The Secret To Making Yourself Into A Better Musician

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Being a musician is one of the most rewarding pastimes in the world. No matter what level of experience you are, there is a huge amount of joy to be had in the simple act of playing music. This joy can be magnified many times if you also get a chance to play with others. No matter how good you are, however, chances are you are always keen to improve. Most musicians find that they are rarely happy with where they are. There is a real joy in learning new techniques for whatever instrument you are playing. What’s more, the more you play and practice with others, the better a musician you become in an all-round sense. In this article, we will go through some of the basic steps towards turning yourself into a better musician. Let’s find out what those are now.

Playing With The Right People

Of course, there is nothing wrong at all with playing on your own. Plenty of successful and talented musicians do play solo, often for their entire lives. However, many people find that they enjoy the process much more if they play routinely with others. No matter what kind of music you play, playing with others is bound to enhance your experience. What’s more, it is also a great way of making yourself into a better musician. This is because, as you play with more people, your styles and tastes will grow and evolve. However, it is important to find decent people that you are happy playing with. The calibre of the other musicians has a huge effect on how well you play, both with them and in general. If you are keen to improve your skills, make sure you play with as many different talented musicians as you can. You will find that this alone makes a huge difference to how you treat yourself as a musician.

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Using The Right Instruments

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how skilled you are if you have a poor instrument. No matter what, the quality of the instrument you are using will have a huge effect on how you play overall. If you are keen to improve your musical ability, you need to ensure that you are using only the best instruments. The problem here is that there is no such thing as one instrument which is better than all the rest. Depending on what you hope to get out of your instrument, you will be looking for different makes and models. For example, the world of guitars is particularly diverse when it comes to this. If you are looking for a general all-rounder, then you will want to check out this taylor 110e review. However, something more specific might require that you dig a little deeper.

Practising In The Right Way

A problem that many musicians run into at some point or another is that their practise is not bringing about the desired results. This often happens as the result of learning bad habits, or learning your mistakes. This is something that we are all guilty of, and it applies to pretty much anything that you do with your hands. If you want to get ahead in your practice as quickly as possible, you need to make sure that you are doing it in the right way. This is something which is much harder to describe than to actually carry out. In many ways, it is learned intuitively. However, to put it simply, you should ensure that you are practising slowly and diligently. A lot of people make the mistake of rushing into learning new riffs and songs. While this might be exciting, it is not the best way to actually practice your skills in the long term. Slow, diligent practice is the best kind. Take your time, learn every chord and finger sequence as fully as you can before moving on. You will find that, over time, this method yields far greater results than the other way.

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Take A Break Every Now And Then

Playing a musical instrument is one of those things which actually gets a little easier if you take a break from it. You don’t have to do this very often, of course. But taking a short break from learning the guitar will actually help you in the long run. The reason for this is quite simple. Often, as we mentioned earlier, you end up learning your own mistakes. This can often be hard to even notice that you are doing it. However, taking the occasional break will help you to fix that. If you take a couple of weeks off, and go back to it, you will notice all of your bad habits. You can then start to build up your skills again, doing away with the bad habits you have developed. This can make a huge difference in your abilities in no time at all. If you want to really progress on any instrument, don’t underestimate the power of not practising every now and then.

Forget About Yourself

Music is one of those pastimes which can all too easily get caught up with a large sense of ego. If you find that happening to you, don’t beat yourself up about it. It happens to the best of us at some point. Ego can help you to a certain point, after all. However, too much of it is definitely a bad thing. If you find that your fear of embarrassment is getting in the way of your progress, then that is a sign that it is becoming a problem. To get around this, you need to try and forcibly forget about yourself as you play. This becomes especially important when you are performing in front of others, and when you are rehearsing with others. If you are able to put your ego aside, you will find that your embarrassment levels drop too. And from that will spring a practice which is much more genuine, organic and beneficial to your ongoing development.