As a self taught musician, I’ve faced the same problem many of you have: reaching that plateau where everything sounds the same. All your riffs get repetitive and anytime you pick up a guitar you end up reworking the same tired material.
Of course, the easiest way to rectify this is to get professional lessons from someone with twice as much expertise. Unfortunately, time and money make this difficult for most.
The first time I reached a plateau in my understanding several people told me that it helps to diversify what I’m learning. If I’ve been practicing a lot of leads and riffs, I should work on rhythm. If I’ve been running scales a lot I should sit down and learn the theory behind them.
Been there done that.
Others said it helps to learn multiple instruments. If you play guitar, pickup a bass because you’ll end up using different rhythms. Grab a cheap drum kit and work on timing. Sit at a piano and learn theory and hand separation.
Again, been there done that (it’s definitely not cheap either to own multiple instruments).
I recently found out about Guitar Pro 5. This is not a new program or a new concept but I had always brushed off these types of programs because they seemed tricky and complicated.
Guitar Pro 5 is by far the best program I have found to increase my abilities. Using hundreds of websites, I can download COMPLETE PROFESSIONAL tablatures to thousands of songs. It’s not tabs made by some Joe Schlubb who thinks an Am7 is the same as an Amsus. (I hate every time I get a tab prefaced by “Hey this is my first one but I think it’s pretty accurate”).
These tabs show the rhythm section, lead, bass, piano… whatever. Complete tabs of all the instruments used in a song.
On particularly tricky songs I can slow down the tempo and play along with the midi until I get it, then steadily increase the speed back to the original.
After using these midi files to practice for about a month, I also noticed that I was able to play more by ear. I was subconsciously learning how to pick out the notes in songs that were similar to the ones I’d been practicing.
Hit up YouTube and check out some video demos of the program and then go to ultimate-guitar.com and scroll through all the songs they have Guitar Pro tabs for.
There are similar programs out there, but this one seems to be the best to me.
