The year is 2023 and there has never been a better time to learn how to play the guitar.

There are more resources online to help you teach yourself than ever before and the standard of the content is getting higher and higher.

This begs the question “are guitar lessons worth it?“

While you can teach yourself how to play guitar with a plethora of online guitar lesson resources, learning from a professional guitar teacher still remains the best way to learn guitar.

In this article, I will explore why you should still be learning guitar with a teacher if you want the best possible outcome for your guitar playing.

Benefit 1 – Personalised Guitar Instruction

Personalized guitar instruction from a professional teacher can be incredibly beneficial for students of all skill levels.

One of the most important benefits is the ability to create a customized lesson plan that is tailored to your individual needs and goals. This approach allows the teacher to address specific areas of difficulty and to help you progress more efficiently by making the lessons relevant to your own goals.

Another significant benefit of personalized instruction is the ability to provide immediate feedback and guidance.

A professional teacher can help you identify and correct mistakes, which will save you a lot of time and frustration. Additionally, a teacher can help you work on the right thing at the right time which will help you avoid biting off more than you can chew with a piece that is way too difficult for you.

Finally, having a set lesson time with a professional teacher can help keep you motivated and on track with your guitar practice.

A teacher can provide guidance and encouragement, and the regularity of lessons can help you stay accountable for your own progress. Furthermore, having a professional teacher can help students to develop a deeper understanding of the guitar, music theory, and the music industry. This knowledge can be incredibly valuable for those who wish to pursue a career in music or simply develop a deeper appreciation for music as a whole.

Benefit 2 – Faster Progress On Guitar

Imagine signing up at your local gym because you have the goal of getting fit and growing bigger muscles.

Now imagine it’s your first time in the gym and you are all alone, surrounded by dozens of machines. You don’t know where to begin, or how to use any of the machines, and could really use some help to get started.

You could waste a whole bunch of time figuring things out by yourself or researching how to use the machines on Youtube…

Or you could just sign up with a trainer who creates a workout routine, shows you how to safely use each machine and guides you through each workout so that you get maximum return on your time in the gym.

This is what it’s like having a professional teacher.

A professional guitar teacher will help you identify and correct mistakes in your playing and give you the exact exercises you need in order to improve.

This will save a lot of time and frustration and help you avoid spending months or even years practising things incorrectly without realizing it. So rather than developing bad habits that can be difficult to break later on, you establish a good habit and great technique from the beginning.

Secondly, a great guitar teacher can provide guidance and feedback on technique.

This can include things like proper hand positioning, finger independence, and tone production. By focusing on technique, students can improve the quality of their playing and develop a more professional sound.

Lastly, a guitar teacher can help you set goals and create a practice plan.

Having specific goals and a structured practice plan can provide much-needed direction for your playing and help you stay motivated.

By setting realistic, measurable goals and tracking progress, you can see the improvement you are making and stay motivated to continue working towards your goals.

Benefit 3 – The Ability To Ask Questions And Get Immediate Feedback On Your Guitar Playing

The biggest disadvantage of teaching yourself (even if it is with resources created by a good guitar teacher) is the lack of feedback that you get.

This can lead to you developing bad habits and flaws in your technique as your guess at the right thing to do.

This is why even if you are largely self-taught and can practice independently, taking a guitar lesson with a real teacher at least once a month can be extremely beneficial.

A really good mechanic will know exactly what is wrong with your car the minute you drive it onto the lot just by listening to it.

Likewise, a really good guitar teacher will be able to identify any bad habits you have with a quick glance or short listen and provide you with immediate feedback on what you can do to improve.

There have been many times when someone who has been self-teaching has been stuck with something for years before they get frustrated enough to reach out for lessons. I’m usually able to solve the problem in less than 5 minutes leaving them wishing they had started taking lessons years earlier.

There is no substitute for being in a room with a real teacher, so I highly recommend that you take guitar lessons with a guitar teacher, even if only sporadically the same way you get a doctor’s checkup.

If you’re looking for a good guitar teacher who can help you out, search for guitar lessons near me and pick the best guitar teacher you can find.

Benefit 4 – A Great Guitar Teacher Will Help You Learn The Right Things At The Right Time

As mentioned earlier there has never been such easy access to an abundance of guitar lesson resources to help you teach yourself guitar and with every day that goes by the number of online resources only increases.

This is a double-edged sword.

While you can get the answer to pretty much any question you have along with a detailed article or video guitar lesson to explain what to do (usually for free, you could be biting off way more than you can chew and attempting something that is way too difficult for you, completely irrelevant to your goals, or jumping way ahead of yourself.

One of the most important things a real guitar teacher can do for their students is to help them learn the right thing at the right time.

This means starting with the basics and building a solid foundation of skills before moving on to more advanced techniques.

It also means focusing on the specific areas where the student needs the most help and avoiding unnecessary or irrelevant material. By learning the right thing at the right time, students can progress more efficiently and avoid frustration.

A teacher can also help you identify a problem with your playing and help you work towards a solution whereas you may just move on to a new video or lesson topic if you were teaching yourself.

For example; If a student is having trouble with proper hand positioning, I would focus on exercises and techniques that will help them improve in that area before moving on to another technique.

By taking this approach, the student can build a strong foundation of skills that will serve them well as they continue to progress.

So Are Guitar Lessons With A Real Guitar Teacher Worth It?

So hopefully you can now see the benefit of taking guitar lessons with a real teacher.

Not only will you make much more rapid progress, but you will also save a lot of time and avoid a lot of frustration by having them guide you through a proper learning plan and overcome any flaws in your technique that may hold you back.

The deciding factor for most people will be the money factor with many people opting to teach themselves due to a lack of money.

At the end of the day, the best advice I can give is “you get what you pay for” and any guitar teacher worth their salt will save you money by getting you from A to B considerably quicker than what you could do yourself.

Now don’t get me wrong, there are also plenty of low-quality teachers out there who will be a waste of money. Ultimately you will need to do some research and find the best teacher you can because it will make a difference.

