What has had the biggest positive impact on your playing?

streethawk

Learning songs by ear from LP's/Singles. 

Tab books.

The dawn of the internet!

Putting shitloads of practice in (those days are long gone and boy does it show).

And to battle the self-loathing that led to me quit a few times, a good friend and awesome guitarist told me: "don't waste time trying to perfectly nail a certain guitarist's licks - we're all better at one thing than another, he'd probably struggle to nail one of your riffs".

I chose to believe him. 

:P

oldBlueWolf

Realising that I didn't have to know everything and that I could make a reasonably nice noise out of a guitar with the skills ( ahem ) that I do have.

TTony

ChristophEar said:

What is the one thing which has improved your playing the most?

1.  Getting a new wife.
Wife #1 was not very guitar-friendly.  Or fun-friendly.  Or me-friendly (apart from the money, naturally) after a while.  Did the trade-in deal (which cost me plenty but worth every penny), and wife #2 is far more guitar/fun/me friendly.  And that's 12 years later ...

2.  Getting something I could use to play-along to stuff with.
Currently that's an iRig device into my iPad, some comfortable headphones and a variety of apps.  So, I can pick up a guitar and play for my amusement, or listen/play stuff to learn, all without annoying the rest of the room/house/street.  Seems to work for all.

3.  Guitar Pro.
After a long time of not playing (see point #1), I found it hard to listen to something and work it out sufficiently well to learn it.  Luckily, the Internet happened during my exile period, and apps like Guitar Pro now make it so easy to get the basics.

4.  Playing with others.
As others here have said, there's no substitute for playing with a drummist and bassist.  We only play for our own amusement (so far), but it's far more fun than playing along to backing tracks or whatever ...

 

Sorry, not quite "the one thing"!

tonyrath

Finding a teacher 3 years ago who was so much better than me and who completely rebuilt my playing. skills in fingerstyle. Not pleasant for the ego but worth it.  Focussed intensive practice works.  I gig six days a week - its called teaching - you better be good, especially as they can see the best on Youtube any time 

siremoon

Another vote for playing with others. 

It was a shock the first time because it was immediately obvious that I wasn't as good as I'd foolishly imagined I was but having got over that it's been an enormous benefit.

Jaycee

For me it was a book.  "The Principles of Correct Practice for guitar"  by Jamie Andreas http://www.guitarprinciples.com/

Phil_aka_Pip

• jamming, especially live in front of an audience
• the practice discipline imposed by the need to keep up with a course at The Guitar Institute
• the neatly structured approach to music theory as delivered by the above course

ChristophEar

Jaycee said:

For me it was a book.  "The Principles of Correct Practice for guitar"  by Jamie Andreas http://www.guitarprinciples.com/

Any particular insights you took away from it?

mike_l

Also, using a decent sounding amp and distortion helped me a lot. Especially with muting unplayed strings, and pick hand control (ie not hitting unplayed strings).

Also I like to practice things with stupid amounts of gain (Boss Mega Distortion) once I've got my fingers around what I'm trying to learn. This gives (almost, not exactly) a "live" situation of having to control things, Ie when volume goes up, gain goes down, so when volume goes down (Ie at home) the gain goes up for a more "live situation" setting (ok badly explained). Keeping things sounding cleanly played with that amount of distortion is hard, and does help (at least helps me)with controlling the guitar/amp.

ArchtopDave

Having weekly lessons, and trying to keep practicing on a regular basis.

digitalkettle

Learning a bit of classical.

littlegreenman

The jam tracks we used to make/ play over on MR, which led me to the Coconut Blues Club monthly challenges on Soundclick. Nothing like a deadline to sharpen the mind, and getting used to nailing things first time to save spending days on end re-recording looking for a "perfect" take that's unlikely to magically appear.

vertigo88

I'd agree with the gigging and playing with other people comments... The first time people started dancing to the music I was playing has probably had the biggest positive impact on my playing so far.

bertie

nothing,  I was born amazing

:-\"

mike_l

bertie said:

nothing,  I was born amazing

:-\"

modest as ever Bertie......... ;-)

dindude

I was definately a more rounded player when I was gigging (knowing how to play some bloody songs for one) so would definately agree with this.

Other than that, in the last three years; going up a string gauge, lowering the gain, rasing the action a little, has given me a far greater appreciation of use of dynamics and touch than I ever gave credit for.

Blueingreen

Finally getting my finger out of my backside and making the effort to learn to read notation to a decent standard.  

mike_l

@Blueingreen, when I was taking lessons I was surprised at how low the RGT grade 8 standard was. Admittedly this was a few years ago, but it wasn't anything passed the 5th fret, and only seemed to be either C major or G major. It might have just been what was put in front of me, but that was what it looked like to me.

I wish I'd learned this skill to a higher level than I have.

jaygtr

Taking a guitar to work and leaving it there.

An extra 45 mins of playing per day and no fannying about with pedals etc, just pure practice.
I've improved more in the past 4 years than I did in the previous 20.

Gigging is good but in a different way

Blueingreen

Mike I'm self taught so don't know much about what's required for the grades.  I'm a bit surprised that Grade 8 is as basic as you say.  Maybe I should take a course!

I worked through the first two Leavitt Modern Method books and Melodic Rhythms for Guitar and that gave me a good basic foundation.  It could be boring at times especially early on but I managed to force myself along. From there it's down to regular practice, which I don't have a problem with because it's now usually the quickest and most natural way for me to learn new material.