During the Covid Quarantine, I took up the guitar again, after having quit playing decades ago. I was terrible back then, but I’ve practiced every day, and become pretty good.
My primary objective was to be able to sit and play my guitar good enough to entertain myself, and I’ve accomplished it. I can fingerpick about 30 songs start to finish, most with my own arrangements, and about 5 originals that I think are pretty good. I’ve also become a credible lead guitarist as well. Lately I’ve been getting into recording.
Nothing is more satisfying than sitting on the front porch at sunset, looking out over the pond across from my house, and fingerpick through some favorite songs, and work on new ones. By playing the guitar instead of eating, I’ve lost 100 pounds, and I’m still going. It’s also been remarkable for my mental health.
I feel this. I started playing the piano again early in the pandemic. I did not appreciate it when I was a kid and my mom made us each practice for an hour a day but I appreciate it now.
Having a creative outlet like a musical instrument has been amazing for maintaining a healthy, less cynical mental outlook. I took a similar break for a real long time and picked it up again a couple years ago and it’s been fun but takes determination to keep it up.
My secret was to play for 20 minutes in the morning when I first got up, 20 at night before going to bed, and 20 minutes somewhere during the day. That gives you 60 minutes a day.
You’re really only focused for about 20 minutes anyway, so after that youre basically wasting your time anyway. Better to get three focused sessions per day, than one long one where you weren’t really concentrating for most of it. And if you miss a short session, you only miss a little, you don’t skip an entire day.
Force yourself to do that for 2-3 weeks, and it will become a positive habit that will feel weird if you skip it. Hopefully, you are so motivated to go on your musical journey that you won’t need to convince yourself too much, but it also helps that your progress will be so fast that it will become self-motivating.
Eventually, I got away from that schedule, because I was playing a lot more than that per day anyway. I’ve became a bit obsessed.
3 x 20 min per day. That’s what I did, and I was shocked at how quickly I progressed.
That sounds pretty similar, the first few months i’d go from lots of playing and practicing for a few weeks then nothing then coming back to it for a couple weeks etc never making very much progress. Now I do a session in the morning for around 20 min to do some practice for techniques and play a recent song I learned or am working on.
Then in the evening a mix of stuff for around an hour. I try to keep 3 things going: 1 technique to practice (currently working on tapping), 1 new or recent song to practice (having fun with sanguisugabog’s dead as shit), and song writing or playing to a backing track so if I get bored or stuck on 1 I have 2 others to pick from. If I get away from it for a couple days it feels weird and I get more structured about at least 2 20 min sessions in the morning and evening.
That sounds pretty similar to the kinds of things I was practicing for a while, and I was improving well.
Then I caught the acoustic bug, and really got into it. I still played electric, but much less. A couple of months ago, though, I started playing more electric again, and bringing a lot of finger picking techniques to electric playing, so it looks like that’s the next stage for me. I’ve always liked the hybrid picking of people like Knopfler or Buckingham.
Tapping hasn’t grabbed me yet. I’m sure I’ll get inspired one day, and go down that path at that point.
During the Covid Quarantine, I took up the guitar again, after having quit playing decades ago. I was terrible back then, but I’ve practiced every day, and become pretty good.
My primary objective was to be able to sit and play my guitar good enough to entertain myself, and I’ve accomplished it. I can fingerpick about 30 songs start to finish, most with my own arrangements, and about 5 originals that I think are pretty good. I’ve also become a credible lead guitarist as well. Lately I’ve been getting into recording.
Nothing is more satisfying than sitting on the front porch at sunset, looking out over the pond across from my house, and fingerpick through some favorite songs, and work on new ones. By playing the guitar instead of eating, I’ve lost 100 pounds, and I’m still going. It’s also been remarkable for my mental health.
I feel this. I started playing the piano again early in the pandemic. I did not appreciate it when I was a kid and my mom made us each practice for an hour a day but I appreciate it now.
Having a creative outlet like a musical instrument has been amazing for maintaining a healthy, less cynical mental outlook. I took a similar break for a real long time and picked it up again a couple years ago and it’s been fun but takes determination to keep it up.
My secret was to play for 20 minutes in the morning when I first got up, 20 at night before going to bed, and 20 minutes somewhere during the day. That gives you 60 minutes a day.
You’re really only focused for about 20 minutes anyway, so after that youre basically wasting your time anyway. Better to get three focused sessions per day, than one long one where you weren’t really concentrating for most of it. And if you miss a short session, you only miss a little, you don’t skip an entire day.
Force yourself to do that for 2-3 weeks, and it will become a positive habit that will feel weird if you skip it. Hopefully, you are so motivated to go on your musical journey that you won’t need to convince yourself too much, but it also helps that your progress will be so fast that it will become self-motivating.
Eventually, I got away from that schedule, because I was playing a lot more than that per day anyway. I’ve became a bit obsessed.
3 x 20 min per day. That’s what I did, and I was shocked at how quickly I progressed.
That sounds pretty similar, the first few months i’d go from lots of playing and practicing for a few weeks then nothing then coming back to it for a couple weeks etc never making very much progress. Now I do a session in the morning for around 20 min to do some practice for techniques and play a recent song I learned or am working on.
Then in the evening a mix of stuff for around an hour. I try to keep 3 things going: 1 technique to practice (currently working on tapping), 1 new or recent song to practice (having fun with sanguisugabog’s dead as shit), and song writing or playing to a backing track so if I get bored or stuck on 1 I have 2 others to pick from. If I get away from it for a couple days it feels weird and I get more structured about at least 2 20 min sessions in the morning and evening.
That sounds pretty similar to the kinds of things I was practicing for a while, and I was improving well.
Then I caught the acoustic bug, and really got into it. I still played electric, but much less. A couple of months ago, though, I started playing more electric again, and bringing a lot of finger picking techniques to electric playing, so it looks like that’s the next stage for me. I’ve always liked the hybrid picking of people like Knopfler or Buckingham.
Tapping hasn’t grabbed me yet. I’m sure I’ll get inspired one day, and go down that path at that point.