In conclusion

While some people may do very well teaching themselves guitar and may make great progress through self-teaching, the vast majority of people will do considerably better by taking guitar lessons from a real teacher.

Even guitar players who work well independently will eventually hit a wall in their playing and need help from a professional who can show them exactly what they need to do to fix it.

If you want to learn guitar and make maximum progress in the shortest amount of time possible then taking lessons from a guitar teacher will be the best investment of time and money you make.

If you’re looking for guitar lessons in Melbourne then consider taking lessons with me at my studio Melbourne Guitar Academy. You can book a free trial guitar lesson so that you can experience how much easier learning guitar from a real teacher is before making the decision to commit to ongoing lessons.

Written by Michael Gumley – Melbourne’s Best Guitar Teacher

The post Are Guitar Lessons Worth It? appeared first on Melbourne Guitar Academy.

One of the common things I hear from many new guitar students is how difficult practice is in the beginning, and how hard ongoing practice can be both mentally and physically.

 

While this is true, I wanted to bring to your awareness that there are different types of practice for different things, and that having an awareness of many different practice strategies can greatly aid us in our effort to become better guitar players.

 

By definition practice is the repetition of an activity with the intention of improving it. If we want to get better at something, we need to practice it. There is no getting around that.

 

But working harder isn’t always the best thing to do and can even lead to unnecessary burnout and unwanted frustration. If we work smarter (while still working hard)  we can get a lot more out of our practice and get a lot further along in proportion to the time and effort we are putting in.

 

In this article We’ll look at the Three Phases Of Practicing and even head back to the garden and touch on a real story to help drive the metaphor home.

 

Let’s start with our story…

Our Very Own Private Jungle

During the recent lockdown we moved back into a property which had been rented out to tenants.

 

Needless to say the tenants had not done a good job of maintaining the property.

 

There were a few things they hadn’t done, but the most impressive was the backyard.

 

I mean it was so poorly maintained I was impressed at how out of control it had become.

 

The grass was knee high, and the smaller weeds were above my waist. There were even a few thistles that were taller than me and I’m over 6 foot tall.

 

On top of that you couldn’t actually tell where the lawn ended and the garden beds began. It was just one big mess that looked like the amazon jungle.

 

One of the first weekends after the move I took upon myself the daunting task of getting it cleaned up.

 

I fired up our lawnmower and pushed it onto the grass only to have it immediately choke out.

 

I fired it up again, rolled it forward a few inches and again it choked out.

 

I repeated this for about 20 minutes and mowed a total of 40cm before giving up.

 

If you’ve read my article about not giving up guitar and quitting too early then you’ll know that you should always seek an expert before giving up.

 

So I called a gardener to come and give us a quote.

 

The gardener arrived, took one look at the amazon jungle we had growing out the back and shit his pants. He told us it was too big a job for him and got in his car and quickly drove off, nervously looking over his shoulder several times as he drove off into the distance.

 

The second guy arrived and quoted us almost $2000 and 3 weekends to get in under control.

 

The third guy (Good Old Jim) quoted us a much better price but said it was a big job and would require some help.

 

In the end it took three people a whole weekend to get the garden back under control which was a huge initial investment of time and effort, but it was done, and we now had a livable backyard and could walk around without fear of getting eaten by giant snakes or getting lost for days at a time.

 

Jokes aside, after the initial cleanup it only takes us 5 minutes to mow the front yard and less than 10 minutes to mow the backyard which we do once a month.

 

We still pull out the occasional weed as well, but our garden is at the point where we only need to put in a little bit of effort every now and then to keep it maintained.

 

We had one big initial investment of time + energy which was really really daunting at first, but once the hard part was over and done with we can now put in the bare minimum of effort to keep it in order.

 

So how does all this relate to guitar?

Whenever you are learning something new, it’s often daunting and takes a whole lot of effort and brain power to get on top of.

 

Then once you understand it, you need to invest more time into building up the skill. You might even hit the wall and feel like giving up, but once you push through that point and have a breakthrough the practicing will be much easier and you won’t have to put in as much effort.

 

Congratulations, you can now enter maintenance mode, where you routinely come back and practice the item in order to retain it in your memory or keep it at a certain level of proficiency. Rather than put lots of time into it, you put in the bare minimum you need to keep it at the right level so that you can recall it when needed.

 

When you’re in maintenance mode, life is easy, and guitar playing is fun. Then you go and reallocate that time into the next skill or concept that needs attention.

 

Let’s take a more in depth look at the Three Phases of Practicing with a few examples chucked in to boot.

The Three Phases Of Learning Guitar

When you are first learning something, a lot of your attention needs to go into actually learning and retaining information about what you need to do. This learning phase is often the most mentally overwhelming because it requires brainpower to take in teh new information as well as effort to practice.

 

This is often the hardest because you’re learning and practicing at the same time, and when you don’t quite have a solid grasp of the concept, your attention is divided between retaining the information and implementing it in your playing.

 

Eventually once the penny drops and you don’t have to think about the information side of things, you can more easily move into practicing.

 

Think back to when you first learned chords. There was lots of mental effort involved in simply comprehending how to read the chord charts, where to put your fingers,  and the names of the chords, which made trying to play them really really hard.

 

Fast forward a few weeks, once you remember the names and the finger positions required for each chord, you have a much easier time of actually practicing them because your focus is less about the individual information about each chord, and more about improving your technique.

 

Think learning how to do a new exercise at the gym and how cautious you are at first compared to a few weeks later when you’re comfortable with it.

 

The third type of practice is something that I call maintenance mode practice. This is where you understand the topic well, have already invested plenty of time into developing the skill or techniques to a high level of proficiency and can then allocate the bare minimum of time into maintaining your skill level or grasp of the knowledge.

 

This kind of practice is useful when you already know something well, but don’t want to forget it, or can already perform to a high standard, but need to keep your chops at a high level.

 

The lifecycle of your guitar practice when applied to learning the fretboard, might be as follows:

The Learning Phase

You have to spend a whole practice session learning the musical alphabet and how the notes are arranged across the strings. You play each string 3 times forwards and 3 times backwards to make it stick, it takes a long time and is a little bit daunting or frustrating.

