What it takes to become a great guitarist

If you’re just starting to learn guitar or have been learning for a couple of years, you’re probably wondering what it takes to become a great guitarist. This short post will give you an idea on what’s really important to build up your skills to become a great guitarist.

Becoming a good guitarist

It’s actually really easy to become a good guitarist once you start practicing properly and work on the right areas of guitar. Anybody can become a good guitarist within a couple of years. So if you’re just starting out and feel a bit overwhelmed, don’t worry. It takes a bit of work at the start but once you get the hang of practicing correctly and constantly improving, you will become a good guitarist a lot quicker than you may think.

What is a good guitarist?

A good guitarist can play some songs without struggling, confidently use basic techniques such as hammer-ons, slides, bends etc. A good guitarist may not be able to shred like crazy, but can improvise confidently.

To become a good guitarist you need to:

• Master all basic skills and techniques – you need a solid foundation before you can build your abilities
• Make the most out of your practice sessions – the way you practice is your key to success
• Have a basic understanding of chords and scales – don’t worry too much about music theory, just a basic understanding will be enough

 

Becoming a great guitarist

To become a great guitarist a lot more time and effort is required. It can take years of dedicated practice to build up your skills to the point that most people see them as flawless. A great guitarist isn’t perfect, but still impresses most people. Being confident with all aspects of guitar marks a great guitarist. A great guitarist can easily improvise great sounding solos in any key over any backing chords without second guessing. A great guitarist can compose interesting songs and can master technical pieces effectively.

To become a great guitarist you need to:

• Spend a lot more time practicing – not longer practice sessions, but practicing more often
• Learn how to improvise in any key all over the fretboard – this is a big challenge and takes some time to develop
• Learn how to master technical pieces in a controlled way – use a metronome to build up the tempo
• Plan ahead and figure out where your strengths and weaknesses are – or else your development will plateau

Is it worth the effort? Definitely. Being a great guitarist is a lot of fun as you can do so many things a good guitarist can’t. Most guitarists will aim for this level as it’s not too hard to get there after a few years and can result in a lifetime of enjoyment. If you put in the practice and work hard, it will pay off.

 

Being the top 1% of all guitarists

Quite often beginners will start out wanting to be not just a great guitarist, but the best. Very few actually consider what it means to be one of the top guitarists in the world. What does it mean to be in the top 1% of all guitarists? The top guitarists seem to do everything effortlessly and have unbelievable control over their instrument. On top of this incredible technical mastery, they also have excellent musical creativity and understanding. They don’t just play, they create. They know how to turn a melody in their head to a fantastic solo or song. If you asked one of these guitarists to play a sweeping maj7 arpeggio in C# Major at 180bpm with right hand tapping they would probably be able to do it straight away.

To become a top 1% guitarist you need to:

• Live and breath guitar – you will need to commit yourself completely
• Spend countless hours every day practicing – it’s a lot of hard work
• Constantly practice for years – during those years the improvements will only be small and gradual

Is it worth the effort? For most people it isn’t. I personally will never even touch this category and I’m fine with that. As explained below, the effort needed is high and the rewards for getting there very small. For some people it is worth the effort but for most of us, the reward just isn’t worth the commitment.

 

Understanding the differences between the skill levels

While the top 1% of guitarists can to amazing things, you need to consider what it really takes to get there. The obvious fact is that countless hours of practice are required. Not just practice, but focused practice on very specific things. For example Steve Vai often talks about how he will sit down and play one note for an hour. One note. He will play that note and listen to how it sounds and how he can control the vibrato. Becoming a top guitarist requires this type of commitment. Do you really want to sit there for an hour playing one note? Then moving on and playing two notes for the next hour?

The difference between a great guitarist and the top 1% of guitarists isn’t as wide as you may think. A great guitarist can do almost all of the same things, just not at the same level of control or understanding. Think of what it takes to become an Olympic level runner. Starting out it doesn’t take too much training to be able to run 100m in 12 seconds. It will take a while assuming you’re already fit, but with some training and effort a lot of people can get there. To improve and run 100m in 11 seconds it takes a lot more training and effort. Less people will be able to achieve that goal and those who do manage to do it did so because they put a lot of effort in. To run 100m in under 10 seconds it takes an incredible amount of time, effort and commitment. Most people’s bodies can’t physically achieve this goal. The people who try to do this must live and breathe this goal. They must wake up in the morning and think about it all day until they go to bed. Being a top 1% runner is an incredibly challenging goal. But the difference between a good runner and the top runner? Less than 2 seconds. The difference between a great runner and the top runner? Less than one second. The difference between 1st place and 2nd place? A tiny fraction of a second. How much effort is needed to shave that small fraction of a second off your time? Countless hours and painstaking training.

