Breaking Through Guitar Plateaus: Key Strategies to Help you

Unlock the secrets to breaking through musical barriers and reignite your passion for playing guitar. Ever felt stuck on your journey to becoming a better guitarist? Learn how setting SMART goals and creating mock deadlines can propel you past those frustrating plateaus. Discover the transformative power of refining your technical skills, like alternate picking and vibrato, to enhance your musical expressiveness. We offer insights into mastering musical subdivisions, boosting your speed, accuracy, and confidence, and ensuring your practice propels you toward energetic and emotive performances.

Elevate your musicianship with practical music theory tailored just for you. Whether you’re navigating the intricate world of jazz with the circle of fifths or shredding away with exotic scales in metal, aligning theoretical knowledge with your personal goals is vital. Our discussion reveals how integrating creative practice techniques can foster your growth, making each learning step not only relevant but also immensely rewarding. Embark on a journey where your unique aspirations guide your evolution as a musician, ensuring every note played is a step closer to your ultimate musical vision.

Links:

Check out the GuitarZoom Academy:
https://academy.guitarzoom.com/

• Steve’s Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/stinemus...
• GuitarZoom Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/guitarz0...
• Songs Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/GuitarSo... .

Chapters

• 0:00 Set specific goals with deadlines for improvement
• 4:47 Confidence in execution enhances musical authenticity
• 7:09 Practical Music Theory for Guitarists

Transcript

Steve Stine [00:00:00]:
Hey, Steve Stine from GuitarZoom here. Today we're going to be talking about some things that you can do to help yourself. If you're an intermediate guitar player and you feel like you're kind of stuck in a rut, I've got four things that I want you to think about. So number one is breaking through plateaus. This is a really common one where a person's been playing for a while and you keep feeling like you're getting stuck in certain places and it's hard to get past those. So one thing is using what we call here at GuitarZoom, we have what's called a GuitarZoom academy, where we have one on one instruction with all kinds of different things developed to help students specifically get past these plateaus. And we use what's called smart goals. So if you've ever heard of smart goals, basically what you're doing is you're trying to set specific achievable goals in a certain amount of time.

Steve Stine [00:00:48]:
So instead of just saying, you know, I want to get better or I want to learn, you know, how to solo or something like that, you think about specific things that you need to work on and you give yourself a certain amount of time, a reasonable amount of time, but a certain amount of time to develop these things. So, for instance, want to learn how to play this solo in the next month, or I'm going to learn how to visualize this particular scale on my fretboard in all the positions in two months or something like that. And you can set up multiple different goals. But what I found with students is if they give themselves deadlines, even if they're mock deadlines, you know, deadlines like you join a band and you've got to learn 30 or 40 or 50 songs or something like that by next Thursday, right? That's a legitimate deadline. But maybe you're not in a band, maybe you're not playing with other people, but you can still set up mock deadlines for yourself where you can say, okay, by next Sunday, I want to be able to play these two songs. Or, you know, I want to develop, I want to learn how to play this solo or whatever it might be. So sometimes even setting up those deadlines can really help you a lot. And again, remember, if you ever need help with this sort of thing, if you're looking for maybe some personalized instruction, it's hard for you to understand what you.

Steve Stine [00:02:01]:
You're missing or how to create these paths. You can always head over to guitarzoom.com and we can help you with these Things. So, number two, developing speed, accuracy and confidence in the small things. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, speed is a pretty obvious one. People get stuck on this thing of like, I don't want to be a shredder, or, you know, there's more feel in one note than a thousand notes. And those things may or may not be true. To you, that's perfectly fine. But the reality is, when you're actually going to play music or you're going to improvise solo, you're always dealing with subdivision, right? If your song is running 130 beats per minute, it's not like all you're doing is playing whole notes for the entire song.

Steve Stine [00:02:45]:
I mean, you're going to have half notes or quarter notes or eighth notes or 16th notes. And so it's important to understand that. That element, that technical element of being able to play. We can call it speed. But really understanding that subdivision is very, very important because it enables you to be able to play things that maybe are a little more difficult, maybe a little more complex. But certainly if you're worrying, if you're working in the improvisation world, it adds energy. Like, if you just. If you think in your head, if all you ever did was play quarter notes, that's.

