Why Most Guitar Lessons Fail (And How to Finally Improve Your Playing)

Why Most Guitar Lessons Don’t Work

Rant alert!

A recent encounter with a new student got me thinking.

He came in wanting to learn how to solo over his own band’s tracks. Apparently, he’d been playing for years. He’d taken some courses, learned from YouTube and even had a semi-famous local guitar teacher.

And yet there he was in front of me, struggling to come up with a simple solo over one of his own songs.

So that made me curious. What were his lessons like?

Fortunately, he’d brought some papers with him, and I took a quick look.

Everything was scribbled by hand on paper, and it took some time for me to fully decipher what it was. I noticed words being thrown around like: Lydian mode, Dorian mode… followed by a simple fingering chart written only with bare numbers.

And I’m thinking… this is advanced stuff. Even I, with 15 years of guitar playing (and actively learning), still need to practice playing and using these things.

So apparently, their lessons looked kind of like this:

Teacher: “So this is the dorian mode” **shows the dorian mode.

Student: **struggles along

Teacher: “Now, when you go home, you practice this.”

Student: **nods confusedly.

The end.

Talk about teaching a robot to play guitar, right?

And there sits the student, hopefully, with all kinds of GOOD questions in his head like: What even are the modes? How do I play them? How do I practice them? How do I use them? Why is this important for me to learn?

Most students don’t admit to themselves, that these are actually good questions to ask. Instead, they feel confused, dumb, untalented, unworthy…

If most of guitar lessons look like that, it’s no wonder so many people are still struggling with their guitar playing.

There are countless guitar lessons on the internet, and all the information you need to be able to play and fully express yourself on your guitar is readily available to everyone.

Yet still, so many of them fail to explain the simple whys, whats and hows.

And these are MORE important than the thing you’re learning itself.

That brings us to something I like to call “the life cycle of learning”.

The Life Cycle Of Learning – Where Most Guitar Lessons Fail

First, you learn the thing.

This is where most of the lessons begin and, unfortunately, end. It’s always good to learn new things, but like the good old quote goes:

“To know and not to do is not to know.” ~ Stephen R. Covey

Besides, always learning new licks and tricks, without learning to apply them is kind of like having a huge armory but having no trained soldiers to arm. And it’s not half as fun as actually playing and using your knowledge.

Second, you practice the thing.

This is what most of the students are told to do at home, and most probably don’t do it correctly – or don’t do it at all.

Most guitar teachers neglect the importance of teaching how to practice correctly. And sometimes all the student really needs is practice in front of the teacher and get feedback.

Third, you learn how to apply the thing.

What are the different contexts where you can apply the licks or scales you've learned? How can you improvise using them? Can you compose a solo using them?

This is probably the biggest difference between the "talented" people and the rest of us. Actually, they are not “really” talented – they’ve just made the effort to apply what they've learned in as many different situations as they could imagine. And I know from my own experience it works like magic.

Lastly, you learn to integrate different items.

Integration in its simplest form means combining different skills.

Our mind is tricky. Usually, it lets us play something correctly if we repeat it long enough. But once we switch to a new lick or item, it needs time to adjust – that means the item isn’t really fully applicable to our real-life playing yet. We have to practice combining different items one after another, or merging them together in new licks.

Find a Better guitar Teacher

And there it is. Most guitar lessons only focus on one-fourth of what learning guitar really takes. And it’s not really their fault – they just don’t know any better.

Many of these lessons are usually taught by people who either:

· didn’t really ever struggle to practice correctly, apply things and integrate them; or,

· over time, forgot what it’s like to suck; or

· didn’t receive any proper training on how to actually teach guitar (most great guitar players fail as teachers).

That’s why most of the lessons I teach focus more on the last three-fourths of the learning cycle. I am perfectly aware students can find most of the information I teach on their own anyway. And the best way to help them is to NOT give them more information.

That’s how the lessons in my own music school šola kitare v Novem mestu are way more fun and help me consistently crank out badass guitar players as a result.

I hope this article will equip you with a new perspective on how to get unstuck in your guitar playing and help you find better guitar teachers or filter lessons by what they really are.