improvement and consistency???

[onetenpercent]

hey i was wondering who could help me out cause this is really buggin me. First off improvement, for some reason i have stopped improving with guitar, i have been playing for two years, (about 6 months kindve seriously), and i went from better to better to better and so on throughout the two years, but now i have just stopped improving these past 3ish months, no matter what i practise or do i cant seem to get any better, and it is really pissing me off. ahaah. i was really getting into guitar and excited how i was improving so quickly untill i hit this brick wall. anyone have any experience with this, or got any tips?

secondly im not very consistent when i play guitar, sometimes i can do everything so cleanly and precise and others not so much. I can be feeling perfectly good and play shitty, and be hungover, tired and sick and play my best. very confused. i think the problem could be i dont warm up. Is this a effect of not warming up before i play? if so, does anyone know some good warmups i can do before playing?

thanks a bunch
peace

 

[Yaow!]

same thing happened to me.
and yes, warmup helped alot, i developed a couple of alternate picking, string skipping, sweep and tapping exercises, and i just do each one of those at different tempos, going gradually higher and higher, i dont do this all the time, although i try too. but for me, whenever i do this to warmup, my playing is always cleaner, tighter and more consistent.

 

[ShivaLeadGuitarest]

ALWAYS have a slow part in your practice sessions and warm ups. especially for sweeping, do it slow and practice on muting. and if you really want a boring exercise, then do that with a metronome. it feels so lame, but it helps you so much. like Yaow said, develop your own exercises and find different ways to challenge your figners.

My current block is eight figner tapping. i am running all my hand warm ups with my right hand as well, concentrating on muting to keep everything clean. so as soon as you think as you have something, keep practicing and find something new then gradually switch your focus. But make sure you at least warm up or practice everything you know once in a session. that way you will never loose it. just remember a practitioner practices somehting till he gets it right, a proffessional practices until he cant get it wrong.

checklist:
metronome
practice slow
muting
find new exercises

 

[HvM]

For clean consistent playing:
1 - Measure your Top Clean Speed with a specific lick or exercise. By clean, I mean without any mistake;
2 - Start practicing that lick or exercise with a metronome at 50% your top clean speed ;
3 - Practice a few sessions, it depends on how you learn things..can be quick or slow, but practice about 5 to 10 sessions, to get it flowing without any errors or mistakes.
4 - Than increase your metronome about 5 bps, and practice that for about 5 or more (or less) sessions ;
5 - Pay attention to how many sessions is required for you to feel confortable with the new speed and increase the speed 5bps again when you're confortable - continue to do that until you reach your top clean speed;
6 - Measure your Top Clean Speed again (it should be higher now). Run through the same practicing sessions routine again, until you reach the desired playing speed.

NOTE: For time to time, in a practice session, play the lick or exercise as fast as you can, even if it is played with errors...this will estimulate your brain and muscles, so they learn that, faster is possible. After this kind of session always return to your current practice "program" sessions at the session you left over.


About shitty days...that's a natural psicological (i think...) human characteristic...It depends on your mood in that day.
It's natural thing! you just have to deal with it...if the playing is shitty as hell...just don't play that day, do something else, study music theory or listen to music, or just don't do anything music related.
Trying to work around it will just get you into in a bad mood and you can start feeling frustrated and loose interest on the intrument...avoid doing this...a better day will come.

Blocks will eventually happen, since the body needs to rest for time to time...you can't keep on learning at the same pace forever without stopping...your body will eventually stop responding/learning like it used to...it will last some time, because it needs to rest...after that it will eventually "return to it's normal state".
This is also natural, you just have to keep up with learning new things and perfecting the old ones. You can also start learning some other things not related to your playing style, just to rest from what you usually do...give your body a brake, and return to it later.


Cheers,
Hugo