How You Can Become AMAZING At Guitar By Improving ONE PERCENT A Day
When somebody starts playing guitar, their first question always seems to be: "how much time will it take me to become good at this?"
And, of course, it's impossible to answer because:
We need to define what you mean by "good" (Strumming campfire songs? Playing Van Halen solos? One of these goals takes quite more than the other...)
It depends on how much you practice per day... and it's not just "how much time!"
Are you self-taught, or are you
smartenlisting the help of somebody who can guide you and can save you years? We call these people "teachers" (though we do much more than teaching...)
... it is much better instead to ask the following questions:
How much better should you be getting at guitar every day?
Should you be making noticeable improvements every day?
Should you be discouraged by a lack of noticeable progress?
On the last question: well, don’t be. It is really not important if you notice the change.
I mean, suppose you are able to play a lick at 100 BPM (beats per minute). And you practice for a couple of hours, and now you can play it at 101 BPM.
That's barely noticeable (you really have to pay attention to see it!), and indeed, it may look/feel like you have not improved at all.
If this happened for a few days in a row, you could become discouraged, maybe even frustrated. you could snap the guitar in two and ragequit and say that's because you have no talent and who cares about playing guitar anyway.
So let me tell you one "secret". A 1% improvement in a day is massive (indeed, most people can not do that... as you will see in the video below)
The only thing you need to do is to keep improving.
In the video below, I will show you how much faster you are going to be if you improve by just 1% per day for 1 year. Unless you do the math, you would not believe it. It's unreasonable that's what it is:
Improving is great and all, but what should you be improving at? After all, speed is not everything.
A great thing to work on (that many people neglect) is knowing the notes all over your fretboard. For many, this seems impossible, but there's a way that you can learn your whole fretboard with just five minutes a day.
To learn how, check out my free eBook on learning the notes on your fretboard
Video Transcription
Hello internet, so nice to see you. Sometimes I go I made a video on how to learn the notes on the fretboard. And they got these interesting comments.
Five minutes a day lol for two years maybe laughing out loud.
Lol and both yeah, I can see how you think it's gonna take two years to learn and notes on your fretboard. But it's not true, it's gonna take much less. And I'm gonna show you exactly why. Okay, people always overestimate what they can do in a week.
And they always underestimate what they can do in a few months of practice. What do I mean with that? Suppose I'm teaching you how to find the notes on the fretboard like I did in that video. And incidentally, if you've seen that video, I also have now a much more detailed ebook and video that you can get on the link at the top right.
And if you want to learn it on your fretboard, that will speed up the process a lot. Let me tell you speed up the process a lot, that even if you don't watch original video, let me say I say I'm teaching you how to do that. Okay, what's going to happen in your mind, the vast majority of people are gonna look at that.
And they're gonna be either one of those, like, the person that wrote this comment like this is never going to happen is going to take too long. And people are gonna think, Oh, this is going to happen. It's going to take a short time, like a week, maybe both those people are wrong. Sorry. It's gonna take an intermediate time.
That's the thing, not two years, okay, but definitely not one week either for a permanent learning. And that's the thing. People again, always overestimate what they can do in a short time and underestimate what they can do in a long amount of longer amount of time. Okay, because you have a very bad intuition on how improvement happens.
So let me show you. Okay, let's say that you have something at your learning could be the notes on the fretboard. Or it could be how fast you are picking a specific lick, okay, it could be our fastest way to switching between chords or anything, anything that you can give it a more or less numerical value on it.
Okay, let's say how fast you find those notes on the fretboard. Okay? And let's say that you practice five minutes today, five minutes, and you get 1 percent better at that, okay? 1 percent It's a very little improvement, very small improvement, but it is an improvement. Okay, just imagine, take your metronome and put it at 100 BPM, and play something and then put it at 101 BPM, and play the same thing, you probably don't even feel the difference.
That's the improvement of 1 percent super small, barely perceptible indeed, sometimes you practice and you don't even notice they're getting better. Okay. And you're improving five I sorry, 1 percent. Today, by practicing five minutes. Tomorrow, you practice again, and you improve another 1 percent and the after you practice again, and you improve another 1 percent At the end of the week you improve 7 percent. Give or take is not a lot.
Okay? So without doing the calculation completely by intuition. How much have you improved in a year? Think about your answer right now. We can find out a it's simple math. If you know the math, I'm going to do it for you. So an improvement on 1 percent. Okay, no improvement. It's one that's where you are right now. Okay, improvement the 1 percent.
