How to Get in the GROOVE!
Every once in a while, I’ll see the frustration of a guitar player with their progress. It usually starts out with something like:
“That’s it – I’m quitting. I’ve been practicing guitar for months now and I’m not getting any better. How long is it going to take for me to learn this thing?”
With so many concepts and techniques to learn such as scales, chords, arpeggios, rhythms, strumming, picking, fingerstyle, bending, and slides (to name a few), it’s only natural to have both option anxiety (i.e. “what should I learn now?”) and progress anxiety (i.e. “should it be taking this long for me to learn the guitar?”). It’s hard enough to stay focused enough to learn, absorb, and assimilate a particular concept without continually questioning whether the manner in which you are learning is actually working.
For me, the most effective way to deal with these types of anxieties is to get back to why you are learning the guitar in the first place: the music. When I say “the music”, I mean the comfortable execution of a musical idea. It can be a song, a melody, a riff, a lick, part of a solo, a one-bar phrase, or any other things you can play that feels good and objectively sounds good. When a musical idea fits this criteria, it takes on the characteristics of what I like to call a groove. It doesn’t matter if the groove doesn’t contain scale or chord, or use concept. The only thing that matters is that when you play it, you dig it, other people dig it, and it reinforces why you play music in the first place.
If you begin to feel these type of anxieties, try the following steps in order to “lock in” a groove or a musical idea that moves you:
Choose a musical idea for your “groove”. As stated above, it can be a snippet of a song, a rhythm guitar part, a lick, part of a solo, something you saw a friend of yours play, etc. The main thing is to not “bite off more than you can chew”. You want to focus your attention on playing a small amount of music well, and not on playing a lot of music poorly.
Get a metronome and set it to a tempo that is significantly slower than you would normally try to play your selected groove. This is important because it will reinforce the playing of the groove at a steady tempo.
Play your selected groove at the given tempo. If you find that you are missing notes or having a hard time playing it, slow the tempo down until you can execute the groove from start to finish with no mistakes.
When the groove feels comfortable to the point where you can play it in your sleep, increase the tempo by a small amount, and practice your groove at the new tempo. One good run-through at the new tempo is not sufficient. Play it over and over at the new tempo until it’s a permanent part of your brainwaves.
Repeat the last step until the tempo has reached the normal tempo at which your groove should be played.
