Busting that plateau

[JustAnother1]

Hi guys,

Just wondering what do you normally do during times when you feel like you've hit a a brick wall during pratice whereby your pick felt as if it weighs a ton, your fretting fingers starts to feel like frozen sausages in a freezer, your ears refused to acknowledge a chord that you've just played....(ya kinda get the idea)

Normally, i would try to listen to other music that i don't usually listen to and stop playing for a week or so.

 

[bigblackbear]

when that happens, i just stop playing. take a break (can be days) until i get the urge to play again

 

[trickstop]

Just keep playing anyway! if you're the kind that plays everyday, stopping for days on end isn't good cause when you start again, you just seem to get stuck and your playing becomes crappy. At least that's how it is for me ..

 

[vernplum]

Get some lessons.
Learn something new from the Web.
Try your old licks in a new key.
Play up and down one string only for at least 5 minutes.
Throw some dice to get a random chord progression, record it and jam over it.
Put on a random record and try to play along by ear.
Try a different guitar.
Focus on one specific technique for an entire session, e.g. only pulloffs, and master it with every finger.
Go out with some other musicians and play with them
Try to figure out well known theme tunes or songs completely from memory
Remove two of the strings of your guitar and only play the others
Tune to an alternate tuning
Program some different sound with your effects you normally would
Play in 3/4 or 5/4 or any time sig except 4/4
Get some music and learn to read it (without tab)
Go eat something.
Read cool guitar blogs.

tons of things you can do..

 

[Syahwylder]

Vernplum made some excellent suggestions there. Follow those guidelines and you'll improve indefinitely!

For me, guitar technique is the easiest to improve on. Its just playing lots of different specific exercises over and over. It's really boring but its one of those things I believe every guitarist goes thru to get better. It definitely helped me. It took me well over 6 months of constant practice to get the hang of really fast tremolo picking. and then another 6 months to get the hang of sweeping. I pretty much dedicated that 1 year to improving these 2 techniques. So yea, even if you're dead bored and uninspired, you can always improve on technique.

As for getting musically better at the guitar. In terms of feel and melody, thats harder to do. To me, its a combination of exploration, experimentation and making mistakes. Vernplum's suggestions hit the mark here.

And finally, take a break man.. Even pro guitarists and musicians need to get away from it all every now and then. Go get laid or something.. haha