Avoid These 7 Dangerous Mistakes in Your Guitar Practice

To play classical guitar well, you need to know:

* how to hold and touch the guitar - form and positioning

* how to move your fingers and hands - efficient, clean, and fluid

* how to learn pieces - reading music, understanding what you see, ingraining, polishing

* how to craft the music so it is beautiful - swells and fades, rhythm, touch

* how to practice so all these skills improve over time and don't go away

At the root of beautiful playing is a solid technique (aka “the way your hands move”). You may have beautiful music in your head, but if your hands can't play it, it won't come out of the guitar.

But bad technique puts a limit on your playing. Speed, tone quality, and control can suffer.

Good technique gets stronger and more instinctive with every practice. It forms the bedrock foundation for your music.

And you may want to understand music so you learn it more easily and it makes more sense. This can help you avoid the excess frustration and dismay that comes with shoddy practice and prolonged confusion.

But playing the notes is not enough. Like an actor bring words to life, we breathe life into our pieces.

And we can do this in an organized way, day in and day out, reliably. Great musicians can play wonderfully in any mood. They do not rely on emotions. Instead, they create music that affects our emotions. This is a trained skill, not an inborn talent.

Playing classical guitar is a long-term study. It's something we do in our homes as part of our days. We play for ourselves, for the quality it adds to life. We may enjoy playing guitar for others, but most of the time we are alone with our work.

There are methods and formulas for great practice. We can use our time well so that see more progress.

We can fix the problems and erase the mistakes. And we can enjoy conquering the plentiful challenges that classical guitar music offers.

If you plan to play classical guitar for any length of time, it is worth it to get help. It's not something we can do on our own, like folk music.

If you would like to hear me (Allen Mathews) playing, visit my other youtube channel:

Or check out these other YouTube videos:

[StephiSensei]

Bravo!!! Great advice for beginners and anyone else! Bravo!!! 
PS: #8! When things get really ugly and it all begins to hurt, ...put the guitar down and go do something else! Eat something, walk the dog or if you have a cat, walk the cat, drink some water! Think about something else and RELAX! Then, when you're calm again, the dog is happy, you're hydrated sufficiently, and your shoulders don't hurt anymore, go back quietly and resume the encounter with your love, with new eyes and fresh energies. It's better for the both of you. Don't worry, she'll wait for you. Remember, it's a relationship, so, be kind to one another.

[henriquemonte]

Good advices. Sometimes what we should do is not that intuitive.

[vianaautocenter]

Thank you very much! Great helping for me!

[elledechenestudio]

I too am guilty of all these, especially #7 which removes all joy. Thank you for this eye opening video.

[johnjordan]

Number 7 is a dangerous mistake for all avenues of life and life in general.

[jonoshei]

Great advice and a great channel! Thank you! 🙏 🙂

[asadeeshprabhakar]

Really very useful watching this I got a very good clarity and I came out of many pre assumptions ....thanks a lot sir 🙏 👏 🙌 God bless you sir🙏🙏🙏🙏

[TheGeniuschrist]

This is exactly the kind of content that made me subscribe

[DelNegro]

Thanks so much! Best regards from Brazil

[ianbaxendale]

I'm guilty of most of these things, especially the negativity, I'm in my fifties now and struggling to get back into playing after loosing part of my middle finger and having a minor stroke. I try to hard and end up making mistakes, it gets frustrating.

[matthewsmith]

Hi, I love the atlas Guitar Support. Bought one age's ago. Playing piano tiles 2 now. Your advice it like gold! I've Stopped playing again overworked my left thumb. Hopefully will heal in a week or 2? 🤞

[chrismuratore]

Its so hard to not be guilty of number 6. I love to play through my repertoire, and with 28 pieces to cover, it takes so much time to keep up with it.

Is there a method to retaining older pieces without constantly revisiting them?

[vayasaberlo]

Nice! PS Once I had everything I needed all set out within arm's reach, I sat down &. . . .realized I had forgotten my guitar!

[donniedean]

This is a great video. I'm guilty of a few of these things. Your guidance has really helped me focus more while practicing. Thank you so much for your channel. Have a great day.😊

[ae]

You have an accent now ? ! ! I havent seen your recent videos - just older ones - so this is a surprise to me.

[derickwhitson]

1. Failing to prepare ahead of time everything on hand aguitar with strings on it metronome tuner do you have it right close to hand another way to prepare is to guard your space close the door turn off the tv silence your phone making sure you know exactly what youll do at least for the first few minutes of practice do you warm up with scales or with a exercise do you do a warmup and a stretch when you sit down what exactly do you do
Know exactly what you’re going to practice for the first five ten minutes
2. Playing too fast
Keep it slow at first
Instead of going for speed go for clarity placement right behind the fret consistency of where you play on your fingertips
Instead of speed go for quality


3. Only playing pieces and not work on technique how do i use my left and right hand how do I make the music go loud and go soft we can’t just work on only pieces and expect to get better over time we’ll keep the exact same problems and just be playing harder pieces and so it’ll start sounder worse and worse
To push our music forward then we need to spend some time working on our actual skills and abilities

4. Not working to make specific things better not addressing problems we need to solve problems in practice that’s one of the big part of practice one of the most efficient use of our time
Zeroing in and figuring out exactly what the problem is and make a change we have to find a particular solution for all of these little problems then the piece works itself out
Solving problems that’s what practice is

5. Mindless repetition
Just playing something over and over while our minds wander

6. Polishing shiny objects if you worked out all the problems on something and you’re just playing it through in your practice time you’re playing playing is why we practice is good to know am I practicing or playing
You should know now I’m playing now I’m practicing just playing is not practicing
The better way to warmup is to really intentionally warmup with something else like technique work
So save your playing for playing time time and make time for playing but when you’re practicing practice

7. Negative self talk

[kevinmaillet]

Those first five seconds were the cringiest I've ever sat through (except for when I used to sound exactly like that. Lol)