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Question for experienced guitar players.?

Question: Can “anyone” learn to play guitar well, or do I need to be born with a talent for guitar as well?

-I’ve been learning to play guitar for about a year-&-a-half (10 months with an instructor).
-I can play open chords but I’m slow & sloppy when changing.
-I get confused when playing with a metronome or with another guitar player.
-I know some barre chord shapes (E, A, Am, C, 7, 9), but I’m sloppy and frequently mute strings.
-I can play 14 songs (badly) & 12-bar blues (fair).
-I can bend (fair), slide (fair), hammer-on (poor), pull-off (poor), vibrato (fair).
-I practice 30min to 1 hour 6 to 7 days per week (all the time I can afford).
-My goal is to play well enough to jam with others and to entertain myself, my family, and my friends.

I’m definitely making progress, but feel I should be better than I am. Is this where I should be at this stage of my playing or am I “behind the power curve”? Thanx in advance!

Some good advice on here…

1) Make sure to have some fun inbetween your practice. No fun means no motivation means no advancement.

2) Don’t be disappointed if you plateau at some point. That’s okay, it’s normal, just keep plugging at it. When you are ready to advance, you will.

3) Focus on one thing at a time… it seems like you’ve got so much going on (barres and songs and techniques and 12-bar blues etc) that maybe you’re just getting a little scattered. Get good with your slides, for instance, then work on your bends. Do one song well, then move on to the next song. “Getting” one technique will help motivate you and give you the confidence to tackle the next one, and will help you feel like you are progressing, which it sounds like you are!

4) Play with a metronome. A lot of people here are saying not to use one… if you can’t handle it right now, that’s cool, but come back to it as soon as you can. It is soooo important to develope a strong sense of rhythm, and a metronome is the ultimate judge of perfect rhythm. You don’t want to sound sloppy right? I totally second the advice about learning your chord changes slowly… set the BPM pretty slow and change every four… then every three… etc. Build your skills slowly, don’t hurry yourself.

5) Take your sweet time making sure you’ve got your barre chord or open chord finger down. Building a strong foundation now means playing better later… and not having to unlearn bad habits in the future! It’s okay to go at a nice, slow, steady pace!

6) Give yourself some freaking credit already!

In a year and a half you’ve gone from not being able to play to being able to do all these things…. obviously you are doing something right! If you can jam even halfway decenty on a 12-bar, you’ve already done something that many beginners can’t… did you ever think about it that way? Honestly, I’ve been playing for over a decade, and I can barely hack my way through a 12-bar… one of the downfalls of being self-taught!

Tell you what… take a few of your favorite songs to your teacher. Ask if your teacher to pick one that shouldn’t be too hard for you to learn, pretty quickly. Then focus on that song – learning it well will give you the confidence to not worry about if you’re doing worse or better than other people.

The point isn’t other people – the point is that you’re learning, that you’re making progress, and that you’re finding out that you have the ability to make some great music. Don’t lose sight of that!

Good luck!

(and honestly, I know I should be better than where I am. we all feel it every now and then, especially when we see some kid half our age shredding on youtube. there will always be someone who can do something better, but there will only ever be one YOU. do it for you, and not for them! you’re doing it the right way by having a teacher, you’re further along now than I was, that’s for certain…. and you can have the confidence that you won’t have to unlearn a bunch of stuff like me later on…)

Saul

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