Motivation

i started playing at 26, with the simple goal of being able to strum to some songs on my cd player. That came quickly so my goal became bar chords. they were so hard for me so when i cracked them i thought "Hell, with enough practice i can do anything".

i then put the bar a lot higher and aimed to play my favourite songs no matter how hard. now, at 29, i am still an intermediate at best, but i gig every week with a locally sucessful pub band (see band website below) and practice an hour a day religously.

what keeps me motivated is not the player i am now, but the thought of the player i will be in 10 years. i always see improvement, not a month goes by without me being significantly better than i was and i just love the feeling that i am improving (and thats at anything - not just guitar).

also, this forum is great motivator. if i need help, i know one of the guys here will eventually come up with the answer i need - this site stops me feeling lost.

what keeps me motivated is not the player i am now, but the thought of the player i will be in 10 years. i always see improvement, not a month goes by without me being significantly better than i was and i just love the feeling that i am improving (and thats at anything - not just guitar).

also, this forum is great motivator. if i need help, i know one of the guys here will eventually come up with the answer i need - this site stops me feeling lost.

Pretty close for me too. I tried a few times in the past to learn, but I really wasn't as devoted as I thought I'd be. Now, 20 years later I am at it again. I took lessons from January to August of this year but I decided to go it alone for a little while. I try to practice/play almost every day. So, my motivation? Being able to play in front of and for people, being the best at playing that I can, learning new things. The guys here are great motivation. I want to play like I imagine they do. :wink:

The best motivation is your first public performance - that first round of applause is instantly addictive and it doesn't damage you like little packets of white powder.

A :-)

Go and spend more than you want on another guitar. Be sure to order a guitar stand with it.

Place new guitar in a place you spend a lot of time. (next to the TV is a great place)

Now see if you can go 3 months without playing it :D .

Other than that, I'm always trying to learn new songs. It keeps things interesting and provides a lots of challenges with every new chord progression and strum patterns.

Songs I'm currently working on:

Coldplay
Fix you
Yellow

Foo Fighters
Best of you (lots of barre chords!!)

Hoobastank
The Reason (lots of barre chords!!)

I can imagine that applause can be addictive, i'd love to be good enough to gig. i'll try and keep that thought in my mind.

I'd like to keep my guitar within easy reach, but with a 2 year old running around, my guitar would be at risk! :lol:

Well, just put the guitar within reach and the two year old in the case. :twisted:

after years and years of playing I can say for sure now....my biggest motivator is playing with other people. the thrill of hearing other instruments filling that awful silence when I play alone. as a beginner I didn't like all the emptiness between my notes or chords. so I began to sing along with playing.
soon after starting I discovered a guy my age down the street. he was a drummer. the two of us played songs and then I'd make space for his drum solo. we had one every song.
reading on this forum, there are so many of you learning and playing solo. I feel so fortunate having had a jam mate from the start.
I like the idea of having your guitar hanging around out of it's case. I have a ukulele sitting out on the TV watching couch. every commercial I hit Mute on the remote and grab the uke. by playing and knowing the four strings the fretboard on my strat is making more sense. figuring stuff out, like two note harmonic runs, has become a motivator. so I guess the reward of learning is another motivation.
lastly, joining a band or three some or computer recording would be excellent motivation.

you know, playing guitar is sometimes like a love hate relationship.
so when I have one of those runs of feeling bad about my playing and hate the guitar. I know that it is missing me more.
and when you least expect it the guitar will having you feeling and playing something you thought you could never do.
that's the ultimate reward. the ultimate motivator; to feel that again.

Well, just put the guitar within reach and the two year old in the case. :twisted:

:lol:

Well, just put the guitar within reach and the two year old in the case. :twisted:

See, this is where I went wrong too. If I'd put the first Mrs Green in the case and locked it my axe skills would be soooooooo good now.

A :-)

Place new guitar in a place you spend a lot of time. (next to the TV is a great place)

Qft (quoted for truth)!

My electric is in its stand in the bedroom, where my computer desk and books are (the house is tiny :| ). I take my sheets out and set up. I may not even plug in. If I want to use one of the acoustics (6 or 12 string), I get them from the dining room where they are in their stands. I can't go far in the house without running into a guitar. :D

Well, just put the guitar within reach and the two year old in the case. :twisted:

See, this is where I went wrong too. If I'd put the first Mrs Green in the case and locked it my axe skills would be soooooooo good now.

A :-)

Surely you would have been a classical maestro then !

This is a great topic - I've been through the same stages, played lots for months, then stopped for years, in a repeating pattern. Last year I decided to have one more serious go and promised myself to persist - and so far it's been great. I still have periods when I don't play all week, and I feel really guilty. Unfortunately with work and family, it's often difficult to find time to play - not only time, but also the right mood that's conducive to playing and learning. Quite often I get up early in the morning before the kids wake up and play for 30mins, and I fell much better for it for the rest of the day.

Now my motivation is to slowly turn into a decent player (let's say within the next 2 years), and I hope to find a few like-minded older beginners like me to play with. And yes, I still dream about performing in front of an audience one day, and I can feel it inside me that it will happen :-)

I always seem to have an excuse, the usual one, not enough time in the day. There are so many things i'd love to do, but no time to do them. i might practice every day for a week and then not pick up my guitar for another 3 months. So how do guys keep yourselves motivated?

Now THAT struck a resounding chord! :lol:

Me, too. Boredom seems to be the mud I get to mire in. But as soon as I come up on a nice, catchy, unique chord run...I go to another place. So WHAT inspires that??? Life. If I find things exciting...so's my music...and my motivation. Listen to Supertramp's "Long Way Home".

Cat

Maybe I'm different, but I have always been motivated to play since I started at age 18. Now I am 54, so it's been 36 years, and I have played almost every single day since I started. Sometimes if I'm busy I only play for 20-30 minutes a day, but most days I will spend at least 2-3 hours playing. I often play while I watch TV. May sound like a bad habit, but that's what I do.

You would think with all the practice I've done that I should be able to play like the greats, but that is not true at all. :roll:
I have discovered in the last 5 years or so that the quality of your practice is more important than quantity. I mean, you can noodle for hours, and that is beneficial to a degree, but if you learn a scale, the notes of the scale and the intervals, how they relate to a chord progression, that is far more useful than noodling around. So I try to study a bit more than I used to. I spend a lot of time trying to improve technique. I will strum a simple song over and over trying to get it perfect, the ears don't lie.

I dunno, there is so much to learn, and a person can always improve, so I'm never bored with playing. :D