The Learning Phase requires the most mental effort to understand the topic, and may take a few additional sessions for you to really understand the topic and to make the info really stick. The goal of the learning phase is to understand and retain the information so that you can improve upon it when practicing.

The Improvement Phase

You now understand the concept and are actively working to improve it. You no longer have to spend 30 minus every session reviewing the information and trying to make it stick, you spend 10 minutes practicing the exercise. In fact, it only takes you 1 minute to do the first two strings because you know them so well, and about 2-3 minutes each for the other strings. 

In the Improvement Phase you keep working at something session after session with the attention of improving it. Sometimes it will be easy, and other times it will be hard, stick with it.

The Maintenance Phase

After a couple of weeks of memorising the strings you will notice that you can get through each one in a matter of seconds, and that doing things three times is rather mundane & unnecessary.

If you reached this point then Congratulations, you have entered the Maintenance Phase. This is where it is more beneficial for you to reduce your practice time from say 10 minutes down to 2 minutes so that you are running through things enough times to ensure you retain them in memory or skill, but don’t waste time playing over things for no additional benefit.

The Maintenance Phase & Beyond

At this point you can either reduce the amount of time you put into practicing something and reallocate it to something in the Learning or Improvement Phases, or find a more difficult level of the task at hand to further your knowledge in the area. (Think playing up and down the string using a more difficult pattern to challenge yourself and further consolidate your knowledge).

 

As you learn more and more things, you will have to invest a larger chunk of time and brainpower into learning them (The Learning Phase), and a lot of effort into developing your skills (The Improvement Phase) but eventually as things get easier and easier you practice them less and put more time into other practice items which need the attention (The Maintenance Phase). You will gradually have more and more things in Maintenance Phase over time which you touch base with less frequently so that you don’t forget them or have your skills go backwards. It eventually becomes a juggling act which you can better learn how to manage with a Rotating Guitar Practice Plan which is a topic for another time.

 

Hopefully after reading this you have a better understanding of how the three phases of guitar practice work and can adapt them into your practice routine. Doing so will allow you to take the right mindset to each phase and apply the right amount of time and effort to the skills and concepts you are trying to learn and improve. Doing so will make practice much more enjoyable and seem a whole lot less daunting.

About The Author

When he isn’t adventuring deep in the heart of the Wantirna South Jungle Michael Gumley is teaching the best guitar lessons in Melbourne Eastern Suburbs from his home studio in Wantirna South.

Michael has the personal mission of raising the standard of musical education worldwide and hopes to do so one student at a time with enlightening articles that offer deep insights into the psychology of learning and the art of practicing.

If you’re struggling to make progress on guitar consider booking a FREE guitar lesson with Michael so that he can share with you some effective practice strategies to help you move forward.

Visit the Melbourne Guitar Academy main page to book a free guitar lesson in person or live on Zoom.

The post The Three Phases Of Guitar Practice appeared first on Melbourne Guitar Academy.

Why Quitting At The First Sign Of Adversity Is Always A Bad Idea

There is a famous story called ‘3 Feet From Gold’ which I heard many years ago.

 

It’s a story about the dangers of quitting too early and how the biggest riches always follow resilience and the ability to overcome what is usually only a temporary setback or defeat.

 

You will do well to listen to this story and learn from it.

As the story goes, a man was caught with the gold fever of the Californian gold rush back in the 1800’s. The man took all of his life savings, bought himself some mining equipment and moved out west to stake a claim in the pursuit of gold and riches.

 

The man worked the plot day and night for weeks and weeks running on nothing but his lust for gold. After a few weeks of effort he was finally rewarded with the discovery of his first nugget of gold.

He wrote back to his family about his discovery and soon afterwards brothers, cousins and uncles arrived with even more equipment and machinery to work the claim.

 

Before long they had discovered a vein of gold below where the original nugget was found, and after delivering their first load of ore to the smelter were celebrating the fact that they had discovered their payload, and that becoming rich was now their reality.

 

They invested more money into even bigger equipment so that they could scale up their operation and extract more of the gold from underground.

 

Except that there was a problem…

 

After several days of digging and excavation the vein disappeared.

 

They dug, and dug and dug desperately, but after a week of digging and no sign of any more gold, they did the worse thing they could have possible done.

 

They quit.

 

They closed the mine, sent everyone home, sold all of the equipment and moved back east.

 

They sold the mining machinery to a junk man for pennies on the dollars they had bought it for, along with the claim for the now defunct gold mine.

 

Now while most junk traders were just trying to make a quick buck off the mining hysteria, this one was smarter than your average boo boo and had the sense to consult a mining expert. He decided to bring an engineer along with him when he picked up the mining gear.

 

The engineer inspected the mine and determined that the project had failed due to something called a fault line which interrupting the vein of gold. He did some calculations and determined that if there was gold still in the ground the vein would be due to resume in only a few meters below where the previous miners had stopped digging.

 

So the junk peddler and the engineer fired up the mining drills and started digging.

 

And sure enough, they hit gold, only three feet below where the original owners had given up.

 

The junk peddler took in millions and millions of dollars worth of gold from the mine and was able to retire rich while the original owner spent a decade of his life paying off the debts to his family which had invested into the equipment for his mine.

 

Luckily the junk trader had the sense to seek expert advice BEFORE giving up on an opportunity, and it paid off for him big time.

Don't Be The Person Who Quits Right Before The Big Breakthrough Is About To Happen

The moral of the story is that often when we start a venture we are met with easy victories, but sooner or later we are bound to hit a rough patch or meet some temporary setbacks. In these situations often the most logical thing to do is to quit because it’s an easy way out.

 

But it is through perseverance and continuing on despite what seems like defeat which leads to the best rewards.

 

When it comes to your playing guitar, there are times when you will feel like giving up, where the progress is slow, and you’re doing the same old things over and over again without much sign of improvement.

