What has had the biggest positive impact on your playing?

ChristophEar · August 2013

What is the one thing which has improved your playing the most?

Could be a book, a certain technique, a method of practising, a moment of insight...

Ideally something the rest of us can steal benefit from!

ourmaninthenorth · August 2013

Perseverance - in practise, and even more so in listening.

monquixote · August 2013

Playing with other people.

Having to go to rehearsal or a gig really focuses the mind that you better know it or you are going to look silly and you learn so much from other people.

Lexie1 · August 2013

For me, it was the double advent of getting to grips with garageband and getting the Yamaha THR10. I can honestly say that I am playing more now than in years.

wordy · August 2013

I actually got back into the guitar while taking some singing lessons a while ago, and doing the two things parallel kind of meant that they fed into each other and kept me going during those first couple of years, when you can easily give it away. These days I no longer really sing, but I'm still playing the guitar, with no plans to stop.

OilCityPickups · August 2013

Gigging ... I wanted to entertain people ... so I soon sussed that the only way to do that was to play okay. Never been comfortable playing with myself ... er ...

thumpingrug · August 2013

monquixote said:

Playing with other people.

Having to go to rehearsal or a gig really focuses the mind that you better know it or you are going to look silly and you learn so much from other people.

This, in spades.

stonevibe · August 2013

Gigging.

not_the_dj · August 2013

Certainly playing with other people. I had lessons when I first started (from prog rock legend Kerry Minear of Gentle Giant fame). That got me started, but playing with others really makes you up your game

octatonic · August 2013

Stubbornness.

DulcetJones · August 2013

I came across an unusual warm up in a book years ago(can't recall, may have been called "The Guitarists Hands"). Take two full size pages of a newspaper and lay them out flat on the floor in front of you. Pick each one up in each hand by grabbing them in the center, then using only the fingers and thumb of each hand individually pull each piece into a ball as small as you can make it without using the other hand. I did this once everyday for a couple of years and it strengthened both hands. I was in the throes of getting my fingerstyle technique down and my right hand was weak until I started doing this.

JookyChap · August 2013

I think the first leap forward was buying a little Seiko tuner from Argos.

The second was starting a band then writing songs, doing some gigs and recording. Each of those made me concentrate harder and practice more.

WezV · August 2013

JookyChap said:

I think the first leap forward was buying a little Seiko tuner from Argos.

sounds daft doesn't it, but i would say the same.

I was practising without a proper tuner for the first few months as I was told pitchpipes would be better in the long run. I was incredibly shit at it, then i got a tuner and realised some of the stuff i had been learning started to sound pretty good once it was actually in tune. once i got used to playing an in tune guitar i quickly learned how to tune it by ear

ChristophEar · August 2013

Using a digital tuner for pitch ear training is awesome. Nice tutorial here.

bigjon · August 2013

Bought Guitar Techniques magazine in 1994 and practiced everything in it, using a metronome on its lowest speed setting then moving it one notch faster each day for two months. One month in, started over with the next issue. . .

RedRabbit · August 2013

Definitely playing with others.

I played for myself for the first 15 or so years and my timing was awful. I've been playing with a drummer, bass player and another guitarist regularly for a couple of years now and I'd say my rhythm playing is pretty tight now.

Still can do a solo worth a damn but I'm working on it.

snakemanStoo · August 2013

The realisation that techniques that I was doing were similar to what some of my heroes were doing.

After that, doing RGT grades cleaned up a lot of my laziness.

spacecadet · August 2013

Girls.

Grunfeld · August 2013

Gigging. Because getting paid for meant it had to be a lot better.

Not that I'm "good" cos I'm not, but I figure I must be "good enough" to other people to seem like I can play -- if that makes sense.

stickyfiddle · August 2013

Definitely gigging and being in a band and having proper rehearsals where everyone concentrates on the little things that move a band from "good" to "super tight and really fucking great"- matching diction and timing on harmonies, hitting cues, slow-downs, etc all at once every time. That sort of thing.

