The three most important things to remember and work on if you want to not only not get worse but continually improve are:
1. Stay in touch with your community of guitarists.
2. Have some kind of teacher.
3. Constantly search for new music, musicians and musical experiences.
So what do those dots mean? Let’s dig into them one at a time.
1. Stay in touch with your community of guitarists.
I know from experience how easy it is to let a few days turn into a few weeks into a few months, and then the next thing you know, you haven’t played your guitar in longer than you can remember, and oh yeah, you I have forgotten everything you knew. This is the definition of that long, sad slide that we most want to avoid if we love the guitar and seek to play it better and better.
Rather than limit yourself to whatever and allow entropy to take over your guitar progress, seek as much support as possible from the guitar playing community.
If you play folk music, be active in the community contexts that energize your folk music. Play on jams or open mics. Stay connected with online forums. Keep watching your favorite folk guitar videos on YouTube.
If you play worship music, then it means you need to keep making new musical friends and learning new songs, as the most important thing is to keep playing your guitar in worship contexts.
Whatever your native guitar proficiency is, speak it up and make sure you consciously and creatively craft it in such a way that you are compatible. If you have a music community, it’s much more difficult to go off on your own and stop playing the guitar.
Use peer pressure to your advantage: have a teacher, a band, a community orchestra. Have something to keep you connected to your guitar and do whatever it takes to keep guitar in your life no matter how busy you are.
2. Have some kind of teacher.
The digital age has made learning things incredibly easy. You have thousands of years of guitar learning at your fingertips. use it
The traditional route to take when learning an instrument is to find a teacher and study with him directly. Private lessons or music classes are amazing, and when you work with a great teacher, your progress will literally have no limits.
But even if you’re not in a place where you can have a teacher, it’s still possible for you to design your own curriculum and follow it. Subscribe to someone’s guitar teaching YouTube channel. Find a good guitar DVD and master everything on it.
Somehow find a teacher and stay close to his teaching.
Your progress will accelerate, you’ll experience continuous reinforcement, and you’ll avoid those pesky setbacks we’re most interested in avoiding.
3. Constantly search for new music, musicians and musical experiences.
If you’re a musician, even (especially) a hobbyist just getting started on the guitar, you have a clear way to continually grow as a musician and as a human being.
When growth stops, decay begins. Align yourself with constant improvement and your music will develop beautifully.
Keeping things fresh within your music isn’t hard, just be open to new influences. Listen to new and different types of music. Find new musicians and listen to their production. Get out of the house and catch some live music – great live music can completely rekindle your passion for the guitar.
It’s too easy to fail to do any of these things. But it’s not hard to make them a priority and invite them into your life.
If you do so, your guitar playing will continually deepen and you will live a life characterized by constant improvement and ever-increasing enjoyment.