By Nicholas Anderson
You’ve taken lessons before. You’ve watched hundreds, if not thousands, of YouTube videos. You’ve bought books, DVDs, and scoured the internet looking for the answers to your burning questions. You’ve wasted hundreds of hours trying to get better. You’ve done just about everything you can think of to find out how to become the guitarist wish you could be.
And yet, you still struggle to get better. Sure, you’ve made small gains here and there, but even with all the time and effort you’ve put into practicing, you’re still stuck.
Why does this happen? Is it because you don’t have any natural talent? Is it because some people have it and you don’t? Or is it because you haven’t worked hard enough? Or perhaps it’s because even though you are talented, you just aren’t talented enough?
The answer to all of these questions is, “No.”
Your lack of progress is not caused by any of those. The real reason why you’re not making a massive amount of progress in your playing is:
- You have not properly diagnosed the cause of your problems
- You don’t have the right strategy for overcoming those problems
Most guitar players, unless they are fairly advanced, cannot properly identify why they’re having difficulty with something. Whether it is a beginner trying to master chord changes or an experienced player trying to figure out sweep picking, both usually do not know why they are having such a hard time.
Unfortunately, most guitar teachers also do not know why their students are having such a hard time either, and therefore cannot offer the kind of advice and training a student needs to succeed and make a lot of progress. Most guitar teachers just think some students are more talented than others, and there really isn’t much they can do about it. This kind of thinking is why so many guitar players fail to reach their full potential.
What you need to understand, then, is the real cause of your problems. This can usually be quickly diagnosed by an experienced and trained guitar teacher, and can literally save you years of struggling and wasted effort.
I know this from experience, because I struggled for a long time to improve my own skill only to find that the problem I thought I had was not a problem at all. It was merely a symptom of the real problem. As soon as I fixed the root cause of the symptoms I was experiencing, my problems went away comparatively quickly.
This is another reason why asking friends, searching online, and watching YouTube videos usually does not work. What you need is someone who can sit down with you, watch you play, and see exactly what is happening when you play. Like a doctor who can do a few tests and tell you why you’re sick, a good guitar teacher can watch you play and tell you what’s holding you back and what you need to do to get to the next level.
If you’ve experienced what I described above, take heart. It is not due to lack of talent that you’ve struggled for so long. All you need is someone who can diagnose the root cause of your problems and help you fix them. That will immediately help you make massive progress in your playing. Click here to apply for admission.
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