{ Lick That Riff! }

A week or two ago I posted about my guitar motivation, or lack of it. Now although I have picked up my guitar since then, I still haven’t picked it up enough. I mean, when people ask me what my hobbies are or anything like that, I do say “I play the Guitar.” But the way things are going at the minute I am going to refrain from saying that to people as it’s just not true.

Anyway as I was looking on the internet for different motivational techniques, I came across one article that seemed to jump out at me. It was called Guitar Practice Motivation and it had a few different tips on motivating or re-motivating yourself to pick up that guitar again.

I think the opening paragraph on this particular article really summed up my thoughts on my own motvation. It read:

“The day you bought your first Guitar you didn’t need any guitar practice motivation.

The day you picked up your new amplifier… no motivation needed then either.

As you looked forward to your first lesson, no guitar practice motivation was necessary.

Unfortunately, one day… you just can’t pick up that Guitar…. you just don’t want to.”

This is summing me up in a paragraph. I hate the last line but maybe that’s because it is so true to me. I am trying everything to pick up my Guitar; Writing this blog, Listening to lots of great guitarists, Taking out guitar tabulature books from my local library, Restringing my Acoustic guitar, Watching endless Youtube videos of great guitarists, Stumbling the category of guitar, Joining facebook fan pages, Twittering with like-minded guitarists, and other various guitar related stuff. And although I have thoroughly enjoyed all of this stuff and it has made me think about guitar constantly. Its been Great! But it still hasn’t helped me pick up my guitar. I have realised that what I have been doing is procrastinising. I’ve spent all this time just doing guitar related things that I haven’t even been near the guitar.

Considering my main goal was to start playing the guitar again, I haven’t done a very good job. So what I am going to do is just go and pick up my guitar. 1 hour per day! No matter what. Now I know that forcing myself to do something isn’t always the best way of getting to do it, but this really is the only way. I’m such an unmotivated person at the best of times that this has to be done.

The article I referred to earlier had some good points about recording how good I am now and where I want to be. One of the points it included was that I should write down all of the songs that I can currently play. I thought that this was a great tip, as I found I can play a a lot more than I have given myself credit for. It instantly gives you a little boost. The article also goes on to say that you should set various goals. Whether they be short or long term goals. He also says that these goals should be SMART goals. For those of you that haven’t heard about SMART goals here’s what they are:

• S – Specific (I want to learn “Blackbird” by the Beatles
• M – Measurable (I will learn four bars on average per week)
• A – Achievable (Don’t set your goal too high)
• R – Realistic (Don’t try and learn an advanced song if you’re a beginner)
• T – Time-bound (I’ll learn this song by the first of next month)

So thats exactly what I am going to do. By next week I am going to learn a new song that I don’t already know. I’m gonna start with something easy to begin with as I think the most important thing here is just learning a new song and not challenging myself too much. I think I’m going to try and learn “Still Take You Home” by Arctic Monkeys. It’s not the easiest song but its definitely not the hardest either. It has a great riff throughout the song which will get my fingers working again.

Here’s how it should sound:

So I shall update you on my progress next week, and I really hope that I have at least attempted it by then.

Also if any of you have any tips on guitar motivation please feel free to post them.

Other Posts in the series:

• Guitar Motivation

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Peace Out

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