When I was younger, I was a big fan of the old-fashioned approach to learning guitar.
I enjoyed the fact that it was so structured and predictable. I could pick up a few tips or buy a book, learn some basic chords and some easy guitar songs, and I was on my way to learn guitar.
Most beginner guitarists start their guitar journey this way.
You start by practicing some basic strumming patterns. Once you have those down, you move on to barre chords. With a little practice, you’re playing songs in no time.
As a beginner guitarist, I found comfort in knowing what I needed to do, step-by-step.
And the motto was practice, practice, practice until whatever I was working on became burned into my brain.
Now I was also taught that that was the best way to learn guitar, and for a beginner guitarist, it may still very well be.
“Knowledge-based” principles run deep in traditional guitar education. (They lean towards concepts like “constructivism” and Bloom’s taxonomy.)
I thought that if I worked hard on my guitar playing, and followed the same principles, I would become a successful guitar player in the “real-world.”
Boy, was I wrong.
A “knowledge-based” approach to learning guitar doesn’t prepare you for the real world as a more advanced guitar player.
You need to be able to play and create music in different situations and not what you know.
To be fair, there is a lot of great stuff that comes from a traditional guitar education.
And it’s there when you need it.
But when it comes to being a pro musician, it is hard to know all the information for every situation.
Be quick to adapt
If you find that there is a gap between what you can do and what needs to to do, then you need to learn how to adapt.
And this is where it can get a little tricky,
Because in most creative situations, there is no clear set of rules to follow
The most successful guitar players learn and adapt to challenging moments. They always bring something unique to every project they work on.
Pro guitar players also learn how to make choices that help them get the job done.
Unfortunately, a traditional guitar education doesn’t prepare you for any of that.
There’s Always More To Learn
The trouble with learning guitar is there’s always more guitar to learn.
But with the amount of information that’s out there, it’s like trying to drink from a firehose, when all you need is a glass of water.
There are many books that can teach you how to play the guitar.
These books often have simple scale formulas and thousands of guitar chords and chord shapes.
Endless YouTube videos and online guitar courses, with the “easy” way to this or promising the “ultimate guitar program”
So you dive in…
And before you know it, you’re in over your head and you are drowning in information.
And sense of overwhelm starts to creep in,
And your playing (and progress) grinds to a halt.
Or even worse, you give up..
It’s OK To Not Have All The Answers, All The Time
Some of the best advice I ever got was…
“You don’t have all the answers. But you’ll figure it out. And you might not get it right. But you’ll fix it. And learn.”
It’s okay not to have all the answers.
What’s important is that you learn how to go find them.
Because sometimes you’re going to miss something and get it wrong.
Learning how to do this can be the best way to learn guitar.
It helps you stay focused on what you need to do, when you need to do it.
You need to get the most value out of what you learn, with the least effort.
Make no mistake, this is NOT about being lazy or finding the “easy way out”
This is about efficient and effective learning, so you don’t waste time and effort.
To get better at playing, and survive as a pro, you need to work on the things that matter.
You can’t be great at everything, all the time; pick the things that are most important and only work on those.
So for me, the best way to learn guitar is more about “how” you learn what you learn.
Start With The End In Mind When Learning Guitar
To be efficient and effective when learning guitar, you should always start with the end in mind.
This means that you set out to learn something new, you should have a clear idea of the outcome that you want to achieve.
An outcome is a change in your playing that drives measurable results.
It’s the difference between where you started and where you finished.
This approach keeps you focused what matters and eliminates wasted work.
It is a way of deciding what to learn and reminding yourself not to get distracted by other things.
So before you learn anything new, ask yourself the following question
“What do I need (or want to learn) right now that will give me the results I’m looking for?”
And only then will the right (and most important) steps come into focus.
In your daily guitar practice routine, this helps you focus on what you want to learn when you need to learn it.
So how do we use an outcome-based approach to help us learn guitar so we can focus on what we need to work on?
Staying On Course When Learning Guitar
If you want to learn how to play guitar, the first step is to think about what you want to achieve.
What’s your ultimate guitar playing goal?
When you’re learning guitar, it’s important to have an ultimate goal in mind.
This will help you make other decisions about your learning process and help you stay motivated.
What Your Ultimate Goal As A Guitar Player?
If we look at the definition from Oxford Languages
A goal is the object of a person’s ambition or effort; an aim or desired result.
For most people, goals tend broad in scope.
For example, a an ultimate goal for a a guitar player might be to “become a better Bluesy guitar player”
When you learn guitar, your ultimate goal is your main “mission” or aspiration. This should be a clear goal that can help you know which direction to go.
