While you might love to play guitar, or love to play an instrument in general, it doesn’t mean you will always want to have the motivation to play it.
Don’t worry, you’re not alone, because this has happened to me.
Many times, I have picked up the guitar and I have felt like I forgot to play, and this doesn’t happen only when playing covers, but if you’re trying to make your own music, or jamming along to a blues backtrack.
Some signs of that may be your fingers move in a slower pace than how they were the before day.
You might have learned a really cool riff a few days ago, but then you immediately forget it, and you can’t get it back by trying to learn it by ear.
This is by far the most frustrating thing that can happen to a musician, but how do you fix that?
Here are five ways that I have gotten my motivation for playing guitar:
Going to Live Music
This is probably my favorite one.
I recently went to a Joe Satriani concert, and I also went to a Slash concert a few months ago, and they were both awesome.
By watching your favorite artists live, you see how they play, and you immerse yourself in their playing, and then you get a thought in your brain saying “I wish I could be able to do that.”
By saying that, your brain isn’t frustrated anymore, and it starts to imagine yourself in that person’s shoes, as if you were playing in front of 500-1,000 people.
That boosts your self-esteem.
But why is it different watching them live instead of just watching a YouTube video?
It’s really about all the atmosphere.
If someone is happy, they’ll likely pass it on to the next person, who’ll pass it on to the next person, vice versa.
With 500 people doing that, they’re bringing positive energy to everybody around them, because remember, they’re there for a reason, same as you!
When everybody’s enjoying the same music, they are all happy together, and everybody starts getting that positive vibe.
This is probably the most efficient way.
But remember, not everybody can afford tickets to a show/concert every week or so, but just even one concert can be a big influence.
Listen to Different Types of Music
https://unsplash.com/s/photos/listening-to-music
This is a very critical and very common stage in a music lover. Are you one of those people who only have one preferred genre of music?
For guitarists, that’s not the best thing you want to be.
It’s important to explore other genres, because let’s be honest, there can’t be a single genre that you don’t like other than the one you are already crazy about.
I myself was obsessed for Guns N’ Roses, and listened to Appetite for Destruction many, many times in one day.
But you want to know what happened? I got bored.
I kept listening to the same music over and over again, and by the time I could play most of the songs on guitar, I was bored, and I wanted to be pushed, because when there’s a song I like, I try to learn it.
But you always need to have a different type of music in your back pocket.
After learning alternative rock for such a long time, I decided to shift over to where it all started, with some Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry, and later moved on to some legends like BB King and moved up the stage in both genres and decades.
Not only did I enjoy the music more than I would have before, but it also escalated my guitar-playing skills, and soon later, I had improved so much, and I was so happy.
I had turned from an alternative rock person to a Jazz and Blues person, and that’s also when I wanted to learn another instrument, and luckily, my school had given me the Saxophone to play for 3-4 months, and I enjoyed it a lot.
The point is, just listening to music will open so many doors for you as you progress, and you can learn things too.
For example, I even learned that it’s way easier and more efficient being able to jam with Blues music than with rock music, since you can have so much freedom with blues jamming, as long as you stay in the key.
Diversifying between music is a very useful thing.
If I went straight up to Jimmy Page, and asked him to play something, he wouldn’t only play some 70s and 80s rock, he’d also play some mixes and just jam, and perfect it – I mean, he’s Jimmy Page.
He [Jimmy Page] went through that path as well.
Stop learning by yourself
I get get it, you want to get better at guitar, but one of the things that doesn’t motivate you is the fact that you are learning by yourself.
My guitar instructor gives me a song that I should listen to every week, and that gives me a better taste in music, now that I am listening to different types of music EVERY SINGLE WEEK.
Now, what are the pros and cons of learning with an instructor?
Pros
- They teach you their own music knowledge
- Have experience
- SHOULD be better guitar players than you
- Can recommend different things
Cons
- The better the instructor, the more expensive they are
- Most students don’t want to learn for the long-term
Apart from those cons, everything about an instructor is good! They are definitely worth it, but you have to make sure that you want to go the long-term, the ‘long-term’ being around 3-4 years or even more.
Instructors have an abundant amount of experience, and I know for a fact they love to share their music wisdom with everybody else, as not only does it give you a better musician in general, but even instructors can learn different types of music, for example, if you request a song to learn and they haven’t heard it before, but then they turn out to actually adore the song!
Hopefully you have a better understanding of how to be more motivated, and I hope these steps helped you.
For any questions, feel free to comment.