It’s the same with guitar. As you become better and better, you need to work harder to improve. You will eventually reach a point where the amount of time and effort you put in only results in small increases in skill. To become a top 1% guitarist you need to work incredibly hard and you still may not get there.

The bottom line

The point of this article was to clear up what it means to become a great guitarist or the best. Understand that becoming a great guitarist is a challenge but it’s reachable. If you want to become the best, understand that it takes a significant amount of time and effort and the results aren’t as impressive as you may think. Almost anybody can become a great guitarist if they put in the effort. Set yourself a goal you really want to achieve and you’ll end up happier.

So what’s your goal? Do you want to be a good, great or top 1% guitarist?

Skype Guitar Lessons with Aaron Matthies Now Available

If you found the lessons and articles on this site useful and want to further develop your guitar skills and understanding, Aaron now offers Skype Guitar Lessons.

How do Skype Guitar Lessons work?

Skype allows you to connect with Aaron via Webcam. Aaron can give one on one guitar lessons regardless of your location. You can be on the other side of the planet (Aaron lives in Australia) and still have lessons. The basic requirements are that you need a webcam, a decent quality computer and a high speed broadband connection. The better quality equipment you have and the faster your internet connection, the better the video displays.

Read more on how Skype Guitar Lessons work here.

What times are available?

As Aaron lives in Australia, you will need to check his Available Times here and convert them to your local time. A link to a time zone converter is available on that page. Once you find a suitable time, you can contact Aaron to schedule the lesson.

What you can learn in the lessons

If you’re a beginner, Aaron can provide you with a simple path to learning the basics and help guide you to the goals you want to achieve. Aaron can create a custom lesson plan suited to your goals and ensure you learn what you want to learn.

If you already know how to play guitar and want to further develop your skills and understanding, Aaron can help you reach higher levels. Here’s a couple things Aaron has helped his intermediate students achieve:

• Master the entire fretboard and break away from box shapes
• Learn to improvise in any style
• Develop a unique playing style
• Master technical solos and techniques
• Write songs and record them

Feel free to comment below to ask Aaron any questions and check out his other website for more information.

How Ear Training can make you a better guitarist

Ear Training is exactly what it sounds like – training your ears. As a musician you need to use your ears all the time but quite often we don’t think about how important it is to build up your listening skills. If you heard a random chord played in a song, could you identify the type of chord? If you were listening to a guitarist improvise could you figure out what scale he is playing without seeing him play? Unless you have spent the time learning this skill it may seem impossible. In this short article we will look at what ear training is and how it can help you as a guitarist.

Why many guitarists have poor listening skills

We live in a time where there are self-tuning guitars, countless guitar TABs available and guitar tuners for your iPhone. While advances in technology are a good thing that should be embraced, these new advances can limit a guitarist’s development in a very important skill. As a guitar teacher I see it all the time: a new student who has been playing for a few years doesn’t know how to tune their guitar by ear because they only know how to tune it using their guitar tuner. Something as simple as tuning a guitar by ear may not sound very important (and it isn’t really), but the fact that this skill isn’t being practiced means the guitarist’s listening skills wont develop and may cause issues later on.

Now that there are countless guitar TABs available to download within seconds means every time you want to learn a song, you can simply find the TAB online and play it. This is a great advance and we’re all very lucky that all these TABs are available for us, but there is a problem. When you stop trying to figure out how to play something by ear, your listening skills weaken. A large majority of guitarists now don’t even know how to figure out how to play something basic by ear. So what happens when you can’t find the TAB for the song you want to learn? What happens when you join a band and they ask you to learn their songs but don’t provide you with TAB?

What Ear Training can do for you

When you take the time to train your ears, many new abilities and skills appear that you didn’t realize were available before. Here’s a quick list of things you can easily do when you train your ears:

• Figure out chords instantly
• Transcribe music (even music in your head!)
• Improvise over a chord progression without having to ask what key to play in
• Tune your guitar without the need for a tuner
• Become a better rhythm player
• Recognize when your intonation is out

The simple truth is you will become a better musician when you train your ears – not just a better guitarist. There are countless guitarists out there with amazing skills, but very poor musicians because they can’t properly listen to music and understand what is happening on a deeper level.

How to get started with Ear Training

As the name suggests, you can actually train your ears and it isn’t hard. Just like training at a gym, it takes effort over time but eventually you will see the benefits. Before you go through this process and build up your ear skills, it’s hard to imagine what all the fuss is about. But after that first time you can instantly recognize a chord or scale used in a song just by listening to it, you will understand why it’s worth the effort.

