100 Days of Guitar

A short retrospective from 100 day of learning the guitar, and how to solo.

• The number one thing about practice is: you need to remove any obstacle, no matter how small, that your brain can use as an excuse not to get started.
• Have A practice plan for each day
  • review it at the end of each session.
  • take stuff off or refine stuff you aren't doing in it.
  • change up the things you are practice, don't stagnate doing the same thing over and over.
  • keep all your reference material organized and ready to go, you need to spend 0 time getting your reference together for practice. Remember don't give your brain any excuses to not practice.
• I started off with a block of memorization each day (fretboard) but I'm not sure how useful that really is. As you work on the fretboard you'll just naturally learn it, and if you don't work on the fretboard, then why do you need to memorize it?
• Multiple mediums are useful for learning; books, videos, sheet music, listening to music. Pulling from multiple sources adds variety and novelty to your practice; this prevents you from stagnating and getting bored.
• Sometimes playing faster or better isn't about skill but technique, some motions can be played faster than other motions, so design your soloing to allow you play faster.
• Music theory helps you understand what you are playing; thus allowing you to build your own music. The goal is to compose, not just play other peoples music like a computer.
• When creating reference material, include as much information as you can . Don't try to be a cool kid that can pretend they know it all. Music theory can be confusing enough on it's own, don't make it worse by creating sparse reference material.
  • If you aren't using your reference material every day, it's either because you have it memorized, or it isn't useful. If it isn't useful, figure out why and update it.
  • If you feel like you should be using your reference material and you're not, maybe you need to update what you are practicing every day.
• Consistently practice every day even if it's only for a few minutes; just keep the streak going.
• Backing tracks make practice so much more fun, and give you a fun metronome to play against.
• Half of soloing is adding texture to the notes
  • hammer ons
  • pull offs
  • bends
  • effects
• Copy stuff you like, and then figure out how to change it to make it yours.
• Artists use reference materials. Anyone that says differently is lying or probably just makes shit art. (or they just do the same thing over and over and have just memorized how to do that one thing.)
• Tools are there to allow you to do things you as a human can't do; they enhance you, so have good tools, and know how to use them.
• If you are bored with something you are doing, find a way to add novelty to to it, switch it up, make it fun, don't give your brain an excuse not to practice.
• Write this document as you go along instead of all at once at the end.
• Throwing in reading gives you more to write about, which makes the practice more interesting
• It's all about making your practice more interesting, novel; don't stagnate.

Upgrade your tools as you get better

• Yamaha amp with wireless hookup; this makes playing so much more fun, and the wireless link "just works" you just plug it in and start playing. It also works as an easy way to get guitar input into ableton.
• A good tuner. My original tune required multiple button presses to get it to the right mode, and more button presses just to turn it off; it was a pain and I hated it every time I used it, and part of practice is getting rid of any excuse that might make you not practice. So I upgraded to a Snark Guitar Tuner; It turns on in one button press, and turns off in on button press.
• I also ended up getting a new Fender Strat because I thought my PRS was lonely.

Reference

• Soloing Cheat Sheet