Want to be a better player? Of course you do. But sometimes it can feel like you have reached a plateau in your skill level that you just can’t rise above. However much you might be gigging, attending lessons or woodshedding it in the bedroom with the latest
Teach Yourself book, you’re still slogging through the same stylistic routines, falling onto the same familiar old chunks of the fretboard. Any guitarist who has been playing a while has probably noticed that their progress as a musician tends to follow a pattern that rises like a set of stairs rather a steep incline: you improve a little, sit tight for a while, improve a little, sit tight for a while more … and sometimes those “sit tight” moments dominate the graph far more than the little bursts of improvement.
What follows is a list of techniques to help you break out of those drought periods a little quicker and, while you’re at it, to vastly improve your overall skill set as a guitarist. What’s more, these are all fun ways to shake up your playing, broaden your abilities and add some new spice to your chops. Next time you’re stuck in a rut, pull one of these out of the bag, devote yourself to it for a couple hours — or a couple days — and I guarantee you’ll come away with a fresh perspective.
1. Play across the genresOr, call this one “cross-training”: Just like athletes who improve their football by doing a little ballet, or sharpen up their hoops game by playing some volleyball, guitarists can improve their playing in their main genre by copping some of the techniques of another, and the process of learning them can be fun and refreshing, too. If you’re a metal head, learn some hard-core Chicago blues; if you’re a country player, study some jazz; if you’re a jazzer, cop some contemporary rock for a while (these are just examples—mix and match any of the above). Scour back issues of magazines or online guitar boards for lessons in other genres, or pick up a good book/CD or DVD package. Also, check out
Arlen Roth’s daily lessons on this very site, and really apply yourself to it for a while, as if you’re intending to make this your new main direction. Even if you never play a country gig in your life, that weekend you spent learning to twang like a Nashville cat will yield countless new directions in which to take your rock solos, and probably surprise your bandmates in the process.
2. Play along to recordsMost of us started this way when we first picked up the guitar, but it’s easy to forget how quickly you can learn a handful of new licks just by playing along to some records from your collection (and by “records” I mean CDs, MP3s, old vinyl if you have it … anything that contains professionally recorded music). The key here is to not limit yourself to your current favorite tunes or albums, or to songs that you’ve already learned — pull some forgotten gems out of your collection, let ’em roll, and play along as best you can, as if you got the last-minute call to step in on a major tour and you’re covering your butt on stage as best you can. You can work this technique from many different angles: Challenge yourself to get into the groove and the changes and be playing competently before each song ends, or approach it as a total improvisation, where you’ve got free rein to riff creatively alongside whatever’s happening on the track. To extend this, apply the principles of “cross training” above and pull out a set of albums from a genre that you’re really not familiar with — or borrow them if you have to — and work up to improvising competently to a whole new style of music.
3. Play to a rhythmIf you are in the habit of playing all on your lonesome, bringing a little rhythm into the game will help to tighten up your chops
muy pronto. Set a rhythm for yourself on any device you have handy: a beat box, the sample program on your computer recording package, even a good old-fashioned metronome. The key is to get a steady tempo and play with it, not against it, ahead of it or behind it. When you start this exercise it can sometimes be a little frightening to discover just how inconsistent your sense of timing really is (especially if you haven’t done this kind of practicing lately, or haven’t been playing with a band on a regular basis), but you’ll soon adapt to being one with the tempo. Don’t make it too hard on yourself, but concentrate on getting in the groove more than on whipping out the lightning-fast riffs. You can work up to speed over time, but a guitarist who plays totally in the pocket on a mid-tempo song is more impressive any day than a guy who shreds like his pants are on fire, but strays up and down all across the tempo and ignores what’s going on with the groove.
4. Play the sax partOr the fiddle part, or the mandolin part, or the keyboard part … Return to some recorded songs that you’re familiar with, or try some new ones, but this time, don’t play along with the guitarist: instead, cop the part of a different instrument. This can be an extremely cool way to bring some new melodic lines into your playing and to broaden your soloing repertoire in a totally fresh way. Violinists, horn players, banjo players, keyboardists and guitarists all tend to approach the familiar scales of their relevant genres very differently from each other so, for example, putting on “If I Should Fall From Grace With God” by The Pogues and doubling the accordion hook or spinning Miles Davis’s “Jeru” and learning the horn part will put you into a completely different mode of making music. This one’s great for the way it forces you out of familiar ruts — the “muscle memory” playing that finds you landing in the same box-scale positions on the neck time and time again — and breaks down some of the barriers you have built for yourself as a player, often without realizing it.
5. Play with othersHowever shiny and sleek your chops seem to be in the comfort of your own basement, sitting down for a good, solid rehearsal with a band can often bring out the chinks in the armor. This is the one that opens your eyes to the beauty of really
making music: playing a simple I-IV-V blues or rock and roll progression along with a drummer, a bassist and another guitarist or keyboardist, with a tight groove and even just a few basic improvised lead breaks, can often prove to be more challenging — and more rewarding — than nailing “Eruption” in the privacy of your bedroom. Playing with others will almost always improve your game, and often pretty darn quickly, especially if you have the good fortune to play with musicians who are at least on a par with you or, ideally, are superior in their skills. It can be a little daunting at first, especially if you haven’t been in a band before or have never even jammed with live musicians, but you don’t have to approach it as if you’re expecting to land a spot on the next Lollapalooza tour. Gather up some players, choose some tunes you’d all enjoy learning, and get your groove on. Even if you can’t pull a full band together, playing with another guitarist, a pianist, a bassist or any other musician will help to bring your skills forward, and teach you to listen to everything else that’s going on around you in a musical context, rather than just what you’re doing yourself. And that, ultimately, is when you start to make music.