 

It’s in these moments that you need to be resilient, and keep on pushing through, for the breakthrough you are waiting for might only be a handful of practice sessions away.

 

Don’t be the guy who gave up on his dream and quit only 3 feet from gold only to spend the rest of his life regretting his decision.

 

Go the extra mile, (or the extra three feet) it makes all the difference in the world.

About The Author

Michael Gumley is a guitar teacher from Melbourne, Australia. He is the founder of Melbourne’s Best Guitar School (Melbourne Guitar Academy) and has also created Guitar Dojo Online  and the Guitar Ninjas Program to help students all around the world learn guitar the right way without the limitation of face to face guitar lessons.

Michael knows how to overcome adversity better than most and had to overcome a compressed nerve in his elbow which required both surgery and a recovery process that included learning how to use his hand and play guitar again from the total beginning.

if Michael can go from not being able to tie his own shoe laces or button his own shirt at the age of 21 to being professional guitarists with full use of his hands again in only a few years then there is hope for you too.

If you’re struggling to overcome obstacles in your guitar playing then consider booking a FREE trial lesson with Michael or one of his team members at Melbourne Guitar Academy. Otherwise try our free guide on Common Guitar Playing Problems and How To Fix Them so that you can self diagnose your problem and follow our step by step guide on how to overcome it.

The post Three Feet From Gold… appeared first on Melbourne Guitar Academy.

How This Hit TV Show Fast-Tracks Development & Turns People Into Pro Dancers In 12 Weeks

(and what that means for your guitar playing)

If you’ve ever watched the hit TV show Dancing With The Stars you can easily tell the difference between the celebrity contestants and the stars in the very first episode.

 

In fact for most of the first half of the season it’s pretty obvious who is who.

 

But then something happens…

 

Something clicks and the celebrities start getting it.

 

They push through The Dip and start looking a lot like the pros.

 

In fact by the end of the season you can barely tell the difference between the pros and the celebrities.

 

This amazing feat just goes to show you the importance of sticking with things, and of having a system to follow in order to achieve or arrive at your desired outcome.

 

In the case of Dancing With The Stars you have a system that takes people who can’t dance, pairs them with a professional pattern, provides them access to expert coaches, and then has them training under supervision for several hours a day in an environment conducive to learning.

 

People with no talent go in, receive daily supervised training and 12 weeks later come out on the same level as the pros.

 

Even if you don’t like dancing, it really is an amazing feat.

 

And the best thing is, your guitar playing could be like this too.

Now not to say that if you don’t turn into a pro after 12 weeks of playing guitar that you should give up, that’s not the case at all, but after 12 weeks of daily practice you’re going to be a lot more accomplished than the average Joe.

 

What compounds this for the Dancing With The Stars Celebrities is the fact that time gets condensed and they do a lot of dancing practice in their 12 weeks. Especially when they get to learn directly from experts who have already put in the decades of effort which quickly helps them accelerate their progress

 

The average amount of training undertaken is at least 4 hours per day of dancing practice. This includes learning routines with their partners, practicing specific moves, and getting coaching from professional dance instructors who can correct their form and give them inside tips and tricks that make a big difference.

 

This happens 5 days a week for 12 weeks! 

 

Let’s do some maths…

 

4 hours per day for 5 days a week equals 20 hours per week!

 

Multiply this by 12 and you get a whopping 240 hours of dancing practice within a 12 week period.

 

This of course doesn’t account for the additional dancing they will be doing during film shoots, their performances and any additional practice they may be putting in outside of scheduled hours towards the end of the season when they go into finals.

 

Can you imagine how good your guitar playing would be if you put 240 hours into it within a 12 week period?

 

Can you imagine how good your guitar playing would be if you put 240 hours into it full stop?

 

Being realistic, if you practiced for only an hour a day, it would take you 240 days to get to the same level, and over a year if you did 30 minutes a day or an hour every second day.

 

So before you lose heart at an apparent lack of progress you’ve made in the short amount of time you have been learning, give some thought to the fact that it does take a long time to develop the skills you need to play guitar well.

 

The big takeaway here is that with a system for learning, expert guidance and consistent effort on your behalf, you can do amazing things in a short period of time.

With The Right Guidance Becoming A Great Guitar Player Is Only A Matter Of Time

What you need to become a great guitar player is:

 

• Guidance from a professional guitar teacher
• To surround yourself with other great players
• To follow a system aimed at developing you into a great guitar player
• To put in the time consistently over a long enough period of time for your skills to develop
• To put yourself in an environment conducive to learning.

 

While it’s highly unlikely that you’re going to be able to put in 4 hours a day and reach 240 hours of playing in a 3 month window of time, it’s very likely that if you stick with your guitar playing and accumulate 240 hours of practice (or even just 100) that you’ll notice substantial improvement in your playing and will be well beyond the realm of a beginner guitar player and ready to tackle the intermediate phase of playing.

 

To quote one of my favourite animated movies Chicken Run.

 

“Chickens go in, Pies come out”

 

At Melbourne Guitar Academy “Average Joe’s go in, Guitar Pro’s come out”

 

You just need to stick with it long enough for the process to work.

About The Author

Michael Gumley is a guitar teacher residing in Melbourne Australia. While he isn’t much of a dancer he has all the knowledge you need to become a great guitar player and has helped countless guitar students improve their playing beyond levels they ever thought possible.

If you’re struggling with your guitar playing and need help pushing through to the next level, don’t give up. Reach out to Michael and his team at Melbourne Guitar Academy for the Best Guitar Lessons In Wantirna South for a free guitar lesson so that we can identify what is holding you back and give you exactly what you need to overcome the problems you are facing.

Remember, “chickens go in, pie’s come out“. You’re the chicken, and epic guitar skills is the pie.

The post Rocking With The Stars appeared first on Melbourne Guitar Academy.

If you’ve been playing guitar for a few months or even years you may be stuck in a rut where no matter how much effort you put in, you just don’t seem to be making any progress.

