3 major roadblocks that leaves you “lost” at learning guitar

No... there is no shortcut to learning guitar. There is no magic pill. No "oh, here's 5 easy licks that will make you sound like a guitar god!" trick. No "1 shape to make you the best!".

Are you ready to click away..? I mean.., it's not wrong of you to do so. They're hard truths to swallow as a guitarist.

Before you go thinking I'm some traditionalist that thinks "the only way to gain is pain!", hear me out first! Let's look at what doesn’t work first, so that we may get clarity on what would work!

Roadblock 1: Fragmentation of learning

If you’re like me, learning guitar when I was young was expensive, and my mum wouldn’t get me a guitar tutor because she’d rather spend that money to sign me up for expensive tuition lessons instead :’). So obviously, YouTube is where we all go, m I rite? 🤷‍♂️ So I learnt from Justin Guitar, Paul Davids, GuitarLessons365, Marty Schwartz etc. (I bet you already know some of them!) And don’t get me wrong, they do an amazing job on this platform. But…BUT..! That’s also where it hit me with a serious plateau and roadblock in my guitar playing progress.

I was trying to learn from everything and everyone on YouTube and sure, it did gave me great ideas to fit into my playing routine or chord writing ideas, but it almost always lands me with the certain level of incompetency that I only know “this song”, or “this riff”, or “this concept” and nothing else.

It felt… incomplete. I needed a roadmap.

Roadblock 2: Being the course completionist

So then I began to explore various guitar courses to get me started learning from the ground-up! Namely, I’ve used JustinGuitar, GuitarTricks, TrueFire, and so on..! And honestly, these resources have been the most major benefit of developing a holistic and complete knowledge of the guitar for me when I dived deeper in each genre, style or technique of playing.

So I wouldn’t really call this as a roadblock for the courses themself! But the pitfall for me happened when I really became a little obsessive and a perfectionist at trying to learn.. EVERY. SINGLE. VIDEO… from start to finish.. I had the assumption that in order to be the best at guitar, I had to be able to play anything and everything, and basically had to learn every single video on each course..

Doing this is not only exhausting, but it pulls you into an endless rat race to always get the “next best” knowledge in the course.

Realizing that every knowledge or skill in guitar is equally important helped me ground myself in my learning, and see that it’s ok to learn one thing at a time, because each resource you take in, it’s all equally valuable.

The mental perception of “chasing the next best knowledge/skill/technique” tends to make you downplay what you are currently learning as you always see it as being “too basic”, or “I need to get over this skill quickly so that I can get to the harder stuff”. This perpetual mentality refueled the impatience within me. And I wasn’t able to stop myself from learning something beyond.

Sometimes, it’s okay to just practice what you ARE practicing NOW. Put down the need for the “next best skill”, and enjoy the current practice routine/skill/content. That’ll free your mind as a musician, or at life in general too! ;)

Roadblock 3: Comparing yourself with other players anywhere

If you’re like me as I once was, I was perpetually scrolling through Instagram whenever I was bored, or taking a break from work. And since nothing else really interest me other than guitar. I followed many guitar-related content on my Instagram feed. So my feed was flooded with guitar memes, funny guitar videos, but the most insidiously painful ones were those “guitar-flex” videos. Don’t get me wrong. They’re technically not flexes, because they are extremely…EXTREMELY good players. Because I call it a “flex” because you are seeing perhaps their 100th take, and their glorious 60 seconds highlight of their talent. Beyond that, maybe..just maybe, there’s hours of practice, hours of frustration, hours of contemplating giving up on that instrument. Or maybe not.., maybe they’re just very passionate and the joy of playing endures through the frustrations.

Whatever the reason might’ve been, it doesn’t really matter compared to how you actually felt about it. This distorted way of perceiving others and yourself is quite a universal mentality for many, not just limited to scrolling on guitar flex”s videos on Instagram. My point is that in my case, those videos could make you feel unworthy of your own current playing abilities, and discourage you of the truth if you’re not grounded in recognising your own abilities and talents as a whole (not just guitar, but your self-esteem as well). It’s easy to get swept away with scrolling on your feeds, idolizing your guitar heroes only to recognize your own incompetencies that seem to hold you back even more. But in truth, the feelings of incompetencies are already residing within us for us to allow ourselves to feel defeated, and the feeds are a mere trigger of these feelings.

This itself, is a deep-seated form of pain that is unresolved beyond the scope of guitar and this article, but for me, I did recognize how it was causing the triggers within me so learning to see that, and backing away when needed is definitely a helpful step towards regrounding yourself back to your “own” truth of competency, talents, and worth.

---

So there ya go! The 3 (mental) roadblocks that held me back in my playing and my learning. What are yours? Let me know in the comments and I’d be interested to see what stops you in your playing!

In the next blog, I’ll discuss and talk about what would work instead! (And no, it’s not “5 licks that make you a guitar god” concept! If only it was..!)