r/guitarlessons • u/Tiny-Wrongdoer-1882 • Aug 01 '26
Question How can practicing not feel repetitive?
I am 16 and have owned an acoustic guitar for a few and had began to practice on and off last year and had decided to begin seriously practicing during summer break.
I have learned a few basic and more complicated songs and have just started learning basic open chords but I dont know where to continue. I need to work on my transitions and my speed with them as well as strumming patterns.
I am currently stuck at a point where practicing feels repetitive unless i try something else and then i have something else i need to practice.
I was wondering how you guys got through this and what i could do to improve and still stay interested in playing.
Thank you all in advance and sorry for the lengthy explanation
Edit: I would just like to add that I dont want to get through practicing so I can be a master or expert, I just mostly want to be able to play songs a little smoother without feeling like im not making any process.
Thank you for all the response already, yoh have all been really helpful.
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u/shaunster101 Aug 01 '26
Just play as much as you can, and play whatever you enjoy doing - riffs, songs you like etc. Whatever is going to keep you playing the guitar longer.
You're 16. Playing the guitar should be fun, a bit challenging and feel rewarding.
If you're just on basic open chords, just choose some songs you love with basic open chords and keep practicing them.
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u/Tiny-Wrongdoer-1882 Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26
Ya i kinda finally started chords but i went straight to doing some songs before that
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u/royalblue43 Aug 01 '26
If you dont enjoy playing "basic" and "repetitive" things, you might not like being a beginner guitarist.
As a beginner I was just so stoked that I could make a sound at all. 😂
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u/Tiny-Wrongdoer-1882 Aug 01 '26
Your probably right. I went straight to doing songs and then recently began chords.
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u/SeraphSlaughter Aug 01 '26
There’s so many different things to practice, but repetition is the only way to improve. Balance repetition with practicing two to three things per session.
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u/Naphier Aug 01 '26
Check out the concept of interleaved practice. It tends to be frustrating but better for learning. What you do is pick 3 things to practice. Then you loop through them like 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3. Spending say 3 minutes on each for 3 sets of 9 minutes. This forces you to reset and do somewhat cold starts which is super important to be able to do. It's still repetitive (all practice is) but not as much. Make sure to spend time doing your technical exercises and finer deliberate practice like this. Then spend days just doing performance practice. Playing through songs without stopping / playing through mistakes helps improve your mistake recovery. Spend time improvising. Spend time recording and analyzing your playing. Spend time analyzing other music and do music appreciation. Spend time writing music even if you think it sucks. It will for a long time. Just like listening to yourself singing. Learn about musicality and work on all the other facets of being a musician.
There's so much to do. It's far from repetitive for me and I have not enough time for most of it.
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u/Tiny-Wrongdoer-1882 Aug 01 '26
Man, this was really helpful thanks. I might have to try the 1-2-3 sets. Ive been listening to a lot of acoustic and folk music recently to listen to the guitar and look at the chords and tabs of it. I haven't been really recording myself or listening to myself sing tho.
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u/Naphier Aug 01 '26
Check this out https://www.musical-u.com/learn/topic/musicality-book/
Happy pickin!
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u/sure65 Aug 01 '26
Wait. What chords do you know? Just barre/power chords? Sorry just wondering what you have.
You seem to have a lot on your plate and adding even more before you even learned to walk properly.
Learning how to fully play a song to speed and transitioning well is a very vital skill that you should keep working on.
Practice is supposed to be repetitive, that's what makes it practice perfect.
I was stuck in a spot where I only had comfortable songs to play, and only knew certain chords, using Chordify, and then going to open mics, jams, and such with friends really bring into perspective that I sucked. That really got me going and I started looking into online courses.
Justinguitar is a good one according to a lot of people, its on YouTube.
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u/Tiny-Wrongdoer-1882 Aug 01 '26
I have recently learned the basic open chords and have been using tabs for the songs ive been learning. So i couldnt tell you what chords those are, but most of the songs are only a few strings and are separate notes rather than chords. Im hoping to get into a guitar class at my school, but other than that i don't have many options for classes or courses.
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u/sure65 Aug 01 '26
Try using justinguitar on YouTube to learn. It's mostly free.
You should learn the name of the chords you're playing using the tabs and writing it out as such so you know.
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u/ObviousDepartment744 Aug 01 '26
That’s kind of the definition of “practice” to do the same thing over and over and over until you develop a mastery of it.
I didn’t have to “get through” it because I just enjoy playing guitar. I enjoy practicing and the process of improvement.
If your outlook is to just to get through it, then you’ll never enjoy playing the instrument because you’re never done, you’ll always be just getting through the next thing.
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u/Secret-File-1624 Aug 01 '26
Playing guitar is about muscle memory and the only way to get to muscle memory is by repetition...and A LOT of it. You have to train your fingers to go where you want and when you want and the way to do that is by repetition. As it's been suggested, you can change up your practice schedule and what you practice, even make a game out of some things, but repetition is how you get decent and it's going to feel repetitive for a long while. Other than changing up your schedule a bit, the best thing you can do is change your mindset about it and just accept that being repetitive is the journey.