Maybe your chord changes still aren’t smooth…

Maybe you struggle to play a certain technique and can’t nail that solo you’ve been working on for months now…

Maybe you’ve learned hundreds of licks, dozens of solos and all of your theory but can’t connect the dots and improvise with confidence…

whether you face these or one of countless problems and roadblocks which are leading to you feeling like quitting the guitar, then consider yourself lucky that you’ve found this article.

Today we’ll be talking about something called The Dip.

Too many guitarists quit at the first sign of adversity and lack the discipline and determination needed to push through to the point where the real results come. Hopefully after reading this article you won’t be one of these quitters who give up way too soon without every giving themselves the proper amount of time needed to play guitar. 

Instead you’ll be one of the lucky ones who knows that the dip is coming, that the dip can be overcome, and that the best rewards for your effort are to be found immediately after experiencing The Dip.

So What Is The Dip?

The dip is the point when guitar feels the hardest. Where you don’t feel like you’re making any progress and the initial experience of joy and excitement you felt when first starting the instrument has well worn off and been replaced with frustration and feeling like you want to quit.

 

The Dip is basically the point where you are most likely to give up because things are the hardest they’ve ever been, which occurs right before you have a breakthrough and finally start getting the hang of it.

 

It’s been called many things, the breakthrough point, the point at which it clicks, the bump, or the threshold, but if you can push through The Dip you are set up for your guitar playing to skyrocket.

 

When we first start playing guitar, we are able to make massive gains in our knowledge and giant leaps in our skill level because we’re starting from zero. We get a big reward for a little bit of effort, and massive rewards for lots of effort.

 

After a certain point however we experience something called the law of diminished returns where the rewards we get don’t appear to match the effort that we put in.

 

This is a very frustrating point for guitarists as no matter how hard we work, we don’t see our progress, and if we weren’t putting in much or any effort, our progress can stall or even go backwards.

 

It’s at this point that our motivation reaches an all time low and the fun we had playing guitar turns to frustration.

 

This is the point where you are most likely to quit.

 

This is also the worst time to quit

 

Eventually, you will push past the dip, and the rewards for your time and effort will again look more proportionate. The biggest results are gained after continuing to exert effort during a period of little or no return.

Almost every guitar player experiences the dip at one point or another, and it occurs at different times for everybody.

 

Some people experience their dip in the first 3 months, others at some point later in the first year. Some people even take as long as 2-3 years before they hit the wall.

 

No matter when your dip is coming, the important thing is to realise that as long as you push through it you WILL have a breakthrough and your progress will skyrocket afterwards.

 

Every great guitarists has faced their dip and pushed through, that’s what allowed them to become great

 

And you can too.

 

As long as you stick with it, keep your eyes on your long term gutiar goals and continue to push through the dip.

Things You Can Do To Push Through The Dip

• Focussing on working towards your long term goals
• Get Guitar Lessons from a Great Guitar Teacher
• Communicate to your teacher that you’re stuck, feeling frustrated and in need of help.
• Being aware of the dip and what comes after it.
• Watching videos of your playing from earlier on to see how much you’ve developed.
• Asking other experienced players about their dips and how they got through them.

The other thing worth mentioning is that over the course of your guitar playing journey you are going to experience many dips. These micro-dips aren’t always as big of a roadblock as the first one, but are frustrating nonetheless, especially when they catch you off guard and you forget that dips are perfectly natural and are going to happen to you no matter what.

 

Experienced players are able to recognise when they are in a micro-dip and keep practicing despite a lack of apparent breakthroughs. They understand it’s just part of learning how to play guitar (or learning anything for that matter) and keep on persevering until their breakthrough moment eventually comes.

 

The Dip Is The Point Where Most People Quit Right Before Obtaining The Breakthrough That Would Otherwise Have Made Them An Expert

No-one is immune to dips in their playing and even the pros can be caught off guard. It’s how you are able to identify when you’re in a dip and push through that determines whether you will continue on the path to greatness. I want to take a moment to share with you my own dip and how it effected me for years.

I remember being at University learning jazz guitar and really struggling for the whole time I was there.

I practiced guitar 4-6 hours most days and still couldn’t improvise or play jazz to a standard I thought was good (this was also confirmed by the examiners because I was scraping by with P’s for my jazz improvisation and guitar exams).

It wasn’t that I didn’t put in the time or effort, because I practiced my ass off, it just seemed that nothing came out.

I graduated from uni and promptly proceeded to avoid playing and practicing jazz for almost 6 years before I came back to it.

But when I came back to it, I had all these amazing technical skills, and I had learned my fretboard a lot better, and I understood the theory concepts and how they related much better.

And without having played jazz for around 6 years I started working through some of my exam pieces and played them better than I ever did when I was working on them for hours and hours daily.

Now as excited as I was that jazz improvisation had just clicked for me, I was also really pissed…

Pissed that I had wasted 6 years of progress in my jazz guitar playing simply because I avoided working on it that entire time.

Had I just pushed with it for a few more months, or even a year, I would have had the same breakthrough and pushed beyond that even further.

I can only imagine how shitty it feels being someone who gave up guitar altogether right before overcoming their own dip simply to live a life of regret not know how wonderful life is when you can play guitar or have some other creative outlet.

Learn from my fail, and push through your dip!

This Too Shall Pass

So if you are currently finding yourself in a dip and are questioning whether to keep going or quit guitar altogether, just remember that it won’t last forever, and that you might literally be only a few days or weeks from a major breakthrough.

 

As long as you never stop playing, never stop taking lessons, and keep persevering through the challenging phase, it will only be a matter of time before you push through your dips and ride next up-cycle in your guitar playing progress. Don’t be one of the people who gives up at the worst possible time and then spends a lifetime wishing they had of stuck with it.

 

Remember, this too shall pass, and whatever frustrations and doubts you’re having right now will be but a distant memory a decade from now when you have the epic guitar skills you can only dream of having right now.

Michael Gumley is a guitar teacher from Melbourne, Australia. He is the founder of Melbourne Guitar Academy, Guitar Ninjas and Guitar Dojo Online and has the personal mission of raising the standard of guitar education worldwide.

