Hey there, I'm Tomas.
When I first started learning guitar, I made a lot of mistakes.
We could only go back.
Recently I spent some time thinking about what I would do differently and if I could
go back, talk to my younger self, what would I tell them?
I ended up writing down a whole bunch of stuff.
Now, since I didn't have a longer attention span, when I was younger, I said I'd better
whittle it down a bit.
I ended up with a list of six things that I thought would make the biggest difference.
I'm going to share those six things with you.
My hope is that it will save you some time and frustration if you're just starting out
or even if you've been playing for a little while and feeling stuck just for fun.
I'm gonna start with number six and then go back.
Starting with number six, one of the first mistakes I made was trying to practice on
a marginally functional instrument.
My first guitar.
Now I wish I had the guitar to show you.
It would be kind of funny now but back then I didn't know better but that's not 100% true
and it wasn't just about that.
There was something about, for me I didn't want to get a better guitar cuz that's some
kind of attitude like a real guitar player can play on anything or I'm not even sure
where that came from but there was a resistance over and above just knowing the guitar wasn't
great.
And when I talked about not great, the strings were really high off the frets like that and
so when I pressed down not only did that hurt my fingers but the notes would kind of go
out of tune a bit so nothing I played really sounds that great.
Also it wouldn't stay in tune very well and you can imagine trying to practice is going
out of tune.
I could tell at some point it wasn't right and you know I realised it wasn't me it was
the guitar and then turned it backup and waste a lot of time and energy.
So get yourself a guitar that works, right?
You don't have to spend a fortune.
Let's talk about the best guitar but the best guitar that you can reasonably afford that
works right, stays in tune, has a reasonable amount of action.
I mean how high the strings are off the frets and when you play it, it sounds good and it's
not a struggle just to press down the strings.
For number five, I chose a lack of routine and I really was pretty up and down with my
practising.
Now ironically, I thought I should practice for hours at a time.
But whenever I sit down something would come up and I would hardly get started and then
move on to something else.
Not only that but because I thought I should sit down with at least an hour or so to practice,
I would hesitate to even make time to practice because I thought well I don't have an hour
right now.
I can't do that.
If I could go back, I would tell myself, practice regularly even 10 to 15 minutes a day, just
make a routine out of it until it becomes a habit.
And then squeeze more time as you can as it feels comfortable just knowing you always
have at least that minimum amount of time to practice.
And now I know, even when I make a small amount of time to practice, often I do practice more
and I enjoy it.
I think of it like squeezing a wedge in a crack and once you get the crack open, you
can move a bigger wedge and a bigger wedge and next thing you know, it's just a part
of your life.
I had no idea when I started out of The Power of Habit of what they can actually do in terms
of practising as well as other areas of my life.
And along with that, I would tell myself to make a place to practice.
Make sure you have at least a small amount of time that you're not going to be disturbed,
not trying to practice with a lot of stuff going on that you're going to be distracted
and trying to do at the same time each day but don't make it a hard and fast rule.
And number four, I wasn't organised with my practice.
If I could go back and tell myself to think about what's important to practice right now,
spend some time on the fundamentals exercises, things that would actually get you better,
not just whatever you felt like playing or what interests you at any particular time.
And of course, when I started that fluctuate quite a bit from easy stuff to very hard stuff
that was way over my head.
As a matter of fact, I tell myself to think about kind of what a practice schedule should
look like and try to stick with it with some variation from time to time just to make sure
you got the fundamentals and things that were really important that we're going to move
you forward.
I would also tell myself, by the way, too, if you're going to play a song with chords,
learn the chords first and practice them.
I would often try to play a song and learn the chords as I went along and I'm doing several
things and not only to get frustrating but it started to beat on me is and feel like
maybe something's wrong with me.
Why can I get this?
Now I could see how silly that was.
I was trying to play new chords.
I didn't know sometimes a half a dozen or more and play them in time in a song changing
from one to the other.
It was just too much.
Number three.
Tomas, pay more attention to rhythm.
Yeah, I really underestimated how important rhythm is in playing music.
You know, I was enamoured by lead guitarist and it looked like it was all about melody
and technique.
But now I realise how important rhythm is and how even simple things sound good when
you get the rhythm right and I'm talking both melody and chords.
I would say practice maybe with a metronome at least some of the time.
It doesn't have to be all over time.
Practice listening to songs and maybe try to play along with them.
Practice playing slowly and in time and even take some time and just practice rhythm exercises.
Matter of fact, if I could go back, I'd probably take even a short amount of drum lessons just
to really focus on rhythm.
Number two, I mean, there we go.
I really underestimated the value of basic music theory.
Now, before you turn this video off, I'm really not suggesting some long drawn out course
in theory or understanding a whole bunch.
I'm talking about some very basic stuff.
Understand how a major scale is created.
In other words, play it on your guitar and understand in terms of the notes, what the
pattern is of a major scale and on top of that, learn triads that's the basics of chords
that means three note triad.
And triads you can relate that to the scale there every other note in the major scale
makes a triad.
There's major and minor triads.
Those are the most important that eventually you want to get on to diminished and augmented
but really not important that first.
Then once you get to at least a hang of that you can move on to more complex chords like
the seventh chords that would be the next one, minor seventh, major seventh, things
like that.
And this probably sounds silly, but I would go back and really memorise the names of the
open strings so that I had them without even having to think about it.
And that would practice knowing the notes all up and down the neck of the guitar just
so I could move around freely and not have to struggle every time I had to find a note.
And the silly thing is all I'm talking about is really not that difficult and it doesn't
take that much energy.
I just needed to make a little bit of effort in the beginning to get this understanding
under my belt and would apply to all things I was doing.
And finally, we come to number one.
I should have connected more with others and a lot of that was just insecurity on my part.
Oh, I got to get better before I can either jam or even sometimes go to a teacher.
I was embarrassed when they already knew and I want to show them something now.
Go out and play with others.
Try to, you know, not playing something so much better and you you're getting intimidated
but it's a little better.
It's good because you learn a lot by playing with other people.
Compare notes, be humble, ask questions, find some teacher or teachers.
Now I would recommend, I had the wrong criteria when I was younger also.
And I would recommend using your criteria of finding a good teacher not just somebody
who plays good or is the style that you like.
Looking for somebody who knows how to teach but that said, connecting with other people
is in itself an educational experience.
Nowadays, you can also do a lot of connecting online and I'm considering just taking online
courses part of that connecting you're learning from ideas from other people and videos, YouTube,
online lessons, online forums, asking questions.
Again, I hope this wasn't available when I was starting out and it's amazing how the
world has changed.
So those are the six biggest things I could come up with.
If you find even one of these helpful for you, it will have made this all worthwhile
for me.
Let me know in the comments.
You know, switching chords are one of the roadblocks that holds people back.
I don't know if that's what's happening with you.
But if it is, download my new ebook - The Seven Keys to Switching Chords Quickly, Easily
and Smoothly.
That's quite a name ah.
In all seriousness, it's the results of years of teaching and studying myself on how to
help people with this and it's free, just click the link in the description.
Now there's absolutely no charge but I am going to ask that you make some time to go
through it and let me know how it's helped you.
See you again soon.
Bye.