Hey everyone, I was wondering what your practice routines look like? I would like to start having some more structure within the time I spend playing guitar as of now its usually just playing along to songs, learning new songs, writing for my band and occasionally some theory based stuff for 2-4 hours a day across two different sessions. A little over a year ago I did a complete overhaul on my picking after I started lessons with one of my favorite guitarists and he introduced me to CtC. I worked really hard for a couple months to get my picking better and while I saw leaps and bounds of improvement, I became extremely burnt out on that kind of intense practice. However, I am starting to feel like I am falling into a bit of a plateau and I was wondering if anyone has any advice on how to practice more effectively.
I think backing away / changing focus on guitar when you feel burnt out is normal, and something I’d encourage. Give it some time until you feel like you really want to play guitar again, or push your limits.
As far as effective practice, it depends on what your goal is? What plateau do you think you’ve hit?
Thanks for the kind words and advice man! I think I need to further refine my goals now that I think about it. When I was really grinding trying to get my picking technique better, I feel as if I was able to do that because that was my goal. As far as plateaus go I think I just stopped putting myself out of my comfort zone genre-wise (usually I play death metal, black metal or thrash almost exclusively) so last night I just sat down and learned a bunch of hair metal classics and enjoyed every minute of it. I also think a lot of the plateau feeling is coming from not practicing or writing with my band in a while due to COVID and just sort of feeling uninspired. However now that I’m starting to feel that drive again I’m going to make some clear goals that push me to go out of my comfort zone at least a little bit every day.
I feel the same from time to time, just wanting to play stuff that is really easy to pick up and jam out to.
I also go through phases where I try to play on acoustic mostly; if you happen to have one, I find it’s easy to get “satisfying” results from comparably easier stuff, I think I just like the sound / projection I get!
I think the last year has affected everyone’s playing: some for the better, others for worse. I think as long as you’re able to tailor your playing time to your current mindset, you’ll keep having fun and eventually find more inspiration to push yourself.