Guitar Chord

Concentrate On The Music Not Your Hands

Focus on the music.

Beginning guitar students tend to watch their hands instead of the music. This usually happens when theyre close to having a piece of music memorized. As their confidence in the song grows, they tend to watch their fingers, look up to see where they are, and then get lost.

Dont practice mistakes.

Listen to yourself perform the song and watch for trouble spots. While I dont advocate watching your hands, I also dont advocate never looking at them. If youve made a mistake, stop, look at your hands and reposition your fingers. Narrow down the trouble area, and slowly and deliberately play through the passage several times. Dont try to speed up until you can play that section perfectly.

Dont go too long without listening to the song.

With You Tube, DVDs, CDs and iTunes available, theres no reason to not have a recording of the song youre trying to play. Listen and/or watch so youre sure you understand what the song is supposed to sound like. Its best to do that when youre not trying to play along. Youll be surprised at what repeated listening can do for you. It helps develop your ear and lots of times youll hear things you missed when you listened earlier.

Play the song for you guitar teacher so you can gauge your progress.

I have students question why I make them play what theyre working on, and the answer is quite simple. We want to correct mistakes, check fingering, and hear how things are progressing. When I took up banjo playing after years of concentrating on guitar, I made the mistake of trying to learn a song I didnt have a recording for. I practiced it for months, then when I tried to play it with others it turned out that I was adding extra notes. I actually quit playing the song for several months and concentrated on listening to the recording when I wasnt trying to practice the banjo. Only after I could visualize how the song went did I go back and re-learn it.