on about those players, but ONE of those players was PRINCE. He would lock himself in his closet, playing his guitar for like 10 hours. No joke! And then he would come out raring and blaring and on fire, with better guitar prowl skills than ever! He did GREAT!
But does that work? HECK YEAH! It does. But sometimes it doesn’t. It just wears you down, with diminished skills because you start to lose focus. Your mind gets all jumbled and mixed up. And your playing starts to suffer.
Enter the story I was gonna tell you about. No, it’s not that Prince story I just told you about. It’s the time when I met this guy who could play ANYTHING on the guitar.
This guy, at first, I didn’t even know he could play guitar. Because we met when we were watching this AMAZING up in coming keyboard, piano, musician!
This guy, the keyboard, piano, musician, could play like a pro. WAS playing like a pro, WAS a pro.
But we were talking about how good he was at the piano. And how good he was at singing too. But we were saying to each other, well if he did this and this, he would explode to where the WHOLE WORLD, would know him. We just said all that to help him get better, not to hurt his playing.
So being the good critiques that we are, we, the guitar player, and me, ended up going to other places. And as we are, he tells me he can play guitar and that he can play anything he hears on the radio.
And I say, whoa!! Wow! That’s great! Because I was at the learning stage of the guitar, a beginner.
So he tells me in order to get good at the guitar you must…..and before he tells me how to get good at the guitar, I’m thinking it’s gonna be this BIG thing, this LARGER than life thing he’s getting ready to tell me, that’s gonna make my guitar playing explode.
And what he was going to tell me WAS going to make my guitar playing explode! It was going to FOREVER, change my guitar playing for the better…. He says, “ALL you gotta do is just practice for just 20 minutes a day.”
And I just said to myself, MAN! I can do that, ANYBODY can do that. ANYBODY can play the guitar for 20 minutes a day, this is doable. (I can do this). BUT he ALSO said all this, he said: “Play 20 minutes a day or MORE, if you can, but make sure you play 20 minutes.”
So my guitar playing became WAY better, real fast, because not only did I play better, but I didn’t have the pressure of thinking I need to lock myself in a closet and play for 10 hours everyday.
So to break this all down for you: “Just play for 20 minutes every day. Or more than 20 minutes if you can.” And your guitar playing will go through the roof, in time. You’ll get good.
Focusing On The Guitar Will Cause You To Get Real Good
Focusing on the guitar will cause you to save A LOT of time. And I mean A LOT.
Because you won’t even have to be playing the guitar to focus on the guitar. Because you’ll be going over the fretboard of the guitar and visualizing and seeing what you’re going to do on the fretboard BEFORE you pick up the guitar.
Unlike PREPPING, you will just be “focusing on, visualizing, seeing what you will be doing on the fretboard of the guitar, like your actually playing it for real, but in your mind.”
Thus saving you a lot of time, so that when you really do play it, it will be a smooth flow. Because you already went over in your mind, what you were going to do on the guitar fretboard.
Learning To Save Time On The Guitar
Learning causes you to save time on the guitar also. Because you can be learning from books, YouTube videos, etc. Even when you’re not playing the guitar. Thus saving you time. Because when you’re learning from books, YouTube videos, etc., you’re NOT playing the guitar.
One such book is called FRETBOARD ROADMAPS! It will save you A LOT of time in understanding the guitar as it opened up my eyes at a time I didn’t understand the guitar completely.
It IS what the pros know and use when it comes to playing the guitar, check it out here it doesn’t even cost that much money and you’ll be on your way to soaring past your peers on the guitar.
Just remember when you order it, that you add your E shape barre chord to what the book tells you, as far as going up and down the neck of the guitar and you’ll do great! AND let your ears guide you, as that’ll be SO much fun!!!
Related Topics
What is the guitar fretboard? The guitar fretboard is basically the face of the guitar. It has strips on it and dots. If you have trouble knowing where this is, just look for the strips and dots on the guitar and then you will have found it.
Is saving time important when playing the guitar? Well it depends, if you are more of a laid back type of person, it may not bother you that your just kicking back, playing the guitar for hours on end. If you’re more of a studious type, it may bother you to no end, how your time is being taken up.
