3 Unconventional Ways to Get Better at Guitar!

Hi, guys. Welcome to my channel. My name is Jaden and And I am here to help you guys along your musical and guitar journey, as well as to document my own journey and experience. Lately, I felt myself being a bit of a rut creatively. Just haven't been able to get things going. Haven't felt like I've been practicing enough. So this video is serving as a bit of a first step to me, for me to get back into the flow of things. And I thought maybe would be a great time for me to share some unconventional ways that I use to get better at guitar. Let's get right into it. So the first thing is something I'm really surprised I haven't heard more people talk about, and that is to have a portable guitar setup. Okay, so here is my portable setup, and this has been huge for my guitar journey. So the first thing that you're going to need is a headphone amp. And basically what? A headphone amp is something. Something that you can plug into your guitar. And it has an area where you can plug an aux cable into, and then you can plug that aux cable. It can either be a pair of wired headphones or it can be a Bluetooth speaker. So this is called a B6. I got this on Amazon for less than $40. This one in particular is pretty cool. I've gone through a few headphone amps. Some of them are more basic and cheaper. But this one I really like because it has Bluetooth capabilities, meaning that your phone can connect to it and play a song or a backing track out of the speaker that it's connected to, as well as it's rechargeable. Some of the ones I've used have used batteries before. And then also, if you can see, it has a couple of preset effects on here, you got your clean, your chorus, your. It's like a little bit of distortion. You have like a metal, which is like a lot of distortion, and then even a wah. So that's. That's pretty cool. The one complaint that I do have about this is that it doesn't get that loud. So it's good for smaller settings. But if you're looking to make a lot of noise, it's not your best bet. Other thing that I use is this little Bluetooth speaker. It's called an Anker Soundcore. And I prioritized having these things be able to fit inside my guitar case so I could take them wherever I was. And then you're just going to need a regular aux cable. And here's A little demo of what the portable setup can sound like. So having a portable setup, as, like I mentioned earlier, has been huge for my development as a guitar player. I cannot count the amount of times that I've been out and about just with my guitar and had an opportunity to make music with people, whether that be strangers or the friends that are around me. Especially if you're a little bit crazy like me. I would be at places like parties where people around me are socializing and talking, and I would just be there with my portable setup playing along to the music. Or if they didn't have music playing, I would be the entertainment for the night. Additionally, it just creates so many more opportunities to practice and create music wherever you are, which is obviously great if you're trying to become a great guitarist. The second thing that I want to talk about, which actually leads, well, from what I was just talking about, is, is to jam out to your environment. This basically means that wherever you are and you have your instrument, instead of always doing your own thing, always have your ears open to what's happening around you. One of my biggest pet peeves as a musician is when I'm in an area and there's. There's some music playing, and then people decide to start playing their instruments and they just completely covered up and it's just. It's not harmonious, or people are in the same room playing instruments, like, next to each other, but not together. I think as musicians, we should always strive to create harmony in whatever situation we're going to be in. And jamming out to your environment creates so many opportunities for you to become a better musician. It could look like learning the progression by ear if you have those types of skills and jamming along that way, or playing a solo over it, or even just creating a little rift and always keeping in mind that we don't want to offend our listeners and we want to create harmony in whatever situation we're in. Okay, and the third and final thing that I want to talk about today is about practicing, and that is to not practice mistakes. And this is one that's really difficult to avoid because I'm sure every musician at some point has run into this. But basically, let's say that you're trying to learn a scale and the pattern goes like this, And you're trying to just learn that little section, but you're trying to learn it too fast. You keep going, oh, well, I got it that time. Oh, and we just keep running into this brick wall of trying to do something that we just don't have mastery over when what we could be doing is. You play it so slow that it's basically impossible for you to make a mistake and from there is when the speed actually comes. I heard a great quote that kind of brings together what I'm trying to talk about which is slow is smooth and smooth is fast. So when you're practicing, as tempting as it is to go fast, whenever you make a mistake, you internalize that mistake in your playing. When we learn things correctly the first time, we can make so much faster progress and develop our fundamentals at such a stronger level. Okay, so that's, that's it for today. Just wanted to do a quick little check in. Thank you guys for watching and if you have any other questions or video suggestions, please leave them in the comments. I will respond to all of them. I'll leave you guys with something I just make up on the spot right now. Sam. Okay, take care guys. Bye.