Focus On Outcome Over Output When Learning Guitar
An outcome is a measurable change in you as a guitar player that brings you value.
This could be learning a specific skill or technique that has been holding you back for the longest time.
An output is something you do, with little or no significant impact or value.
This could include playing songs and ideas you already know. Playing for the sake of playing. You’re still doing SOMETHING but may not matter much in the grand scheme of things.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
Sometimes playing guitar for the sake of playing guitar is fun!
But when we talk about the best way to learn guitar, we need to stay focused on what you want to achieve.
This means looking at the changes in your playing that are most important to you and that bring you value.
They give you the reason “why” or purpose behind why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Rather than using the floodlight to highlight your ultimate goal as a player, we use a spotlight on something you need to focus on.
With this focus, you are able to better focus on what matters most to you, and will bring you the most value, right now.
When you use an outcome-based performance framework to learn guitar, you get the best way to learn guitar, for exactly where you are as a player.
To help us focus on what we want, we use a framework called OKRs. This has been helpful for companies like Intel and Google.
What Are OKRs?
OKRs stand for “Objectives and Key Results.”
This is a way to set goals that you want to try and achieve.
These goals are challenging and ambitious, but will be able to measure them.
Where your ultimate goal can be thought of as a floodlight, OKRS are the spotlight.
OKRs are a way to track progress and stay motivated by setting specific, measurable goals.
How can OKRs help you learn guitar more efficiently and effectively?
What are the components of an OKR? Objectives and Key Results
You write an OKR with an Objective and 3 to 5 supporting Key Results below it.
They can also be written as a statement:
I will (Objective) as measured by (Key Results).
- What you want to do
- How you’re going to measure it
Objectives:
An Objective is a way to organize the steps needed to achieve specific part of your ultimate goal.
It’s that “what” in what you want to do to make progress.
When you create an Objective, it should focus on one of these three things:
- Growth
- Innovation
- Change
Doing this helps you ensure you are focusing on something of value.
But it’s doesn’t stop there.
Your ultimate goal also guides the objectives you set.
For that, try adding the question “why?” to the end of the Objective to highlight its purpose.
The more important your goal is to you, the more likely you are to commit to achieving it.
So let’s say your Objective is to “learn Jimmy Page’s guitar solo from “Since I’ve Been Loving You”
Why are you learning that solo from that song right now? Is it a priority? Does it align with your ultimate goal?
You can also check the relevance of your Objective by adding “so I can” along with your ultimate goal to the end of the statement.
I will learn Jimmy Page’s guitar solo from “Since I’ve Been Loving You” so I can “become a Blues-y guitar player”
If your Objective in playing guitar does not match your ultimate goal, it will be clear right away.
Key Results
Key Results benchmark and track how we get to an Objective.
They are milestones to help you measure your progress as you work to achieve your Objective.
Key Results also have some common characteristics you can check to make sure they’re doing their job:
- Are they specific? Is it stated what needs to occur and by when?
- Are they aggressive, yet realistic? Are they aspirational?
- Are they measurable and verifiable? Is the criteria for success clear?
You want key results to be easy enough to achieve, but tough enough to help you grow.
Key results also have deadlines and they are used to measure the change performance over time. By having a start point and an end point, you can better track your progress when you learn guitar.
Let’s continue with our Led Zeppelin example…
So let’s say you need to work on your speed to be able to meet your Objective of playing the solo in Since I’ve Been Loving You
What key results (milestones) do we need to hit to meet this objective
What are some of the specific things we can measure to know we are on the right track
Here are a few of the things we could possible measure for our key results
- Tempo – are you able to play fast enough? Are your attacks and releases solid?
- Pitch – how accurate are you? note for note?
- Dynamics – how are you matching dynamics?
The idea of OKRs is to pick what you think will help you the most to get the desired outcome.
Let’s start with Tempo
If you listen to the song, or look at a transcription of it, you will see that there are a lot of 16 note triplets in the solo.
(There are some 32nd notes – but let’s assume that we’re not at the level yet)
You know that the song is in 12/8 at around 40 bpm.
First you need to assess your skills and see if there are any gaps.
After a quick test with a metronome, you realize that you are only comfortable with 16th note triplets in 12/8 at 20 bpm
So if you re-phrase that as a Key Objective:
KEY RESULT #1: Increase the speed of my 16th note triplets in 12/8 from 20bpm to 40 bpm
Give yourself a deadline to get this done. Let’s go with 7 days. So you would need to increase by about 3bpm per day.
Now you have a plan and you can start to look for guitar lessons that have exercises to help with speed.
