How to Improve Your Guitar Playing Skills After Defining Your Style

The main reason people give up playing guitar is due to a lack of progress. 90% of people who start learning guitar quit within the first year.

Many beginners expect to master the guitar much quicker than they anticipate. In reality, improving your guitar playing skills and technique comes with time, commitment, and dedication to developing a new skill.

How can you get over the hump and improve your guitar playing skills? Here are six recommendations for beginners, from an experienced guitar player and instructor.

Set Specific Goals for Yourself
Try Out New Styles and Techniques
Find Your Influences
Set Aside Time to Practice
Play With Others
Take Lessons from an Experienced Instructor

1. Set Specific Goals for Yourself

Set small, achievable goals and celebrate milestones. Whether it's improving your rhythm and timing skills or improved chord changes, constantly work toward improving your skills as a guitar player. Measure your progress, and how far you’ve come.

2. Try Out New Styles and Techniques

Learn as much as you can. Learning new songs, chords, melodies, song variations, and strum patterns can help you become a more skilled and well-rounded guitar player. Try picking songs that will get out of your comfort zone.

3. Find Your Influences

A great way to stay motivated and keep your enthusiasm for learning guitar is to play your favorite songs. Musicians will listen to other musicians for inspiration. To find your personal style as a guitarist, study the musicians and styles that attract you.

4. Set Aside Time to Practice

Each day, set aside some time to practice. Be productive and intentional with the time you set aside to improve on something you’ve been working on. Consistent practice will help you improve your guitar playing.

5. Play With Others

Jamming with other guitarists and musicians can be incredibly beneficial in developing your style and honing your skills. For guitar beginners, this will be a huge confidence booster. Playing with other musicians, particularly more experienced ones, will give you an opportunity to improve on various aspects of your performance, including staying on rhythm, endurance, and consistency. If you want to learn guitar, jamming with other musicians is one of the best things you can do.

6. Take Lessons from an Experienced Instructor

There’s always room for improvement. A good instructor will not only teach you guitar, but will help you evolve as a musician and develop your style. Beyond learning and improving guitar, you will gain confidence and learn what it takes to be a musician, from someone who has many years of experience. Guitar lessons will help you improve quickly, and become a more well-rounded musician.

Closing Out: Learning to Play The Guitar Takes Time And Persistence

Like anything else, improving at guitar takes time. Through practice, experience, and inspiration, you will naturally develop your own style.

As a guitar instructor, I love seeing the progress my students make as they develop their own style and approach to playing guitar. If you want to improve playing the guitar, I offer lessons for students of all ages and skill levels. I offer in-person guitar lessons in Boston, as well as remote guitar lessons via Zoom, Google Meet and WhatsApp.

Book a lesson today - your first lesson with me is free.