If you’re finding yourself stuck in the dip and need help breaking through then look no further than Online Guitar Lessons with Michael so that he can help you overcome whatever obstacles are currently holding you back.

Visit the Melbourne Guitar Academy homepage to book a FREE trial lesson with Michael or a member for the MGA team either in person or via zoom.

The post Has Your Guitar Playing Hit A Roadblock? You’re Probably In ‘The Dip’ appeared first on Melbourne Guitar Academy.

“Will my fingers ever move fast enough?”

 

This is something I hear on and almost weekly basis as a guitar teacher as a student of mine sees a more advanced player run through a guitar solo or epic lead lick.

 

This couldn’t be farther from the truth, and as I often point out to students “if you can type on a computer, you can play a guitar“. The realityis that most of us can already move our fingers fast enough to play guitar when we’re typing, the only difference is we haven’t yet developed the co-ordination needed for the finger movements unique to guitar.

 

At risk of sounding cliche, I want you to remember back to when you first learned how to type on a computer.

 

You probably used only the index finger of each hand, and slowly pressed key after key being extra careful not to mash two buttons at the same time.

 

Then, after a period of time, something happened…

 

You sped up and got faster,

 

Then you started using multiple fingers,

 

And at some point you didn’t even have to look anymore…

 

And before you knew it you were typing confidently and have never looked back since (or ever thought about how hard typing was in the beginning).

 

You also probably experienced a similar thing when typing text messages for the first time. Slow and cumbersome in the beginning, and now, years later you can fire off a message furiously with your phone in your pocket or under a desk, or even with your opposite hand while driving (you know you’re not meant to do that right?).

 

The point is, if you have successfully trained yourself to type on a computer, then you are perfectly capable of learning how to play guitar.

 

It’s going to require a little bit more time, and an extra degree of co-ordination, but you’ll eventually get there.

 

So if you have any doubts about your ability to play guitar, and are wondering if things are ever going to get easier, rest assured knowing that with enough time and consistent practice your fingers will be able to learn and execute every movement you want them to do so that you have total control over your hands and the music you want them to make.

 

Make sure you are getting lessons from a great teacher who can set out an easy path for you to follow…

 

…all you have to do is follow it.

About The Author

Michael Gumley is a Guitarist, Author and Music Educator from Melbourne, Australia. He has extensive experience playing in bands and has toured both nationally and internationally. 

Michael’s true passion lies in educating others about the guitar and he has the personal goal of raising the standard of guitar education internationally through his Guitar Teacher Training and Guitar Ninja Programs and the modern approach to learning and teaching that that provide.

If you’re seeking a Professional Guitar Teacher In Melbourne then look no further than the 5 star guitar tuition offered by Michael and his team at Melbourne Guitar Academy.

The post If You Can Type On A Computer, You Can Play Guitar appeared first on Melbourne Guitar Academy.

Do you ever get tired of doing the same guitar exercises over and over when you’re practicing your guitar? I’m sure you do, and before you get worried; It’s perfectly normal.

 

Unfortunately, part of the way we need to practice in order to improve our playing is to build muscle memory which requires repetition, and lots of it.

The good news however is that you only need to play a finite number of reputations for something to become muscle memory. Being disciplined enough to accumulate enough reps however, is a different matter!

By nature, we humans seek variety and crave uncertainty when things become routine, so doing something like guitar exercises can become boring and monotonous, even if we know it’s good for us.

 

…Kind of like going to the gym.

 

If you’ve ever signed up with a personal trainer at the gym, or routinely attended classes you’ll notice that they generally set you a program.

 

The program usually consists of 3-6 basic exercises for each body part.

 

And you do the same exercises on the same day every week.

 

Monday is upper body, Wednesday is legs, and Friday is cardio.

 

And every week you do the same exercises over and over, maybe with higher weights, or more reps as you get stronger, but you still do the same ones over and over.

When it comes to working out at the gym and getting fit, or playing a sport, we accept that we need to repeat the same things over and over for weeks, months and even years. However when it comes to guitar, we seem to get bored of the same exercises and jump on YouTube to find something new and exciting to work on.

 And before we know it we’ve just watched two hours of videos, tried a whole bunch of things for two minutes each, and despite knowing about them, we can’t yet do them, plus we’ve added a whole bunch of things we want to practice on top of what we need to practice.

 

Don’t worry, it’s not just you, virtually every guitarists ever with access to a computer has done this, and before computers existed it was guitar magazine and even old VHS tapes (if you’re old enough to know what one of those is). The problem with this approach is you learn about a whole bunch of things without investing enough time into perfecting the, so you feel extra bad about your lack of progress because you now how more things you have discovered and now sucks at, and even more things on your radar to practice and now an overwhelming sense of dread at having to find time to practice them all.

 If you go to the gym, you do your same set of exercises over and over, while either losing weight, or getting bigger and stronger muscles. The key is consistency.

 

With out gutiar playing, if you stay disciplined and stick to your exercises (like scales, chord changes, arpeggios, and any other exercise) when it comes time to play the songs you want to play, or rip solos, or learn your favourite licks, you’ll have a much, much easier time of it.

 

It’s just like going to football training and practicing different kicking, hand balling, running and tackling drills,

 

Or basketball where you practice shooting, passing, dribbling and running,

 

Any sport, hobby, or activity you’re going to do, you’ll have a number of movements you need to commit to memory and get really good at doing.

 

Having the discipline to get really good at your fundamentals on gutiar is essential.

 

Stick to the basics, go through you allocated practice items set by your teacher and then use any additional time you have for fun things or exploring,

 

In a future post I’ll talk about ways you can make practicing more fun, even when you have to do hundreds or thousands of repititions of the same micro movements, but for now, just think about how with most of the activities you do, you have a routine, and repeat the same things over and over.

 

Guitar is no different, be disciplined and stick to your routine and the talent will come.