But also I'd say getting the Jamup app on my phone. It's a really good modeller full stop, plus it does tempo- and pitch-change and section-looping on mp3s that are already on my phone, which makes it super-powerful for learning new stuff. It's been a genuine game-changer in terms of *how* I practise.

mike_l · August 2013

Getting lessons I was bumbling through, with no real direction.

Now I bumble through, with no real direction, but have a vague idea of what I'm doing.

Also having backing tracks to play along with helps. And the "Lick Library" series of DVD's, for learning specific parts. Because of the LL DVD's, I managed (just, with a lot of help from BigJon and Viz) to get through All Along the watchtower, in front of people.

Yes, @Bigjon, and @Viz, All Along was the first time I'd been brave/stupid enough to try that (and Hey Joe) in front of an audience......

streethawk · August 2013

Learning songs by ear from LP's/Singles.

Tab books.

The dawn of the internet!

Putting shitloads of practice in (those days are long gone and boy does it show).

And to battle the self-loathing that led to me quit a few times, a good friend and awesome guitarist told me: "don't waste time trying to perfectly nail a certain guitarist's licks - we're all better at one thing than another, he'd probably struggle to nail one of your riffs".

I chose to believe him.

:P

oldBlueWolf · August 2013

Realising that I didn't have to know everything and that I could make a reasonably nice noise out of a guitar with the skills ( ahem

) that I do have.

TTony · August 2013

ChristophEar said:

What is the one thing which has improved your playing the most?

1. Getting a new wife.
Wife #1 was not very guitar-friendly. Or fun-friendly. Or me-friendly (apart from the money, naturally) after a while. Did the trade-in deal (which cost me plenty but worth every penny), and wife #2 is far more guitar/fun/me friendly. And that's 12 years later ...

2. Getting something I could use to play-along to stuff with.
Currently that's an iRig device into my iPad, some comfortable headphones and a variety of apps. So, I can pick up a guitar and play for my amusement, or listen/play stuff to learn, all without annoying the rest of the room/house/street. Seems to work for all.

3. Guitar Pro.
After a long time of not playing (see point #1), I found it hard to listen to something and work it out sufficiently well to learn it. Luckily, the Internet happened during my exile period, and apps like Guitar Pro now make it so easy to get the basics.

4. Playing with others.
As others here have said, there's no substitute for playing with a drummist and bassist. We only play for our own amusement (so far), but it's far more fun than playing along to backing tracks or whatever ...

Sorry, not quite "the one thing"!

tonyrath · August 2013

Finding a teacher 3 years ago who was so much better than me and who completely rebuilt my playing. skills in fingerstyle. Not pleasant for the ego but worth it. Focussed intensive practice works. I gig six days a week - its called teaching - you better be good, especially as they can see the best on Youtube any time

siremoon · August 2013

Another vote for playing with others.

It was a shock the first time because it was immediately obvious that I wasn't as good as I'd foolishly imagined I was but having got over that it's been an enormous benefit.

Jaycee · August 2013

For me it was a book. "The Principles of Correct Practice for guitar" by Jamie Andreas http://www.guitarprinciples.com/

Phil_aka_Pip · August 2013

jamming, especially live in front of an audience
the practice discipline imposed by the need to keep up with a course at The Guitar Institute
the neatly structured approach to music theory as delivered by the above course

ChristophEar · August 2013

Jaycee said:

For me it was a book. "The Principles of Correct Practice for guitar" by Jamie Andreas http://www.guitarprinciples.com/

Any particular insights you took away from it?

mike_l · August 2013

Also, using a decent sounding amp and distortion helped me a lot. Especially with muting unplayed strings, and pick hand control (ie not hitting unplayed strings).

Also I like to practice things with stupid amounts of gain (Boss Mega Distortion) once I've got my fingers around what I'm trying to learn. This gives (almost, not exactly) a "live" situation of having to control things, Ie when volume goes up, gain goes down, so when volume goes down (Ie at home) the gain goes up for a more "live situation" setting (ok badly explained). Keeping things sounding cleanly played with that amount of distortion is hard, and does help (at least helps me)with controlling the guitar/amp.

ArchtopDave · August 2013

Having weekly lessons, and trying to keep practicing on a regular basis.

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What has had the biggest positive impact on your playing?

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