There are quite a few different ways you can train your ears. I personally have used three different options: EarMaster Pro, GNU Solfege (free), and Auralia. They all do fantastic jobs and are easy enough to use.

One final reason to train your ears

Guitarists in the distant past used to train their ears because they had no other choice – they didn’t have accurate TABs to tell them exactly what to play. They had to figure everything out by ear. The reality is very few guitarists today actually take the time to develop these skills. That means if you spend the time and effort to develop your listening skills you will be at an advantage. Once you train your ears past a certain level of ability, you will fully understand why it’s worth the time and effort.

Special offer on guitar flash cards

Tempo Music Cards are having a special on their popular 50 Essential Chords guitar flash cards pack. You can grab yourself a pack of cards and in the next 24 hours receive FREE SHIPPING worldwide.

If you’re learning guitar this is a great way to learn 50 easy chords chosen specifically to beginners.

Grab yourself a pack now.

Teach Guitar? Set up your own website

If you teach guitar, having your own website is an extremely effective way to find new students and spread the word about your guitar tuition. More and more students are searching online to find a guitar teacher so it’s more important than ever before to have your own website.

Live and Teach Guitar have just announced today a new service for guitar teachers to easily set up their own website to use to find students. You can choose your own website name then customize every page with your own details, photos, videos or whatever else you want. You don’t need to have any programming skills as the entire website is automatically set up for you within seconds.

From personal experience I know that having your own website is the most effective way to reach new students. The best thing is once you have it set up, you can just leave it and people will continue to contact you for years without any extra cost.

Live and Teach Guitar also provide teachers with lesson materials they can print off and give to students as well as guides and advice on how to run a guitar teaching business.

To find out more visit Live and Teach Guitar here.

Teaching guitar using lesson plans

As a guitar teacher I use custom lesson plans with my students for several reasons. This is different to teachers who teach their students using a standard guitar book found in any music shop. If you’re a guitar teacher or want to teach guitar, it’s worth making the comparison between guitar books and lesson plans.

Here’s a few reasons why I choose to teach using lesson plans over any guitar books:

• You can change direction at any time with lesson plans instead of having to teach whatever is in the book
• If your student doesn’t like the way the book explains topics, or doesn’t like the exercises used, it’s makes your job hard
• You can create a unique curriculum to fit each student’s needs using lesson plans
• Every student learns in different ways and many wont learn effectively from a book
• Lesson plans give you freedom as a teacher to teach the way you want to
• Guitar books suggest to the student that they could learn without you as long as they have the book

My experience as a student

As a student I had a teacher who gave me a guitar book (actually I had to buy it) and in the first lesson we started on page 1 then worked page by page towards the end. It was the worst experience because I didn’t like the songs and exercises in the book and the teacher didn’t have any backup material. Obviously he wasn’t a good teacher (for various reasons) but the fact that he simply followed the book was a clear sign that he didn’t really know how to teach properly.

After I left that teacher I found another teacher and this time instead of giving me a book, this teacher would hand me new pages filled with relevant exercises and songs to learn based on my current abilities. I would put each new lesson in a binder and if I didn’t like certain materials she gave me she would make a note and next week we would have something completely different that suited my learning needs.

Needless to say the distinction between the two teachers was obvious. As a guitar teacher I now ensure that each of my students receives the same high level of tailored lessons that I received. None of my students learn from a book and in actual fact a few of my students mentioned they were relieved they wouldn’t learn from a book when they started with me. I now write guitar teaching resources for other guitar tutors to use and once they start using them they realize how much freedom it gives them as a teacher.

It’s your choice as a guitar teacher

I’ve mentioned my story here not to say you should do one instead of the other but to show you that as a teacher you have a choice. Most people when they decide to teach guitar simply teach out of a book because it’s the default option – they didn’t choose, they just didn’t consider the alternatives. If you currently teach out of a book and feel it’s working, then that’s fine. Just realize there are other options and you may in fact be better off not teaching from a book.

Something to think about.

If you learn guitar from a teacher, leave a comment whether they teach out of a book or using custom lesson plans.

Not all guitar sites are equal

Quick tip for anybody learning guitar from resources off the Internet:

Never trust a guitar site that talks about how they will help you master the ‘acoustic or electronic guitar’.

If they slip up with something so basic as calling an electric guitar an electronic guitar, just imagine what else they might get wrong. Although I won’t name the site, it’s a good reminder to make sure you use a combination of different sites when learning something new. This way you can cross reference any material so if something stands out, you can figure out which resource has it right. Otherwise one day you might walk into a guitar shop asking to see their range of electronic guitars…