In this blog we are going to discover the 3 things slowing down your guitar progress. As every guitar player has a blind spot these are important to take head of. Most guitarists will often find out the hard way down the line losing valuable practice time.

While every guitarist wants to accomplish different things. One may want to become a full-fledged shredder whereas the other might want to become a country player. There are a few things that every guitarist should incorporate into their own playing.

Whether you’re a beginner or not, the following practices that’ll be mentioned are ones that a good portion of professional players that you know of, use or have used in the past. Anyhow, here are the top 3 things slowing down your progress on guitar.

1. Guitar Progress Stumbling Block 1: Not Practicing In Isolation

If you’re struggling to learn a difficult solo, one mistake that you might be doing is playing the entire thing instead of just focusing on one section and repeating it until you get it down. Doing this will lead you to play every part very poorly making it harder to get down.

Your best solution is to break up the solo into chunks and learn one at a time until you can play it at least 100% up to speed. Additionally, you should be starting off slow then working your way up which leads to the next point.

2. Guitar Progress Stumbling Block 2: Impatience  

We all want to nail that cool lick or solo down, and this is very common in arpeggios but it’s important that you slow down and perfect it slowly before you can play it fast. Remember that a baby has to learn to walk before it can run.

Some guitarists would tell you to start off fast, make it messy, then clean up your technique. But this is just on view point. You will give yourself a bad foundation this way, thus making many mistakes and making it longer to learn that solo because it’s a mess that needs cleaning. Playing fast and sloppy is misguided and delusional when it comes to your guitar progress.

If you work your way up, it will turn into a domino effect. You will be able to play from 5% speed and then to 10%. Given time it may jump to 20% as you get more comfortable with what you’re playing.

3. Guitar Progress Stumbling Block 3: Relying On Tabs 

This is a big one. While it’s easy to rely on tabs as everything is already laid out for you it actually will damage your progress in the long run. All that time that was spent taking shortcuts could have been spent doing ear training and sharpening your ear.

The problem with tabs is not only that a lot of them are wrong (even for popular songs) but they don’t develop your ear which is one of the most important aspects as a musician.

Have you ever wanted to play what’s in your head and just improvise out of nowhere? This is where ear training comes into play.

Conclusion

That’s it for the 3 things slowing down your guitar progress. Remember that playing the guitar is a marathon, not a sprint, it will take some time to make accomplishments. Don’t let this discourage you as learning guitar is supposed to be fun. If you aren’t having fun playing guitar, then you are doing it wrong.

Some exercises will be boring there is no doubt about that, but you should always spend some time playing something you like. Otherwise if you only practice, playing the guitar will seem like a chore.

As a bonus tip, you might find it helpful is to find some cool guitar accessories to help you along the way. You will find it to be of great help when it comes to learning guitar. Things like fretboard stickers are great if you are a beginner guitarist looks to learn your notes on the fretboard.