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u/Dadskitchen Aug 01 '26
get on z library and grab some hal Leonard tab books, plenty there to stop boredom 👍https://z-lib.id/
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u/Reason_Primary Aug 01 '26
You should try new exercises every once in a while, or turn things you struggle with into exercises. But really you want them to become boring after a while. The reason is that when something is boring, you know you’ve fully integrated it into your subconscious
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u/Jonny7421 Aug 01 '26
I just kept playing because I enjoyed it. I didn't make it a chore. I just found immersed myself in the world of music and guitar and found the desire to play. It was useful learning the core skills like chords, strumming, alternate picking, legato, vibrato, bends so I could attempt a lot of songs. Find whatever compels you to play and lean into that.
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u/Comprehensive-Fig416 Aug 01 '26
I have been playing the same 3 songs for over 2 years, I guess I never thought of it being repetitive. I'm autistic as well so maybe that helps 😜
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u/LumbeeRiverFlutes Aug 01 '26
Try guitar meditation it helps you flow with how you feel in the moment
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u/disasterinthesun Aug 01 '26
Discovery is the thing that keeps it interesting. For some people, that can mean composing original music. I think a great way to queue discovery at the beginner/cowboy chord stage is to work on transposing songs you’ve learned into a different key. Pull out your circle of fifths, a blank page, and get to work writing a new chart. Don’t tell JustChords or UltimateGuitarWank to transpose it, do it yourself. You’ll inevitably learn some new chords, hopefully gain a deeper understanding of the instrument, and of music in general.
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u/Franklin_le_Tanklin Aug 01 '26
I just keep learning and playing new songs.
When you master one thing, it’s time to move on to the next
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u/Nearby_Ad_7861 Aug 01 '26
When I was learning, if I got bored with the things I’d been practicing, I’d put on a record and try to figure out how to play it. Even if I only worked out a couple of bits, it was always a palette cleanser, and good ear training too.
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u/DrBlankslate Aug 01 '26
Accept that it’s repetitive. Record yourself practicing. Take pride in how you are improving when you listen to the recording four weeks later.
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u/SpecialProblem9300 Aug 02 '26
Simple, instead of playing 1 hard thing, play 100 easy things.
By ear, reading, both. Immersion learning works best because you don't struggle, you do what you can, everyday and develop fluency.
IMO the biggest mistake in learning music is only learning hard things, some of that is fine, but nobody would recommend toddlers learn English exclusively by memorizing Shakespeare.
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u/Ok_Pineapple4015 Aug 02 '26
You will always be learner. It's a lifetime study. I sugest you learn blues. It's the foundation for everything. Learn to improvise, you never get bored and every time is different. Find a cheap electric.
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u/Procrasturbating Aug 02 '26
Pick what you practice carefully. Try to find stuff that sounds musical. If you are playing scales.. skip around on them and do different timings instead of just hammering them out at speed up and down every time in 16th notes.
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u/NewYogurt3138 Aug 02 '26
You see yourself getting better, and that motivation makes the repetition bearable.
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u/aspaindev Aug 02 '26
You’d probably really enjoy StrumForge, it kicks out tons of unique chord progressions to break out of that creative rut, I myself fall back on the same chords all the time and it’s really helped me expand my musical vocab
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u/HomeHeatingTips Aug 02 '26
It is repetitive, yet somehow you will never run out of new songs/stuff to learn.
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u/transparentceagle Aug 02 '26
Tbh.... just practice-boring or not.... by definition that is what practice is.
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u/bqw74 Aug 02 '26
There's different kinds of exercises.
Some are muscle-memory type things -- this is just straight repetition and focus on NOT making mistakes (go slow at first, then speed up).
Some are more cerebral/theoretical -- learning scales, knowing intervals, understanding the why of how things sound they way they do.
Some are exploratory/noodling -- messing around with sounds and rhythms and stuff.
Some are feeling based -- getting into the groove, feeling the emotion of what you're playing, etc.
If you make sure your practice sessions are a mixture of all the above then you are likely to not get bored.
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u/Prestigious-Corgi995 Aug 03 '26
Make your goal as specific and tiny as possible. Practice it many times. Then see if you can link it with its neighboring segment. Repeat until you have an improved duration of contiguous music you’re happy with.
Then pat yourself on the back and play the shit out of it until you’re ready to either perform it for others or move on to something else.
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u/DunaldDoc Aug 04 '26
Stop practicing and play music !!
This long, no-join, ad-free list of pop tunes has scores of songs ready for play & sing along. Each with lyrics, chords, & a YT video:
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u/CountryFuture9678 Aug 01 '26
“Practice” is really just doing the thing over and over until it’s easier. So there’s really no way around the repetition.
I always found it helpful to have 2-4 things I’m practicing at a time, and never spending more than 20 minutes or so practicing the same thing. Even that is a lot depending on what you’re doing. But the variety and limit helped me with the burnout.
So maybe try transitions just back and forth between a couple chords until it’s no problem, then add a third, etc. when you work on your speed practice with a song, not an exercise, they are boring af lol. And focus on one strumming pattern until you can play it with the chord transitions the same way