It's 1.01. Okay, and to see what happens after a year, you have to multiply this number by itself by itself by itself by itself 365 times or you just need to simply raise it. And 360/5 power. You all have calculators you hold ever, ever ever smartphone there are scientific calculators in it, you can do this calculation. Again, just without any calculation.
Just imagine how big is this this number? Okay, the real number is this 37 point 78 You are 37 times faster. If you took up lick. If you could play at 100 BPM, and you were ever able to keep improving 1 percent every day. By the end of the year, assuming you could keep the rate of improvement.
You will be playing the same league at 3700 BPM 3778 BPM which is inhuman I don't think any guitar player was at faster. Rate too fast, way too fast to hear. Okay, of course you cannot sustain this kind of improvements for that specific thing. You can ask them when they're gonna hit a wall.
My point is that you weren't expecting this number, right? If we're fixing something like two or three now, we're expecting something like four maybe not 37 Okay, that's the good news. A lead to improvement every day makes you incredibly faster. If today it takes 10 seconds for you to find a note on the fretboard 10 seconds.
Okay, 10 seconds is can you find that E note? Well, let me calculate how much I don't know, maybe I can find any No. Mistake, okay? That's 10 seconds. It's a long time. And you improve these by 1 percent Every day, so every day. So the from the first day, the second day, it doesn't take 10 seconds, it take nine seconds and point 90 seconds of a second.
Okay, so imperceptible, a 10th of a second is nearly imperceptible, okay. And you keep improving at a trade, by the end of the year, it's gonna take less than a third of a second to find a note. And that's not a third of a second, it's a pretty good result, starting from 10 seconds, okay, you're probably gonna go from one person to implemented very small, very small, you can probably improve faster than that even in five minutes, and just saying, it gets way faster. Okay, these are the good news.
But there are the bad news too. Because the beauty and the horror of the thing is that it worsens in reverse, what if every day you get 1 percent? Worse? And you're not going to notice that now? Because what if every day you go down 1 percent, then you're only 99 percent on what you were you went the day before?
What's going to happen in a year, if you get worse, the amount of time if amount of percent every day, okay? Well, you don't want to know it. But I'm gonna tell you anyway, the numbers are the number is these two. This is 2 percent. So if at the beginning of the year, you could play a lick at 100 BPM, but you don't practice your skill degrade, and every day you lose the imperceptible amount of 1 percent.
By the end of the year, you can play to two BPM and a half, which is one beat of 25 segments. Okay? So it's impossibly slow. My point is this. A small improvement makes you better more than you expected, as long as you stick with it, as long as you keep practicing. And this is true over all the board.
Okay, this is true for technical stuff for speed stuff for a versatility stuff. But also, it's true for theory, every if every day, you're 1 percent better in your theory, you know your course better, you can find your chords by the you know, you get 1 percent better at putting together chords and making your progression better, whatever 1 percent means, okay, but your songs are 1 percent more beautiful every day, okay?
By the end of the year, you might not be a master, but you got a very, very good way toward becoming a master. But if you get worse every day, you are headed for a ditch man. Okay, it's not going to end well. This means that that's why you have to practice every day. And this why consistency, beat everything else.
It doesn't matter. But it doesn't matter a little bit. But it doesn't matter really how much you improve every day. And if occasionally you do a six hour of practicing, what matters is what you how much improve everyday consistently. So, five minutes a day of learning the notes or anything else may not seem enough to you and you will not seem enough in a week.
But give it a couple of months and you're going to be good. Give it a year. And it's not going to be a problem anymore. You live in wonder why last year you thought it was so hard, because now you're 37 point 78 nearly 38 times better at that. Okay, of course, the best moment to start learning. All this stuff was one year ago.
Okay, so now today you will be better. Okay? But if you didn't start one year ago, the second best time is right now to want to learn your notes, get the ebook and video on the top with the link at the top right.
You want to learn anything else? Start practicing today. Practice a little bit. And if you don't see an improvement every day, don't worry and implement a 1 percent it's invisible. Keep practicing, you're getting better these trust the process and you're going to become a master at whatever you do on the guitar. And with this I leave you this is Tommaso Zillio of MusicTheoryForGuitar.com, and until next time, enjoy.