I've been playing guitar for about a year now and I feel as if I've hit a huge musical wall...

I've been playing guitar for about a year now and I feel as if I've hit a huge musical wall. I feel as if I'm not progressing or getting anywhere! What can I do to become better at guitar or what should I be doing to improve? I really don't know and I can't seem to find an answer anywhere!

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Be dedicated, utilize knowledge, and apply yourself; this will gain you progress.

Pick something you're not as good at, and work on it, it's very simple.

Thanks dude I really appreciate that, any other specifics I could be doing to improve?

If you havnt learn classical guitar and sheet music

Buy an expensive amp and a shit ton of pedals.

Is there any other theory related things I could do to also improve my playing ability?

Get a formal education through a private instructor. You will want the criticism from an outside perspective and going through all the basics thoroughly.

youtube.com/watch?v=pQ5XRfKccoo

Learn shapes

Lame
Let the music move you to where you want to go

Learn right hand techniques and practice vibrato bars until you can vibrato chords.

Playing different styles of music helps a lot. Try something that you don't usually play.

Learn different styles of playing finger picking, alternate thumb picking, clawhammer, flamenco etc

No, don't listen to this. You need to understand how music works if you want to play it properly.

Real musicians laugh at guitarists. If you go to college for music its classical or jazz.
Everything else is pretty much pop music and much easier to perform and understand.

It'd be helpful to know what level your currently at.

I would get some lessons or just try to find songs you haven't learned and learn then... I consider myself at I guess an intermediate level cause of my ear learning skills but I still want to get some lessons so I can use my wah pedal better and tune my new floating bridge guitar properly

Look up Steve Vai's Guitar Workout. Really good technical exercises that'll get you floating all over the neck.

download Guitar Pro 5 (released in 2007) and a bunch of .gp5 files and you'll improve before long

10 year old program but it's still the best

vocaroo/clyp something for us.

You don't really have to learn much of the theory behind it unless you want to compose music (even then it;s not a must but it helps when you get stuck in the process)

to use a wah pedal all you need is groove.

Most guitar players dont even know how to shift position properly.

You'll never learn anything with out seeing what you are actually doing.

If you are learning because you want to play for fun, get lessons or make friends with someone that is trained. You will hit a brick wall several times and without any criticism or guidance, you will stay in a rut for a very long time.

If you are learning because you want to start a band and make some money, just fucking quit now. You will not make money at all unless you are a damn good cover band or you're blowing a record execs dick better than his regular hooker. Making money in the music business is virtually non-existent.

Bottom line, don't pick up a guitar because you think you will be a rock star someday, those days are long gone.

this OP

some people learn by ear, some need to dig deep into the theories to progress...
i just listened to songs i loved and tried to play along. just challenge yourself.
if you can play metallica, try children of bodom next.

This guy knows

I'm using a boss dynamic wah instead of a foot pedal it's an auto wah pedal so far I like it but I'd like to go over it with a teacher cause im not really good with it at all

Keep playing through the wall. Try a genre you aren't used to. Come to Sup Forums for all musical advice. Stick headstock in anus.

This is a standard for any classical guitarist.
youtube.com/watch?v=06GVrYP6NKs

what the hell?
auto wah... what the hell?
like... what the hell?

lol, autowah's are fucking crap

What do you mean by "seeing what are you doing" or "learn anything'? Too general

CAGED system, major scales and modes

practice with a metronome and count your beats and subdivions, write yourself subdivision patterns and changes to practice

if you can do that on sheet music all the better

to me, something like this would never be fun to play. if i was into music like this, i would play the piano instead.

I had a dunlop cry baby but it was defective so I went with the boss im not regretting it I just need to learn how to use it better

"Real" musicians? Jazz is literally learning music theory, and then playing things that sound shitty together because that's somehow better?

Nobody has written classical music better than Mozart, Beethoven, etc. in what, nearly 200 years?

Sounds like it's an art form that hasn't evolved much if it reached it's pinnacle then.

