Have You Stopped Playing The Guitar?
We all get bored with things after a time, even with something like playing the guitar. Often it is just a temporary thing, but to avoid it becoming permanent you need to put in some work to find ways to make it fun again.
Now we will look at 3 of the most effective ways to make playing the guitar enjoyable again:
Master a different style of playing: Your tutor is in control of the style of music you play when you are learning, they pick songs they feel will stretch your playing ability and use chords that you have just learnt or techniques etc. When you are ready to start learning whatever songs you want though then people invariably turn to the style of music they like best and learn to play that, they then stick with those songs and that style from then on.
What about trying a new style though? Maybe classical music or Blues for instance? That might not be your idea of good music, but if you can spend some time learning to play it then you will become a much better guitarist and can use your new skills with whatever style you want afterwards. As you already know how to play the guitar then it is going to be relatively easy to pick up these new skills, so grab a course from a site like BluesGuitarDVD.org and get stuck in. What’s the worst that can happen? And you might find out you actually really like it!
Find people to play with: Some people learn an instrument specifically because they want to be in a band, and so this part won’t apply to them as they will have joined a band the instant they could strum a few chords together, but some people just want to play by themselves and with a few friends instead. So if being in a band has never really appealed to you before, then what about now?
It will move you out of your comfort zone and force you to do things you have never done before, plus you will hopefully find a new group of friends to hang out with. Only when you are pushed outside of your comfort zone can you grow as a person and as a musician, and you will more than likely have a lot of unique experiences (good and bad) which give you lots of interesting stories to tell!
Start your own songs: Once you are comfortable reading music and playing the guitar, then you are ready to take the next step and start to write your own tunes. You might think you would be rubbish at it but everyone had to start somewhere and people like Elton John don’t just sit down and write a fantastic song first time, it takes time and tweaking and scrapping countless attempts before they find one they like.
Just take some time to pay attention when you are messing around with your guitar and if you notice a tune you think sounds good, then note it down and work from there. Once you have a basic tune to work with then you can start to experiment and add to it from there, before you know if you will be having ideas for parts of the song, the tune and the words, throughout the day and it will start to form into a song you can be proud of.