About The Author

Michael Gumley is a professional guitar teacher and gym junkie from Melbourne, Australia. He was fortunate to group up in an AFL household with a father and uncle who both played footy in the AFL and went on to have successful coaching careers which allowed him to be privy to elite level sports training which inspired much of which Michael uses to coach his own guitar students to elite levels of gutiar playing in his school Melbourne Guitar Academy.

If you’re looking for Guitar Lessons In Wantirna South then you’re lucky to be in just the right place to learn from one of the best guitar teachers in all of Australia! Take your playing to the next level with a FREE trial lesson!

The post Learning Guitar Can Be Like Going To The Gym appeared first on Melbourne Guitar Academy.

Change Your Expectations, Change Your Outcomes

I’d like to take a moment to talk about practice expectations.

 

When it comes to playing guitar we have grandiose ideas about how fast we’ll progress and how quickly we’ll become guitar gods. This often leads to disappointment when we don’t meet our own expectations and progress as fast as we would like to.

 

While we do everything we can to accelerate the progress through efficient learning techniques and optimised practice, you still need to put in the work, and it’s still going to take a few years before you really start to feel comfortable.

…Just like learning how to drive.

 

When you first learn how to drive, you’re set up with the expectation that you can get your learners permit at age 16 and that you need to do two to three years of practice before you’re even allowed to take the test.

 

In my home state of Victoria, you have to do a mandatory 120 hours of supervised driving before you’re even allowed to take the test.

 

Then once you get your license, you have to be on a probationary period for 4 years before you’re deemed ready to be a fully licensed driver.

 

So the expectation is you need approximatly 6 years of driving experience before you’re a fully qualified driver.

 

Would it be worth changing your mindset towards guitar playing and allowing yourself 6 years of development to learn and develop your skills, and experience playing gigs, jamming with other people before you got angry at your lack of progress, or decided to give up? I definitely think so.

Learning To Play Guitar Takes
A While... And That's Okay

Imagine how much better you’ll feel just accepting that learning to play guitar takes a long time.

 

Imagine how good you can actually become in 6 years time.

 

Imagine all the skills, techniques and confidence you can develop if you stick with it and don’t give up.

All you have to do is keep playing regularly, continue coming to your lessons, and allow time to do the rest.

 

And yes, if you practice more, you’ll develop quicker, just like some people are ready to get their license at the age of 18 while others need a few more years to develop their confidence.

 

There is no time limit on your development, just go at your own pace, and never give up!

 

*A Quick Side Note On Calculating How Long It Takes To Get Good At Guitar

 

If you wanted to achieve 120 hours of guitar lessons instead of supervised driving practice the average person would need 240x 30m guitar lessons which would take you 4 years and 6 months assuming you had a weekly lesson without missing any weeks.

 

Coming to 60 minute lessons or two lessons per week, as well as practicing regularly at home will accelerate this for you, but it’s still going to take time and effort to develop.

About The Author

Michael Gumley is a guitar teacher from Melbourne, Australia and is the founder of Melbourne Guitar Academy, Guitar Dojo Online and Guitar Ninjas. 

He is partnered with Ormsby Guitars, Line 6 Effects & Ernie Ball Strings and makes it his personal mission to raise the standard of guitar eduction worldwide through his Guitar Ninjas Curriculum and Guitar Teacher Training Programs. 

While he can’t help you learn how to drive, he is The Best Guitar Teacher in Australia (with the Google Reviews to prove it) and would lovey to help you improve your guitar playing. Get in touch today to book a FREE Guitar Lesson with Michael or a member of the Melbourne Guitar Academy Team.

The post L Plates For Guitar appeared first on Melbourne Guitar Academy.

An Article About Unfair Comparisons

Today I want to talk about the most famous guitarist of all time, Jimi Hendrix.

 

While there have been many technically superior guitar players that have come after him, no one has been as revolutionary to the instrument as Jimi himself, and no guitarist is more recognisable or as well known to the common man as our Jimi. 

 

 

Why are we talking about Jimi Hendrix? Mainly because he is the most famous guitarist of all time whom I am going to use as an example of how we often unfairly compare ourselves to famous guitar players at the wrong point of our journey. If you’d rather take your favourite player or any other famous guitarist, feel free to do some background research on them and apply the same ideas we’re about to talk about.

 

One of the biggest mistakes aspiring guitar players make is comparing themselves to other guitarists, and who better a benchmark than the mighty Hendrix?

 

Young girls are always told ‘don’t compare yourself to the models in the movies and the magazines, it’s unrealistic beauty standards’…

 

Teen boys and young men are often told ‘don’t compare yourself to the muscly guys in the the action movies, it’s steroids and you can’t get that big’…

 

But no-one ever tells us not to compare ourselves to professional musicians, let along the tiny less than 1% guitar god rockstars who are the musical equivalent of olympic athletes…

 

So why do we do it? Why do we put such high expectations on ourselves to play like these elite players? My guess just comes down to wanting instant gratification and not realising how much effort goes into learning an instrument. It’s really easy to become inspired by great music, and professionals can make it look really easy to play, but we often don’t realise it’s taken them years to perfect their creative and technical skills before it’s ever written, recorded, edited, polished and released to us as a product.

Let's Take A Closer Look At Jimi Hendrix

• Hendrix started playing guitar at age 15.
• He played for hours and hours every day, listening to records and trying to figure them out by ear and play along with them.
• He jammed and played with other guitarists and instrumentalists both in school and out of school, pretty much every opportunity he got.
• He tried to take lessons and jam with any guitarists he came into contact with, always learning from more experienced players.
• He didn’t get a record deal and release his first album until he was 24. (9 years into his guitar playing career)
• He released 4 albums in 3 years and then died at the age of 27.

On paper it might sound like Jimi Hendrix had an amazing career and achieved so much at a such a young age that he truly was unique once-in-a-lifetime musician. While this sounds fantastic the reality of the situation is that it took him 10 years to become famous and he had to work hard to develop his skills and take advantage of the opportunities his hard work created.

 

The point of telling you this is to see that comparing yourself to Jimi Hendrix or any other famous guitarists isn’t a fair comparison.

