Establishing Guitar Goals

First off, why set goals for our guitar lessons?

Goals are what measure our progress. We all go through the time when we measure our guitar playing on how impressed people are with it. But hopefully we move beyond that and realize that the more important measure of our musicianship is how well we express ourselves through our guitar playing and in our relationship with the music and rhythms.

• Goals are concrete (theoretically)
• Goals tell us what we need to work on
• Goals give us a temporary end in site
• Goals relieve frustration and disorganization
• Most importantly goals reveals to us our successes

STEP ONE

Write down current observations about your guitar playing.

You can use paper and pencil, type them up or whatever. I personally live by my journal. I keep all of my notes, guitar goals and objectives for each guitar lessons or session in it. All of you who are members and have access to the PDF downloads in the Triads and Major Scale Mastery Courses have used the practice logs that I’ve developed for those daily lessons.

I spend a lot of time logging my guitar practices and keeping tabs on what material I’ve been covering in my practice sessions.We all have guitar heroes. We all want to play better and learn more. We all seem to find ourselves in a rut every now and then. So what to do?

Don’t continually practice stuff you know how to play. And stop noodling around. Bring focus into your guitar lesson.Start making general statements about your guitar heroes and what you like about them. Here’s my list. (I like a lot of fingerstyle guitar)

• “I want to play like Alex Degrassi and Andy McKee.”
• “I want to solo like Phil Keaggy.”
• “I want have the same feeling in my songs as Nightnoise.”
• “I want to be able to hit notes like Pierre Bensusan.”
• “I want to jam out like Tommy Emmanuel or Doyle Dykes.”
• “When I play electric I want to SOUND like Steve Morse.”

STEP TWO

Ask yourself questions about your guitar goals.

You have to ask the right questions before you can make progress.

• What is it that these guys’ guitar playing do that I’d like in my style?
• What are the techniques that I can incorporate into my guitar practice that will enhance my playing like the guys I want to play like?
• DON’T ASK why can’t I play guitar that?
• DON’T ASK why is this guy a guitar genius and why do I suck?
• Now I needed to make some detailed observations.