Playing Guitar Is Useless

Today I want you to celebrate with me. We're going to celebrate the fact that learning and playing the guitar is a useless, unproductive activity. Yes, that's right, I said useless and unproductive. And we should all be celebrating that because, well, useless is in fact useful.

The Importance of Useless

Our bustling modern world is obsessed with value, productivity and profitability. In rich countries people have never before had so much material wealth, so many objects. Yet, many are unhappy and stressed by the constant pressure to be clever, productive and efficient.

Our leisure activities are no exception. They have to be meaningful and important. We should be "winners", always striving for even more achievement. But what about the simple enjoyment of simply doing something for fun? You’re your hobby really have to be about achievement?

No Pain No Gain

Rocky Balboa believed that no pain meant no gain as he pounded the streets on his way to becoming a boxing champion. But does your guitar learning have to feel like you are hammering those hard cold streets every day? Pushing yourself to your limits and beyond?

I bet nearly all of you started to play the guitar because you thought it would be fun. But the fun is often absent in a lot of learning material. It's all about better, faster, more, and fun seems to take a back seat.

It feels like everyone is pushing you to become a world champion guitar player. There's little encouragement for the player who's happy strumming simple arrangements of his favourite songs with just two or three chords.

There's even a lot of this here on Not Playing Guitar. Sure, if you want to learn guitar there are plenty of hints and exercises. But many of you might just want to play a few simple songs for pleasure. So feel free to ignore lots of the advice and just strum for fun.

You don’t have to learn all the tricks of the guitar masters. A few simple chords and some songs you enjoy are all you need to have fun. It’s alright to be way behind on your practice schedule, or even to have no practice schedule at all.

Now I'm sure that some of you avoid practicing sometimes because you feel guilty about stuff you didn't learn, or didn't practice. Or simply because you feel your playing isn't "good enough". There's no need to. Remember, whether you are just beginning or are already a guitar hero, playing guitar is just a frivolous waste of time. So lighten up on yourself, and enjoy.

Celebrate and have fun

Playing guitar is useless. It really is just for fun and that's why it's so great. Let's all celebrate that today. Pick up your guitar, quit feeling bad about all those things you didn't get around to practicing, and simply have fun playing your guitar.

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Survey: What's Your Guitar Learning Challenge?

We all have challenges to overcome as we try to learn guitar. This week I’d like to hear about your challenges so I'm running a survey on Not Playing Guitar where you can tell me what problems you are dealing with – or not - as you learn guitar.

It's not easy to describe all the challenges you could face in a simple list but I'm going to try. You can select more than one if you want. If you don't see your challenge in the list then you can always add a comment on this post to describe it.

I’ll be leaving the survey up for a week or so to give everyone a chance to have their say. You can check back later to learn about the results of the survey. I’ll be following it up with my thoughts on these problems and hopefully I’ll be able to suggest some solutions that will help you.

The survey appears in the left hand column of the site, just below the subscription area. If you can’t see it right now then scroll up or down a little until you find it. I look forward to hearing from as many readers as possible.

Don’t forget, if you want to hear more about solutions for your learning challenge, make sure you vote for it in the survey or leave a comment to describe it.

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Become a Better Guitar Player at Rock House

Would you like to become a better guitar player? I know I would, and that's why I enjoyed a series of 12 tips offered by the Rock House blog earlier this year. The Rock House series presented little things you can do to become a better guitar player, right now.

You might have missed the series, but our friends over at the Rock House blog had the good idea to re-post the tips in a convenient single post. I've printed a copy to leave as a reminder in my guitar case, next to my list of songs. You might find this useful too.

Here is a taste of the 12 things Rock House recommends in 12 Things You Can Do Right Now To Become A Better Player. You'll have to read the post to get the details...

1. Listen.


2. Practice smart.


3. Watch yourself.


4. Record yourself.


5. Learn from your mistakes.


6. Have perception.


7. Build speed in small increments.


8. Use your body clock.


9. Listen to other genres of music.


10. Play for others.


11. Create a practice routine and play consistently.


12. Don't get frustrated.

You might already know of some of these things, and even do them already. Congratulations if that's the case. You can still use the list is a simple and practical reminder so you don't forget and lose focus.

Two things I decided to do better are recording myself and playing for others. Recording revealed to me that I play songs too fast.

This might seem surprising, it surprised me at any rate. It seems that most guitar players worry about not playing fast enough. But I have found with several friends that in fact we play too fast. I guess it's the excitement (or fear!) as we rush to finish a song without making mistakes.

I'm sure you'll find something in the list that will help to improve your guitar playing. If you want to become a better player visit 12 things you can do right now and print a copy to keep in your guitar case.

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Guitar Power Chords Lesson

Here's an interesting lesson on power chords that will show you how to easily add some new sounds to your collection of beginner guitar chords. The lesson is offered by the Pickstroke blog.

Power chords are fairly easy to play and can be a good way to approach learning of bar chords. They will help you to learn and memorize the position of the important root and fifth notes up and down the fretboard.

But power chords also have a learning pitfall, read the article Guitar Power Chords on Pickstroke to find out what it is...

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What Is Your Guitar Playing Strength?

So often as guitarists we focus on what we are not good at. We're never satisfied, always seeking to improve this or that in our playing. Today, it's time to reverse this trend and start congratulating ourselves for what we're great at.

Guitar Player Zen recently told the story of 3 Myths That Are Holding Your Guitar Progress Back.

Guitar Player Zen writes about the book "Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Success" by Marcus Buckingham.

"The key idea of this book is to harness your strengths and make them stronger, and not to focus on getting better at where you are weak. The result of focusing on your strengths is innovation, higher creativity, and passion. While it is still necessary to work on areas of weakness, you will see more impactful improvement by focusing on your strengths."

The post goes on to explain three "myths" the book claims often hold people back from reaching their potential. I want to take a closer look at myth number two:

Myth # 2 You will grow the most in your areas of greatest weakness.
Truth: You Will Grow the most in your areas of Strength.

Guitar Player Zen relates this to learning guitar.

"If you do not eliminate this myth, your development and uniqueness as a guitar player will suffer, and you may not realize your own unique guitar identity. By constantly comparing areas where you are not as good as other guitarists and trying to catch up, you only become more like them, rather than spending the majority of your time building upon your own style.

You also will be most inquisitive, most resilient, most creative, and most open to learning in your areas of strength."

After reading that I got to thinking about my own playing. Now I usually consider my playing a pretty mediocre affair. But looking at it to find what I do well I realized that there are indeed some things I do well. Even though my idea of well might be relative.

I became aware that I am generally good at rhythm guitar. I have a good sense of timing and rhythm (my wife thinks I should play percussion. This is not entirely wrong, but I like to play it on the guitar) and I can reliably chug away through a chord progression creating a decent rhythmic groove.

As soon as this thought formed in my mind I felt a warm happy glow about my guitar playing. Yes, my guitar playing. That thing I'd always been so ashamed of because I couldn't do this or that or didn’t understand so and so. That guitar playing, modest as it may be, is now something I feel GOOD about.

If my experience is anything to go by a focus on your strengths could be a powerful tool to make you feel better about your guitar playing. That's why I'm sharing it with you today. Now, think about your playing and find something good about it, even something small. Leave a comment by clicking the link below to share it with us, I'd love to hear about your guitar strength.

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