What do you want to achieve on guitar? What are the steps you need to take to get there?
To answer these questions and make real progress at this level, you need to define YOUR personal long term and short-term goals.
Long term goals are the big picture and answering the question - why are we playing guitar?
If you're reason to play isn't strong enough, your motivation and progress will not be good, and this could lead to your being disappointed with your progress.
Example LONG TERM goals include.
I want to join a band/ play open mic nights/ jam with others
I want to specialise in playing lead guitar
I want to play and sing at the same time
I want to be able to play a large repertoire of songs that I love
After this is decided, your short-term goals should line up towards helping the long-term goal, otherwise you don't get close to achieving it.
Example SHORT TERM goals include.
I need to work on memorising song structure and chord progressions so I can enlarge my song repertoire
I need to improve my strumming and rhythm if I ever want to play full songs well
I need to focus on scales and improvising as I want to be a lead guitar player
Sometime the short-term goal will be improving a weakness, sometimes it will be improving a strong part of your playing.
Universal advice
A universal piece of advice for everyone at this level is to learn 10 songs that you can play along to the recording. If you cannot do this yet, SORT THAT FIRST. If you have NEVER played with anyone else or jammed along to a recording, check out my free 10 days course and play along to the ‘play along’ videos that occur in each day of that course, or choose 10 of your favourite songs that you can play a little already. It’s simply a vital skill that also solves many other core issues.
Managing your time
Timing saving discussed at 5:04 in the video above
The less time you have, the more specific you need to be. In the days and week when you have precious little practice time, focus on keeping your song repertoire to at least 10 songs, ideally that you can play along to the recording. When you have my recommended one hour most days to practice (one hour 5 days a week is perfect) then you can divide this up like I will show you in the next lesson.
Working towards Musical outlets will be the biggest help to give you direction, focus and motivation.
Musical outlets are discussed in detail in lesson 7 of this Practice section.
