Perseverance - It Will Make Or Break Your Guitar Playing

by Tom Hess
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Want to know something awesome about your guitar playing?

Your guitar playing potential (and your potential to become a great musician) is virtually unlimited...

Yes, it's true.

Unfortunately, most guitar players never fully achieve their potential, no matter how much they practice guitar.

Those who fall short usually lack one trait that all great guitar players possess...

That trait is: perseverance.

What is perseverance?

It is the key to solving all your guitar playing and musical challenges as you practice guitar and work to become a great guitarist.

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Perseverance helps you think through problems in your guitar playing and keep trying new solutions until you find the right one during your guitar practice

Want to see how perseverance helps you solve your guitar playing problems?

Watch this guitar playing video to see an example:


Here is what to do to improve your level of perseverance as you practice guitar, so you can become a great guitarist a lot faster:

  • Understand that becoming a great musician takes time and effort. Guitarists who expect instant results from their guitar practice do not become great musicians.

  • Be certain that your guitar practice efforts are moving you towards your goals. This keeps you from becoming frustrated even when your goals take longer to reach than you would like.

Persevere through the guitar practice process to massively improve your skills using each guitar playing tip below:


How To Persevere Through The Process Of Becoming A Great Guitarist

Guitar Playing Tip #1: Learn How To Use Guitar Practice Effectively To Get Big Results When You Practice Guitar.


Perseverance is a result of confidence in your ability to learn to play guitar the way you want. This confidence is developed from practicing guitar effectively and seeing consistent results in your guitar playing. You must learn how to use guitar practice to:

  • Solve your guitar playing problems that keep you stuck.

  • Develop skills needed to reach your musical goals.

This guitar technique guide shows you how to make your guitar practice very effective and literally double your guitar speed in the process.

Guitar Playing Tip #2: Make Your Guitar Practice Fun.


Your guitar practice becomes more fun when you:

Practice Guitar In A Geometric Way Rather Than A Linear Way. There are many skills that go into reaching you musical goals. You must identify what they are and rotate your guitar practice focus among them each week.

Do not wait until you fully master one skill before moving on to the next skill. This keeps you from become bored and makes you a better guitarist faster.

Learn what skills go into reaching your musical goals.

Practice Guitar Integrating Your Guitar Skills Together - your musical skills matter very little in isolation. Your ability to integrate your skills together fluently means everything. Take any guitar technique exercise, music theory concept or element of ear training and find a way to integrate it in music.

Here is an example of what integrating guitar techniques looks like:


This guitar playing tip keeps your brain engaged in the process and helps you enjoy guitar practice.

Another simple way to make guitar practice more fun is to make sure it’s not mindless. A great technique for achieving this is called ‘focus rotation’.

What is focus rotation?

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It works like this:

Step 1: Choose a single exercise you want to practice. (It can be anything – from a section of a song or solo to some etude you are learning in guitar lessons).

Step 2: Make a list of guitar playing elements you want to improve (for example: picking hand efficiency, fretting hand finger independence, 2-hand synchronization, fretboard knowledge, phrasing, timing, ear training, etc.)

Step 3: Begin playing your practice item over and over, focusing on making the first element of your playing better. (e.g. picking hand efficiency).

Step 4: After 1-3 minutes, keep practicing the same exercise you chose in step 1, but rotate your focus to refine the next area of your playing. (e.g. Fretting Hand Finger Independence.)

Step 5: After 1-3 minutes, continue playing the same exercise from step 1, but rotate your focus to refine the third guitar playing element from your list.

This style of guitar practice is highly effective for a few reasons:

It lets you improve many areas of your playing in a small amount of practice time. (And, if you’re practicing guitar effectively, you end up improving 5-6 areas of your playing in 20-25 minutes... something that would take most guitar players hours to do.)

It lets you avoid mindless practicing (a huge killer of gains) and makes practicing more fun. The more fun guitar practice is, the more you want to do it. And the more you want to do it, the more time you’re likely to spend ‘actually’ practicing. 

All this leads to you becoming a way better guitar player.

Guitar Playing Tip #3: Track Your Musical Progress As You Practice Guitar And Work To Become A Great Musician.


Persevering becomes easy when you see objective proof of your musical results. Tracking your improvement gives you a precise picture of your guitar playing strengths and weaknesses. This guitar playing tip helps you to:

  • Make the right adjustments in your guitar practice. These adjustments eliminate weaknesses that hold you back from improving your guitar playing.

  • Feel in control of your guitar playing. You know exactly what skills hold you back from reaching your musical goals. Most guitarists do not have this clarity and do random guitar practice. This makes it easy to become frustrated and give up before your goals are reached and you’re able to become a great musician.

Guitar Playing Tip #4: Get Inspiration From Non-Musical Success Stories.


Sports give many great non-musical examples of perseverance (that can help you become a great guitarist more quickly). Think about Michael Jordan - the great basketball star. Jordan wasn't even good enough to make it on his local high school basketball team! Most people would have given up after such a disappointment and believed that there is no point in trying again next year.

This was not how Jordan thought about his situation. He worked extremely hard every day and asked the coach to teach him, even though he was not a member of the team. The next year, Michael made the team and went on to eventually become one of the world's greatest athletes of all time.

Guitar playing tip for you: learn from high achievers in all areas of life and apply the lessons from their success stories into your guitar playing. That will help you become a great musician way faster.

Guitar Playing Tip #5: Surround Yourself With People Who Have The Same Goals As You.


You become a great guitarist faster when you are around like-minded, passionate and motivated musicians who are working hard to reach their musical goals.

This environment makes you more motivated to improve your skills and persevere through the process of reaching your goals.

Note: Use this guitar playing tip best by finding a peer group at a higher level than you. This makes you more motivated to reach their level faster.

Guitar Playing Tip #6: Get Feedback On Your Guitar Playing From An Expert Guitar Teacher.


Expert feedback on your guitar playing helps you identify problems during guitar practice that you cannot spot yourself and become a great guitarist much faster than you could on your own.

Guitar Playing Tip #7: Visualize Your Guitar Playing Success In Advance As You Practice To Become A Great Musician.


See your guitar playing the way you want it in your mind’s eye. Visualize yourself already having reached your goals. Make the picture as vivid as possible and go through the visualization process on a daily basis.

This reinforces your reasons for playing and practicing guitar and helps you persevere through the process of becoming a great musician.

This free guitar technique eGuide makes your guitar practice more effective and helps you master guitar in less time.

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Tom Hess
About Tom Hess: Tom Hess is a guitar teacher, music career mentor and guitar teacher trainer. He teaches rock guitar lessons online to students from all over the world and conducts instructional live guitar training events attended by musicians from over 50 countries.

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