You can then repeat the Key Result process for the other two aspects.
Let’s now look at Pitch
Your end point is a note-for-note recreation of the solo so you can use this as your “source of truth” for measuring your progress. The more faithful you are to the original, the better.
Let stay we’re starting from 0 – never having played the song before, so phrasing this as a Key Result can look something like:
KEY RESULT #2: Play every phrase of the solo so that they match the original solo as close as possible
And now, you can break this Key Result into specific exercises. You can find some online guitar lessons that teach songs phrase by phrase at slow tempos. We will stick to the same deadline of 30 days.
And last, let’s look at dynamic as a Key Result…
KEY RESULT #3: Ensure every note of the solo matches the dynamics original solo as close as possible
Again using your ears and the recording as your means for measuring your progress and accuracy.
Of course I happened to pick these 3 aspects to derive our key results. You could pick whatever is most important to you.
Using OKRs is more about finding what works best for you, and less about following a set of rules.
For example, players who are more advanced might already be able to play guitar at this tempo, so they could use Tone or even articulation as measurable Key Results.
Once you hit all your key results, you’ve hit your Objective.
When put together, the full OKR looks like this:
OBJECTIVE with OUTCOME: I will learn Jimmy Page’s guitar solo from “Since I’ve Been Loving You” so I can “become a better Bluesy guitar player”
- KEY RESULT #1: Increase the speed of my 16th note triplets in 12/8 from 20bpm to 40 bpm
- Daily Exercises added to your guitar practice routine to achieve KEY RESULT #1
- KEY RESULT #2: Play every phrase of the solo so that they match the original solo as close as possible
- Daily Exercises added to your guitar practice routine to achieve KEY RESULT #2
- KEY RESULT #3: Ensure every note of the solo matches the dynamics original solo as close as possible
- Daily Exercises added to your guitar practice routine to achieve KEY RESULT #3
Making Consistent Progress is Easier Said Than Done When Learning Guitar
Although on paper, creating objectives and defining key results to learn guitar looks simple it’s quite hard to do in practice.
So many factors can be a distraction from the objective you want to achieve.
Remove the Emotional Pressure
When you’re driven by your emotions, it’s referred to as emotional pressure. It’s when you work because someone else is threatening your sense of self-worth..
You’ve applied emotional pressure if you’ve ever used guilt to push a loved one to do something.
There are many types of emotional pressure that can affect your progress when learning guitar. Fear of failure, peer pressure, and embarrassment can all hold you back.
When you do something to avoid disappointing yourself or others, you are giving in to emotional pressure.
For example, you might want to play guitar as a a full-time musician, but your parents or partner don’t think it’s a good idea.
They might think that anyone who chooses to play guitar for a living is wasting their time. They might not understand that music can be a stable career.
Never Sell Out Your Long Term Goals for Short Term Gains
When an outside force compels you to play guitar, it’s usually a sign you are doing something for the wrong reasons.
You’re doing it to be rewarded (money, praise, validation) or prevent yourself from getting punished (like failing a test in school)
Now, your purpose to play guitar is no longer linked to your work or your identity.
Of course, sometimes you “gotta do what you gotta do…”
If you are doing a project for money, or to get attention on social media, be careful that it doesn’t distract you from your ultimate goal.
Be The Best Version Of Your Guitar Playing Self
Now that you know the importance of focusing on what you want to achieve when learning guitar, it’s time for you to try this process for yourself.
Because at the end of the day, the best way to learn guitar is a way to learn guitar that works for you.
Here are a few tips to get you started today:
Try to define your ultimate goal as a guitar player. What are your hopes, dreams and aspirations as a player?
What are some things you could focus on right now, that would give you the biggest leap towards your ultimate goal? Brainstorm as many as you can
Identify what is most important to you right now, and define it as an outcome-based Objective you’d like to achieve
Look for the biggest gaps between where you are and where you need to be to hit the objective.
Break that gap into 3-5 key results you can use to measure your progress and you work on filling that gap.
Find some specific guitar lessons or exercises to work on those weak areas.
And then add it to your guitar practice routine and go for it!
Need Help Defining Your Outcomes For Your Guitar Playing?
If you’re feeling lost and don’t know where to start to learn guitar more effectively and efficiently, don’t worry!
We’re here to help.
Our team of experts can assist you in identifying the outcomes you want and the skills you need to achieve them, as well as help guide you with specific feedback or make exercise recommendations.
We’re also in the middle of building an AI assisted Practice Planner that puts your most important playing objectives at the center of every session, so you can spend less time managing goals and more time achieving them.