How 5 Songs Can Improve Your Guitar Playing Fast!

Five songs can be used to set a vision and align your goals and eventually supply that drive that leads to the click or light bulb moment where you just get it.

Can 5 songs really change your playing? 

I’ve been teaching guitar since I was a teenager and then went to college to receive a music degree and have taught guitar along with many other instruments during my career.  I’ve used countless method books, theories, and practice techniques, but no matter what books or methods I used, one external factor kept separating the students that had success learning guitar from the unsuccessful students and that was…drive.

So how do you get the bug, the itch, the drive?

Before I understood what was going on I would tell parents, “Just stick with playing guitar weekly and it will click.  It did for me.  It did for my brother and several other of my students.  You just have to get through those barriers to learning guitar.”  

Then I started asking myself what made it click?  Why was I able to learn guitar so much faster in 8th grade than when I started in 6th grade?

The difference I found was in ownership.  I took ownership of learning  guitar and used what I learned in lessons to aid the personal goals I had set.

So how can 5 songs change your playing as a beginning guitarist or an intermediate guitarist or even as an advanced guitarist?

Five songs can be used to set a vision and align your goals.   When you have a vision and goals, you are more focused.  A focused learner is a more excited learner and this excitement will lead to the drive that propels you forward.  It will also eventually lead to that click where you just get it.

Here’s how it works for a beginning guitarist:

Pick 5 songs that you want to learn.  

The 5 songs that you pick should be songs that get you excited about playing.  They can be songs that you listen to all the time or songs that you have heard over the years and thought, “That sounds really cool, I wish I knew how to play that.”

Picking 5 songs will be easy for some and daunting for others.  If you don’t listen to music and don’t really have a clue of what you like, then you need to have a pre/first step and listen to music you think you like and narrow it down to 5 songs.

If you already have a ton of songs you want to learn, narrow it down to just 5.  Through these 5 you can learn the process of learning songs and it will quickly lead to the others on your list.

Does it matter the difficulty?  Not really.  If you continue following me on the blog, Youtube, Instagram, or sign-up for a my Bootcamp, I will help you break it down to bite sized steps that are attainable for any level.  In fact, if you want help, send me an email with your 5 songs right now!

Got my songs, what’s next?

To Learn these songs, you can use several different sources, Youtube, Ultimate Guitar or many others, but for right now I’d suggest typing “(song name) chords” in google and clicking on the first chord chart that comes up.

Choose 1 song to start learning.  Throughout the process, we will go back and learn several different parts of the song so don’t worry about what exactly you pick to learn.  If the song has a stand out guitar riff, you could start by learning that.  Try to learn the thing that draws you to the song.

If it doesn’t have a stand out riff, then learn the chords.  Chords can be tricky and if they seem too hard right now then just play through the song using only the root notes.  (Learn How to do that Here).  This may seem too easy, but it gets you playing and will help you learn your way around the guitar, which you will need in the future.

Got it!  What’s next?

After you have gotten the hang of playing the riff or chords of your first song, move to your next song and repeat the same process.  Now when you practice, play through both songs using the chords or riff you have learned.

Now that you have a good start and have two songs that you are practicing, think about finding a friend to play with.  This could be another beginner or a more advanced player.  Choosing the 5 songs that inspire us is the first part to creating the drive that leads to the click that makes guitar second nature for beginners, but adding a community of people that you play with weekly will accelerate your learning by adding the fun of hanging out with a little accountability.

Remember, we want to keep it fun though so don’t get stressed about it!  When you play with your friend you may want to choose a few different songs that match both of your interests.

Don’t worry if you have a friend that is more advanced than you, that may make it playing together even better!  Most songs are filled with multiple parts so playing with someone else will give you that feeling of fullness by adding parts that you can’t play if you were playing the song by yourself.

Speaking of other parts…

Now that you have a community and a portion of two songs under your belt, go back to your first song and try to learn it a different way.  If you didn’t play chords the first time, try to add a chord or two.  If you didn’t learn any of the lead guitar parts, try to learn one.

This article is long enough already and I’m sure you have some practicing to do, so I’m going to end it here, but before I go, here is a general idea of how a week of learning your songs might look.

Day 1- Learn Song 1

Day 2- Practice Song 1 and Learn Song 2

Day 3- Practice Song 1 and Song 2

Day 4- Practice Song 2 and Learn a new part of Song 1

Day 5- Practice new and old part of song 1 and old part of song 2

If you’d like more help, sign up for my free Guitar Bootcamp and I will help you learn your 5 songs in 10 days.  I’ll help you develop a plan for the 5 songs and give you a personalized practice plan.  

Not Ready for a complete solution?  Shoot me an email and I’ll help you get started.  And yes it’s really me answering the email and helping with your songs.

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Mitch Gissendaner

Performer and Guitar Instructor