I see this happen on a near daily basis.
A student sits down and begins to work on a piece of music, and it’s like they’re trying to eat a whole steak in one bite.
They start at the beginning and just play through the whole piece.
The same difficult spots still trip them up.
They hit the wrong string again, struggle with that one chord change, play the rhythm just a little wrong.
Yet, they don’t stop and fix those spots.
This is a major reason people don’t make progress. They’re shoving an entire steak down their throat. It ain’t pretty.
The key to better progress in your playing is breaking things into tiny little chunks. Get laser focused on the problems and solve them, one at a time.
If you try to do everything at once, you’re doing nothing but reinforcing bad habits.
Do this today. You already know what trips you up. Focus all your energy on that one thing. A chord change. A tricky strum pattern. A bend so out of tune that it sounds like a dying cat.
Work it. And don’t stop working until you see improvement. Maybe it’s not perfect today, but make it better. Then repeat that tomorrow. That’s how you make progress.
If you do this every day, your playing will be transformed. Not overnight, but in time. Maybe it will take a month. Maybe a year. I can’t say, but I do know that solving problems when you practice is transformative.
Keep reading: Simplifying anything that feels too hard and a 4-step method for better practice.
Nicholas
P.S. If you’re a fingerstyle player, this is exactly what my 53-minute course Fix Your Fingerstyle is designed to help with. It tackles the most common fingerstyle problems one at a time, so you know what to fix and how to fix it.