Making music with other people helps A LOT. I play bass now for over 10 years and I always feel like I get the most value out of jam sessions with other people/friends. That doesn't mean now that you have to form a band or shit like that. Just sit down with other people that are equally interested in music and try to have fun. When you listen to what other people play, and try to "find the groove together" you learn a lot.
Proper education also helps, but not as much, IMO. I took lessons for 3 years at the beginning of my "career" to learn the basics, but if you don't keep learning and practising that kind of shit you'll soon forget all the theory.

Also, what have you done so far? "How" do you play your instrument? Do you sit down and play what comes to mind or do you play along to songs you like?
Playing stuff other people have written isn't the greatest way to improve your playing, it helps getting to know your instrument though. Especially when it comes to guitars and stuff like that. Personally I'm not a great fan of covering songs and just playing along to the music you like, because you limit yourself. You listen to that music anyway, so why play along to that shit? Always try to expand your bondaries and try to familiarise yourself with types/genres of music you don't know a lot about. That'll help too.

Most guitar players play easily, they think of chord and scale shapes instead of the notes themselves and ditch efforts to learn technique when guitar is very technical.

Because playing more than 1 role on 1 instrument is hard. Piano makes it easy mode.

Guitar didnt become a respected instrument til late 1800s and before that it was basically considered a kazoo which is what most people treat it as today.

>Proper education also helps, but not as much, IMO.
You know how else you could get what you get out of jam sessions with other people?
A proper education.

Changing style helped me a lot, now I play a mix of classical/japanese/southern/metal... may not be the best option, but it sure helps

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play with different tunings
experiment with delays and reverb
capo and play some songs ( sound better for some reason)
play along to jam tracks
try new picking styles
mess around with harmonics

How? I don't see how this statement makes sense. At least not from my experience. When I took lessons, I never played together with my instructor. We would always play riffs from a fucking book, which was kinda boring and lame, but it helped me learn reading notes and shit. Jamming with other people however is a completely different experience (again, at least in my experience), since you don't play songs reading from a sheet or what ever. In my case it was always like, the guitar guy would play a riff and I would try to find a baseline to that riff. And that would turn into a jam. That has nothing to do with proper education. But like I said, that's just my opinon.

Well, the problem of OP is playing or composing? Because just playing is pure muscle memory - the less you think about it the better you are.

find other musicians and do drugs with them

Sibelius, Schönberg, Rachmaninoff... There are many.

>When I took lessons, I never played together with my instructor.
I said "proper."

You aren't wrong. I can't speak for other instruments, but guitar is entirely muscle memory.
Sheet music is beautiful though. You can play pieces you never heard before.

Better? Get fucked.

No shit, try to get your hands on a lyre harp. I haven't the slightest fucking clue why but I picked one up for Halloween a few years back for a bullshit toga party since I can play guitar, and after fucking about with it I decided to actually learn how to play the thing. Long story incredibly short, when I picked my guitar back up it seemed nicer, more comfortable even. Idk other than that, but work will almost always beget progress, so play guitar to get better at guitar. Weed and sex will help just about any situation too.

Get a copy of Rocksmith. It's available for PC, PS4, and XBox1. It'll run you 60 bucks, but you'll get past that plateau quickly.

Dude, I took my lessons at a conservatory. My teacher played as a supporting act for Joe fucking Cocker. He knew what he was talking about. Just because my lessons were different to yours (implying you even took some in your life), doesn't mean they were not "proper". Go fuck a cactus.

Learn modes, when you can't think of what to do for practice, just practice modes and scales. do single-string improv over songs to build intuition about modal transitions/theory.

Most importantly, you have to want it enough that these things won't make you quit. I hid the same wall, I decided I was happy with where I was skill-wise because I was playing for myself only. Accept the fact that if you're playing for fun, you WILL hit a point where the effort isn't worth it, and it isn't fun anymore. Stop when you reach that point. If you're trying to be a professional and make a career out of it, power through no matter what.

headstock in pooper

Matter of taste naturally but I think it would be strange, if those old composers would remain the best. Give them a listen:
youtu.be/16G0OUMvL3A
youtu.be/kpTXZDVe5Wg
youtu.be/dbbtmskCRUY