Lauren Bateman explains the difference between merely playing songs and deliberately practicing guitar techniques. She advises students to keep playing songs for fun but to set focused practice goals (e.g., faster chord changes, finger dexterity exercises, metronome work for timing, specific strumming patterns) to improve skill and make playing songs better.
Are you playing your guitar or are you practicing your guitar? There's a huge difference between just playing your guitar or just playing through a song versus actually practicing things that will make you better. So many students get in the habit of just playing songs over and over again, and there's nothing wrong with songs. That's the fun part of guitar. Please keep playing the songs, but really focus on the specific techniques that are going to make you better. Like maybe chord changes. Maybe your chord changes are slow and you really need to focus in on changing the chords much quicker. Maybe you have to work on a finger dexterity exercise to get those fingers moving. Maybe your timing is not the greatest and you need to work with the metronome and really focus in on learning a specific strumming pattern in time. Those are the things that really help you get to the next level and make playing songs so much better. So when you're practicing the guitar, make sure you're practicing to get better. And then when you're playing the guitar, have fun and play some songs.
