The ESP Guitar Company

Guitar players have a never-ending relationship with practice. No matter how good you become at playing guitar, there’s always something new to discover, something to work on. You can bet that even the most accomplished musicians do drills in their downtime to stay sharp and hone their techniques.

In this article, we’ll be sharing with you some tips on how you can keep your guitar playing skills from going stagnant or rusty. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been playing, whether you’ve been playing guitar for years or have only just started with online guitar lessons – check out reviews here - what’s important is you give yourself a few challenges along the way as you practice. Ready? Let’s begin!

Learn something new each day

If you’ve been playing guitar for some time, challenge yourself by learning at least one guitar-related thing every day. It can be anything from a song, a strum pattern, a chord, a playing technique, an altered tuning, the major scale intervals, or just a lesson or exercise you skipped from before because it never really interested you, or you found it too difficult. Now’s your chance to prove to yourself that you are a musician.

When you challenge yourself to seek out guitar knowledge and skills, you improve yourself as a musician. You allow your musical instincts to develop further, plus you also get to add fresh concepts to your muscle memory. All of these will help you improve and sharpen your guitar playing skills.

Play a different style

Another challenge that can keep you on your toes is playing a song in a style or from a genre that you’re not particularly used to. Not only will this expand your skills but also teach you the nuances of various styles. After all, one characteristic of good guitarists is their ability to play different music styles.

As you add more skills and styles to your playing arsenal, try combining different styles together. For instance, you can inject some jazz licks into rock jams or your go-to genre. See how fresh it makes your sound. Don’t be afraid to experiment and see what you can come up with!

Be a copycat

Yes, yes, playing guitar is all about finding your own voice, but there’s real value in learning to sound like others first. Try to really get yourself into the music and put yourself into the guitarist’s shoes, especially in the solos. When you do this, you not only expand your musical vocabulary but also improve your feel, sense of solo contour, stylistic awareness and delivery. You’ll also get a more intimate look into the guitarist’s brain and playing style.

There’s this guitar player who’s known to do just that when he was just starting his music career - he jammed along with different records until what came out sounded exactly like what his record player was belting out. His name? Eddie Van Halen.

We hope these tips offer you some ideas on how and what to practice so you can keep your guitar skills sharp. Don’t forget to keep a log of what you’ve learned and track your progress. Have fun!