Find clarity by becoming a project-based guitarist
Hello everybody,
I’ve recently moved across the country and, as I’ve been in flux, my guitar playing has taken a back seat.
I wanted to play more, but every time I picked up my guitar there was no there there. I would procrastinate, start something but not finish it, and get tired of playing the same old stuff I always do. I realized it was the same things I did for years, but now amplified in this period of flux.
I wanted a process that let me improve constantly, reliably, and with low friction. It would need:
To be simple and intuitive to match my lack of stability
To bake in clear next steps so I can just jump in without thinking about where I left off
No strict daily practice timeframes, but flexibility instead
To minimize distraction from spur-of-the-moment randomness
Etc.
This process works. I’ve been doing it for a while and it is helpful not just in periods of flux, but for all guitarists floundering in procrastination and lack of direction.
I believe this process will be useful for others and I’ll be writing more about it in the future. Today I will discuss one piece of it: projects as the unit of improvement.
Grant Carson
Photo by Alex Gruber on Unsplash
Something to think about
The benefits of making your practice routine project-based
A lot of common issues for floundering guitarists are resolved by projects.
Do you feel like you lack direction? Do you feel like you’re not getting anywhere even when you practice? Do you feel like there’s a disconnect between what you’re practicing and how it’s useful? Projects fix all these problems. I don’t mean vague goals or just getting the gist, either. I mean baking projects as outcomes into your practice routine - a specific set of steps to create a concrete, tangible artifact.
It sounds intense, but it’s really not.
It’s too easy to work on something for a bit, get distracted, never come back to it, and eventually forget it entirely. Making projects the only outcome for your learning means you don’t get to “kind of” know something. It means you either learned something and can do it well enough to create a concrete, tangible artifact or you didn’t. And as you complete projects, these artifacts become a library of your own personal guitar knowledge.
A lot of practice routines look like this:
5 minutes: warm up with scales
20 minutes: work on repertoire
10 minutes: go over theory
These are vague goals.
I’ve tried this kind of thing a bunch of times and it’s never worked for me. It’s hard to know what kind of progress I’m making if there aren’t any concrete deliverables. And even if I meticulously measure all progress, there’s a general feeling of “now whatness” at the end of it.
At what point do you stop “working on a piece of repertoire?” I’ve been guilty of this a million times - getting 75% of the way there without really getting it.
But if my practice routine is about projects, there are parameters to each concept, technique, or piece of repertoire. Instead of "working on a piece of repertoire", I will, for example, record a video playing along with the track.
I will benefit from this because producing a video of me playing along with the track includes:
A definite start and end
Variable level of difficulty (I can try to be exact or do an easier, yet still complete version)
A sense of accomplishment and forward momentum
A record of what I’ve learned and how I played it for future reference
The ability to self-critique
It doesn’t have to be great quality, just a complete artifact.
Here are some other possible projects for common guitar players:
Record a video of playing along with the track
Write and record an 8 bar melody using X scale
Make a beat using Y chords
Learn a complete song
Write a song
Make a chord chart of a song
Make a lead sheet of song
Make a track with the chords from a piece and create a new melody.
Make a track with the melody from a piece and find new chords.
Etc.
Projects force you, every time you come across something you want to learn, to ask yourself, “What am I planning on doing with this?”