Why You're Not Getting Better On Guitar

-Most guitar players spend a lot of time with their instrument yet don’t progress as quickly as they expect.

-The primary reason is simple: they spend all their time playing guitar instead of practicing guitar.

-While both have value, practicing is what truly builds new skills.

-This article explains the difference and provides a focused method to improve specific skills.

Playing vs. Practicing: What’s the Difference?

Playing Guitar

• Doing things you already know how to do fairly well
• Repeating familiar songs, riffs, chords, or strumming patterns
• Fun, enjoyable, and confidence-building

Practicing Guitar

• Identifying a specific problem
• Setting a concrete, measurable goal
• Focusing only on the skill that needs improvement
• Eliminating everything that is not related to that problem
• Repeating targeted movements until they improve

Playing and practicing serve two different purposes. Improvement depends on practicing.

Why Most Players Don’t Improve

General goals such as:

• “I want to play better,”
• “I want to change chords faster,”
• “I want to learn new strumming patterns,”

are too vague to create real progress. Effective practice requires defining the exact issue that needs attention.

A Focused Practice Example: Fixing Slow Chord Changes

Imagine you’re working on a chord progression with four chords, and the real difficulty occurs between chord two and chord three. Most players make the mistake of practicing the entire progression repeatedly, which wastes time on movements they already perform correctly.

Instead, the focus should shift solely to the transition causing the problem.

Step-by-Step Method

1. Identify the exact trouble spot
   Example: the shift from Chord 2 to Chord 3.
2. Remove everything that isn’t the problem
   Do not run the entire progression.
3. Stop strumming multiple times
   If each chord gets four beats, that’s unnecessary repetition when the issue is the transition itself.
4. Simplify the drill
   Practice like this:

• Finger Chord 2
• Strum once
• Move to Chord 3
• Strum once
• Repeat

5. Remove strumming completely
   This is even more effective. Simply move your fingers back and forth between the two chords without playing them.

Why This Works

Strumming slows you down. Every cycle includes:

• A strum
• About 1–1.5 seconds of listening
• A chord change
• Another strum
• More listening

This adds roughly 3 seconds of wasted time per repetition. Without strumming, you can perform 5–10 times more repetitions in the same amount of time, drastically increasing improvement.

The Real Objective

Your single goal during focused practice is to get your fingers to the next chord faster. Tone, clarity, ringing notes, and accuracy can all be corrected later. Speed of movement comes first.

Focused Practice Creates Real Improvement

By eliminating everything except the specific problem, you create:

• A clear objective
• Rapid progress
• Less frustration
• A more efficient practice session

This is true practicing—not playing.

A Recommended Practice Routine

Before picking up the guitar, ask yourself:

“What exactly do I want to improve today?”

Then:

1. Identify the problem
2. Focus solely on that issue
3. Practice it without distractions
4. Finish by playing for fun

Ending with fun keeps you motivated, boosts your mood, and increases the likelihood that you’ll pick up the guitar again tomorrow.

Remember to always have fun with your guitar and I’ll see you next time…

If you are looking to learn another excellent rhythm guitar skill, you can check out my FREE lesson on how to weave lead guitar melody lines to your rhythm guitar playing here: https://rhythmguitarlessons.net/Pro

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About Mark Turko: Mark Turko is a professional guitar player and instructor with over 30 years of experience and teaches guitar lessons online.