How to Get Better at the Guitar - 3 Ways to Make Your Progress Perpetual

The three most important things to remember and work on if you want to not only not get worse but continually get better are:

1. Keep contact with your guitar community.
2. Have some form of teacher.
3. Constantly seek out new music, musicians and musical experiences.

So what do those points mean? Let's dig into them one at a time.

1. Keep contact with your guitar community.

I know from experience how easy it is to let a few days become a few weeks become a few months-and then, next thing you know, you haven't touched your guitar in longer than you can remember, and, oh yeah, you've forgotten everything you knew. This is the definition of that long sad slide we most want to avoid if we love the guitar and seek to play it ever better.

Instead of just defaulting to whatever and allowing entropy to seize our guitar progress, find as much community support for your guitar playing as you can.

If you play folk music, then stay active in the community contexts that energize your folk music. Play at jams or open mics. Keep connected with online forums. Keep watching your favorite folk guitar YouTube videos.

If you play worship music, then it means you need to keep making new musical friends and learn new songs as you most importantly keep playing your guitar in worship contexts.

Whatever your native guitar domain is, inhabit it and make sure you consciously and creatively craft it such that you're supported. If you have a musical community, it's much harder to slide off on your own and just sort of stop playing your guitar.

Use peer pressure to your advantage-have a teacher, have a band, have a community orchestra. Have something that keeps you connected to your guitar, and do whatever it takes to keep the guitar in your life no matter how busy you become.

2. Have some form of teacher.

The digital age has made learning things unbelievably easy. You have thousands of years of guitar learning at your fingertips. Use it.

The traditional route to take when learning an instrument is to find a teacher and study with them directly. Private lessons or music classes are amazing, and when you're working with a great teacher, your progress will literally know no bounds.

But even if you aren't in a place where you can have a teacher, it's still possible for you to design your own curriculum and follow it. Subscribe to someone's guitar teaching YouTube channel. Find a good guitar DVD and master everything on it.

Somehow, someway, find a teacher and stay close to their teaching.

Your progress will accelerate, you'll experience continual reinforcement, and you'll avoid those pesky backslides we're most interested in avoiding.

3. Constantly seek out new music, musicians and musical experiences.

If you're a musician, even (especially) an amateur one just getting started on the guitar, you have a clear way to grow continually as both a musician and as a human being.

When growth stops, decay starts. Align yourself with constant improvement and your music will unfold beautifully.

Keeping things fresh within your music isn't hard-just stay open to new influences. Listen to new and different types of music. Seek out new musicians and listen to their output. Get out of the house and see some live music-great live music can completely relight your fire for guitar.

It's too easy to default toward not doing any of these things. But it's not hard to make them a priority and invite them into your life.

If you do, your guitar playing will continually deepen, and you will live a life characterized by constant improvement and increasing enjoyment.