5 Fascinating Facts about Becoming a Super Crazy Guitar Maniac

There comes a time in every guitar player's life when the thought of becoming a super crazy guitar maniac is all you want to accomplish.

You have a couple of guitar players and bands that you admire so much. Whenever you hear them play your mood suddenly changes and you are left with nothing short of an amazing experience.

Sometimes you stand in front of the mirror. Other times you are lost in thought and all you think about is seeing yourself play like them. You imagine yourself strumming chords exactly the way they do it. You imagine yourself playing solos as fluently and confidently as they do. You imagine yourself playing wicked riffs and licks exactly how they do it.

But all of that are just imaginations, right? They are just things you dream about and hope that someday you get to achieve them.

So, the question is how? How do you make your dreams and imaginations a reality?

Well I have a few tricks up my sleeve. It is not going to be easy but it is possible. Here are 5 fascinating facts that you should know about becoming a super crazy guitar maniac.

1. You must play it for 360 days a year
The road to becoming a maniac at anything has never been smooth and the guitar is not an exception. If you want to become extremely good and well respected you have to play your guitar for nothing less than 360 days in a year and you have to do it every year.

We have 365 days in a year. You can use the remaining 5 days to rest your fingers and muscles. And who says it is going to be easy? It is not going to be easy at all but it is what you have to do to be who you want to be. So I say suck it up. No excuses.

2. You must be extremely curious
You know what? I want you to think back to when you were a kid.

What happened then? Weren't you always curious to know the reason behind everything even though you didn't always have the guts to speak out? Weren't you always curious to know how something came about?

You see, if you want to get to that prestigious guitar player status you need to act like a kid. You need to act as if you don't know anything. You need to always be curious to want to know the reason behind everything. You need to always be curious to want to know how something is being done.

For instance if you hear anything that sounds off the hook and you don't know how to play it, you need to find out how it is being done and make sure that you know how to do it.

Because here is the thing: curiosity is very important. It is what will help you develop into a unique player and most definitely help you to better your skills.

I want you to always remember one thing: no one is an island. You will always need the help of others to get to your goal. All you just have to do is ask and humble yourself and you will get what you want.

3. You must not be full of yourself
Even The Bible says it. "Pride goeth before a fall." You cannot be proud and then expect to be the guitarist that you want to be. It is just not possible.

Let me make something very clear: the day you think you have arrived just because you have mastered a set of skills on the guitar is the day you have started failing.

Even after you must have reached a very advanced stage in your guitar playing, there are still a lot of things for you to learn. To prove that I am right go and ask any guitar god or goddess. They will tell you that when it comes to playing the guitar you are always improving. There is no such thing as “I have arrived.” And the day you think you have is the day you fall into the pit of people who are close to their dreams but somehow can’t achieve it.

So don’t be full of yourself. You can show off your skills but always be ready to learn from someone who knows something that you don’t. Even if you are 100 times better than that person.

4. You must mask your mistakes not
Have you ever noticed something? When guitar masters play they hardly make any mistake. They play so easily and fluently that your head starts to swell and then you begin to think that playing the guitar is not so hard after all.

But do you know how they did it? Here’s how. They don’t mask their mistakes when they are practicing. They make mistakes quite all right but they don’t hide them in any way. That is how they have been able to get to that point where they hardly make mistakes.

So here’s my advice to you: if you want to play flawlessly just like the way guitar masters do, don’t hide your mistakes. Don’t use any amplifier, distortion, reverb or special effect.

Just play your guitar the way it is but most importantly correct your mistakes as you go. There is no sense in making a mistake without correcting it and expecting to get a different result. It just can never happen.

5. Learning to play drums will help you a lot
In an interview with guitar goddess and pop songstress, Kaki King gave out a tip that could help all guitar players to move to the next level. The tip is to learn how to play drums.

Are you surprised? Don't be. Because that was exactly how I felt until I came to really think about it.

The whole idea is that when you learn how to play drums, you get to do something with one hand and at the same time do something completely different with another hand and still make sense out of what you are doing.

Doesn't that kind of sound like what you are aiming to do with the guitar?

Yes it does. On the guitar your aim is to use one hand to hold down the strings on the fretboard while you use the other hand to strike or pick on the strings at the same time and still make sense to the world.

So what is the point? The point is that by learning how to play drums you are learning how to discipline and control your hands. You are learning how to achieve absolute hand independence. And that is a very important skill that you need to have if you want to be a master of the guitar.

Try it. Start learning how to play drums and then use what you learn when playing the guitar. You will achieve amazing results I can promise you that.

About the Author: Samuel Lab is the founder of One Hour Acoustic Players. If you would like to learn more about what it really takes to become an outstanding acoustic guitar player, subscribe to his blog by sending an email to onehouracousticplayers-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Get ready for some serious action

I mean it. I want you to get ready for some serious action. I want you to get ready to become the best guitarist that you can be. I want you to get ready to become a guitarist that people want to play for them. Not because someone somewhere said that you are good but because they saw you play and they really loved how you played.

I will be sending out my first set of blog posts very soon, and I want you to watch out for them. They will be really good, I promise. So stay tuned.

Signing off,

Samuel Lab