 

That would be like an under 10’s footballer comparing themselves to Gary Ablett, Buddy Franklin or Patty Dangerfield and then losing motivation to play… or a young female singer comparing herself to Beyonce and telling herself “I’ll never be as good as Beyonce so I may as well just give up now”.

 

Jimi Hendrix played guitar for 7 years before he got the chance to record music. He played for 9 years before he got a record deal, he put in over a decade of work before he got famous and became the legendary guitarist that we all know him as.

 

He played for hours and hours every day, jamming with other people frequently, 

 

And this isn’t to say you can’t get good at guitar, or to say that you’ll never aspire to be the same level as Hendrix…

 

I actually believe that you can be as good as Hendrix, if not even better, you’ll be able to do it in way less time than what it took him,

 

How? Because he already did the hard work figuring everything out and innovating, we get to stand on his shoulders and go to the next level, and with the breakthroughs in modern education and the technology we’ll do it in record time.

 

The whole point I am saying here is don’t get upset that you don’t sound like Jimi Hendrix did after 9 years of playing when you’ve only been taking a few months of lessons. Don’t compare where you are today to where he was 10 years into his journey.

 

It’s just not a fair comparison,

 

And It’s going to take time…

 

It might take you two or three years to get to the same level, but I guarantee you that you can get there, and you’ll probably get there in half the time it took him.

 

Never Give Up

So if you feel frustrated, or you feel like quitting, remember that the only guitar player you need to compare yourself to is the guitar player you were yesterday.

 

As long as you stick with lessons, and continue to practice consistently, you’ll become a great player,

 

You’ll even probably surpass the mighty Jimi Hendrix,

 

As long as you don’t quit playing, you’ll get there!

 

The only difference between you and Jimi Hendrix is Jimi stuck with his guitar playing long enough to become good.

 

If you stuck with it, it’s only a matter of time before you get there.

About The Author

Michael Gumley is the owner of Melbourne Guitar Academy and the creator of both Guitar Dojo Online and Guitar Ninjas. Michael is both a respected Guitar Teacher and Guitar Teacher Trainer with the goal of raising the standard of guitar education worldwide through a revolutionary approach engaging lessons and modern learning techniques. 

If you feel like you’ll never be as good as your favourite guitar player don’t fret, get in touch with Michael and the team at Melbourne Guitar Academy who can help out with both in-person and Online Guitar Lessons to help you overcome any frustrations you may be feeling.

The post You VS Jimi Hendrix appeared first on Melbourne Guitar Academy.

The last thing most people expected to see or hear from me was an article about gardening… but the last couple of weeks I’ve been spending a lot of time in our garden and having loads of fun doing so. My Grandmother had the most wonderful garden and veggie patch, and I have many fond childhood memories with her digging holes, catching worms and planting seeds and all sorts of mischief in the garden (often involving picking kumquats and turning them into projectiles).

I don’t know why it took so long for me to get back into it gardening but recently I’ve decided to give it another go and haven’t looked back since.

 

While this may seem totally out of character, and totally unrelated to guitar playing, my experience as a guitar teacher and watching my students ‘grow’ is teaching me many valuable lessons.

 

A month ago we bought a raised garden bed from our local hardware store planted some seeds. We eagerly assembled the beds and planted some seeds, watered them every day or two, and made several attempts at keeping our dog out of the garden beds (before finally building a makeshift fence from shipping container pallets) and then planted some more and watered some more.

 

After two weeks, some of our plants started poking through. After a month several more sprouted up through the dirt (much to our delight). We’ve even got some veggies that aren’t expected to pop up for another few months and will remain hidden under the ground for a while longer yet.

 

I’ll tell you what, It sure is frustrating having to go out and water every day only to find that some of the plants haven’t sprouted yet, and that the ones that have grow so slowly that we barely notice a difference.

 

But if I look at a photo from a month ago, or week to week, the progress isn’t just obvious, it’s amazing.

It then dawned on me that this is the exact same thing guitar players go through when first starting out,  so if you’ve ever planted a seed and tried to  grown your own plants, you know that it takes time and effort.

 

Learning guitar is just like growing a plant from a seed in both process and payoff.

 

• First you plant the seed, and then you water it.
• Then the next day you water it, 
• Then you water it again,
• And the day after that you water it again, 
• And you keep on watering it every day.

 

It might be a week before you see the sprout poke up through the dirt, or it might be 6 months.

 

But the point is you might need to put in daily effort for a long period before you can SEE the results.

 

This doesn’t mean that during this time nothing is happening,

 

It just means that you can’t see the progress that you’re making because it takes place below the surface.

 

But when that seedling first pokes up through the dirt, it sure feels good to know that all your hard work and effort has amounted to something.

 

So if you’re putting in lots and lots of effort and feel like you’re getting nowhere, just think of the seed, and know that even the tallest tree first started life as a seed.

 

Your guitar playing ability will eventually grow as strong as a great tree is tall, you just need to give it consistent attention over a long enough period of time to allow it to grow.

 

Really great trees, like the tallest gums take decades to grow, while others only need a few months to a few years before they start baring tasty fruit for you to enjoy.

Just Remember...Never Give Up!

Just remember: Don’t give up, and don’t stop watering the seed before it has the chance to grow. Even if you can’t see the improvement and it doesn’t feel like you’re making progress, your seed is growing under the surface and is getting ready to break through!

As long as you keep on investing time into your guitar practice you’ll eventually develop the skills you can only dream of having now! Never stop learning, and never give up!

About The Author

Michael Gumley is the owner and head teacher at Melbourne Guitar Academy, the creator of Guitar Dojo Online and the founder of Guitar Ninjas; a modern method and teaching curriculum for accelerated learning on guitar. While he isn’t much of a gardener, he is the Best Guitar Teacher in Melbourne and has the largest collection 5 star Google reviews to prove it. If you’ve stalled in your guitar playing progress get in touch with Michael to book a free lesson so that he can help you overcome any hurdles in your playing and start helping you move forward.

The post Planting A Seed… appeared first on Melbourne Guitar Academy.