Sometimes it’s difficult to see our own progress. Even when you practice every day it can sometimes feel like you aren’t getting anywhere. I’ve had a few students come to me over the years feeling a little discouraged that the song they’re working on hasn’t come together how they imagined.
The thing is, when you’re monitoring your own progress it’s difficult to see the little improvements that you make all the time. For me, the improvements in your playing are always apparent and I can always find positives from week to week if you’ve practiced.
Here’s one way to look at it (strange analogy incoming)… You look in the mirror every day and what do you see? You see yourself and that’s how you’ve always looked for as long as you can remember, right? Wrong. I’m sure we’ve all had a relative or a friend who hasn’t seen us for a while tell us how much we’ve grown or how much older we look. That’s kind of what it’s like week in and week out with me. I haven’t been with you all week as you practice and because I haven’t been with you all week it means it’s much easier for me to hear the improvements in your playing.
Sometimes we’ve got to look at where we came from to see how far we’ve come. So a good tip is to make periodic recordings of your guitar playing. Maybe record yourself playing the song, chords or rhythm you're working on during a practice session. When you listen back after a while (be it a few weeks or months) you will be able to hear how much you have improved. It’s just like taking a snapshot of your current level at that time.
You’re not alone... I even get this way myself sometimes and have to check back on videos I made a couple of years ago to see how much I’ve improved since then. I’ve even found it beneficial to just try and organise in my head what I know now that I didn’t know 6 months ago or a year ago.
For some of you reading this you may still be a beginner and you may still be within your first year of playing guitar. Think back to last year… you hadn’t even picked one up yet and now look at everything you know.
Take care
