7 Ways To Stay Motivated While Playing Guitar

7 Ways To Stay Motivated While Playing Guitar

 

Stuck in a rut, bored of your boredom, got guitarist’s block? Why can’t the guitar pick itself up you say, where is the love, curiosity and motivation I felt at the beginning. Don’t worry my fellow Guitar friend here are 7 ways to stay motivated while playing guitar. 

 

 

  • Inspiration-Driving-Motivation

 

 

Why did you pick-up the guitar, can you remember? Perhaps it was a new hobby – a chance to let yourself relax, to find musicians to play with (more on that later) or to impress dinner guests. Whatever the reason, never forget the inspiration that got you to this place to start with. Refresh that inspiration by revisiting the music that got you to buy that guitar – the musicians, the live concert experience. Let the inspiration drive your motivation and remind you of the beauty of it. 

 

 

  • Easy Like A Sunday Morning

 

 

Congratulations, you purchased your guitar and got yourself started with playing but what happened? 

 

Somehow taking it out of its case and going into the other room and practicing has now become a chore rather than the curious affair that you first felt. Make playing the guitar an easy task to reinstate that curiosity. How about leaving your guitar out next to the sofa or creating a little practice space where you can just play whenever you pass by for a few minutes. Allow playing the guitar to be as easy as picking it up on a lazy Sunday morning. 

 

 

  • Patience To See Small Steps Become Big Steps 

 

 

Each small step makes up the mile. Are you considering a weekly goal such as learning a certain number of chords or finishing a song or piece? 

 

Setting these achievable goals for your guitar playing will make a big difference. You want to create small achievements that will let you know you are moving forwards and allow you to feel good about your progress. Nobody needs the added pressure, so focus on the small tasks to help ease that pressure and make it easier to facilitate the big achievements.  

 

 

  • Rewards: You Deserve It

 

 

Focusing your aims and goals is important but don’t forget about giving yourself credit where credit is due. YOU got yourself to this seat and are trying to find motivation. YOU managed to practice this week. Reward yourself on those achievements – you are doing great. 

 

 

  • Active Engagement

 

 

You’re seeing the practice provide progress but what do you do now with this new set of skills? What does a guitarist do practically while they learn? 

 

Keeping active engagement with music is a really important way to stay motivated; examples of this could mean any of the following, listening to music, going to see live gigs, discussing music with friends or finding other instrumentalists to play with. Playing the guitar is about more than just sitting there and practicing all day long. Enjoy being a part of the music world and community, enjoy being a guitarist. 

 

 

  • The Musician Becomes The Musician

 

 

Everyone finds advice and inspiration for learning guitar through a number of different ways but watching videos of your favourite musicians or tutorials of other musicians is a great way to start. Musicians have learnt from musicians since the beginning of music itself and that isn’t going to stop anytime soon. There are a number of ways to watch these videos including live streams of your favourite bands, watching artists on their own pages, scrolling through YouTube or Ultimate Guitar Tabs tutorials to find what suits you. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJunCsrhJjg

 

 

  • Build A Community 

 

 

Everyone needs their motivation lifted up once in a while and there’s no better place to find that then through a community. 

 

The music community spreads far and wide across genres and finding your own community can come through different forms including fan forums, a local gig venue and music centre or even looking at ads for bands looking for musicians. Build your own community by asking your friends to come to events with you or by meeting and socialising with people at gigs/music venues who share similar interests to you. Music builds community and this drives motivation to keep engaged with it.