Steve Stine [00:03:17]:
And, you know, your singer sang quarter notes and your drummer's only playing quarter notes, it would sound very strange. Like, the whole point is that everybody's able to move through these subdivisions at various stages and make music sound more musical. To be able to build energy or go the other direction and play a little less and make things a little more space, spacious, these are all great things. But being reasonable about that, not just saying, I don't want to shred, therefore I don't want to practice anything of a technical capacity or a speed thing, that's just silly. I mean, you want to try and work on those things. So developing your speed, developing your accuracy when you do play something, trying to make sure that you've spent enough time really articulating it and figuring out all the specifics of what it is that you're trying to do. So it sounds the best that you can play it. Not just, can I get from point A to point B to finish this to move on to the next thing.

Steve Stine [00:04:12]:
But can I really make this sound and feel the way it's supposed to sound and feel? And then confidence in the small things. What I mean by that are things like bending, you know, vibrato slides. There's all kinds of different things like that. But really having confidence when you Go to play something, whatever it might be. If you go to do a bend or a vibrato or a lick or whatever it might be, being able to execute that in a way that feels good and sounds good and makes you feel more confident. Because sometimes we get so wrapped up in things like scales and all of these different things, which is important, but we forget that sometimes it's the little things that we do that really can sell the authenticity of the music that we're trying to play. So learning how to use a metronome, right, for more of the technical things, learning different techniques like alternate picking or, you know, string skipping or economy picking or legato playing or whatever it might be. These are all things that fit into this category.

Steve Stine [00:05:18]:
So the third category I would talk about is creative practice. I always talk to people about buckets of practice. And one of the buckets that I find that a lot of students don't spend enough time in is taking all of the things that they're learning and trying to figure out how to take this stuff and put it in the creative bucket, I'll call it, which is when you go to improvise or you go to, you know, whatever it might be. I'm certainly going to use improvisation as our example. How well can you connect to the musical situation, the jam track, backing track, band, whatever it might be, in a musical way? Not just how many scales do I know and how much theory do I know and blah, blah, blah. But when the music actually starts, are you able to respond to it on a musical level and not just spitting out ideas that your brain says, oh, remember, you practiced that last Thursday. You better play that. Oh, you were working on that speed thing.

Steve Stine [00:06:15]:
You better throw that in there. And you're not really listening to the music and trying to figure out how to respond appropriately to this musical situation that you're in. So practicing the creative aspect of your playing is really, really important to do, whether it's a daily thing or you've got it on a weekly schedule or whatever. But I think that's really important, too. And then the fourth one, the last one, might be expanding your music theory knowledge. You know, a lot of people might learn something like, you know, what the major scale is on the guitar, but they don't really understand what the major scale is or how chords are derived from that scale, or knowing maybe where the notes are on your fretboard, or understanding a mode or whatever it might be that is that connects to where you are in your musical journey. Practical music theory, I always call it. Right.

Steve Stine [00:07:02]:
Not just music theory, for music theory's sake, which there's nothing wrong with, but for me, even more important is finding music theory that relates to who you are as a player, what you're trying to accomplish, and how it can fit into that. I just had a conversation with a gentleman a few days ago, and he was telling me, you know, he joined the academy, and he was telling me about how the things that he wants to learn and the things that he struggled with. And then we talked about music theory, and he's like, you know, I've been playing for 30 years, and I've never found a use for the circle of fifths. Now, that may or may not. I mean, in his world, that's certainly true. Right. Although, you know, as an instructor, I might be able to show him the benefit of that, maybe if it fits into his journey in some way, but maybe not. So my point is, is that for somebody that musical or that circle of fists might become really, really important to them, where somebody else doesn't even see the purpose of it.

Steve Stine [00:08:01]:
You know, if you're learning how to play Slayer and you want to, you know, play music or you want to write your own music, that's Slayer inspired, you're probably not using the circle of fifths very often. Right. There's other music theory things you might be focusing on, like exotic scales or something like that. And then, of course, all of the speed, accuracy stuff that we were talking about that might be more relative to who you are as a player, where if you're more of a jazz player, for instance, you might find a lot more use in practical music theory that you can use for your comping and your improv and that sort of thing. So just something to think about a little bit, those four things. Number one, breaking through your plateaus. Excuse me. Number two, developing speed, accuracy, and confidence in the small things.

Steve Stine [00:08:44]:
Number three, creative practice, the creative bucket, if you will. And then number four, expanding your music theory knowledge. Okay. And that would certainly include your fretboard as well, being able to understand more about what's happening on your fretboard.