Guitar/How to Continue Learning
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If you are an intermediate to advanced guitarist and you want to continue to develop and remain intellectually stimulated, there are several options:
- Learn a new genre or style of guitar. If you have reached a high level in rock guitar, for example, you could try learning blues, jazz or country guitar, as all of these styles will add new depth and variety to your sound. As well, you could learn a new role. If you are mainly a rhythm guitarist, you could work on soloing. If you are mainly a solo guitarist, you could learn more rhythm playing and chording.
- Learn to sing. Even if you do not intend to sing live, learning to sing can help you to develop musical ideas, create new melodies. As well, you may want to add singing to your guitar performances, thus becoming a guitarist-singer. As well, even if you don't sing at a solo singer level, you may learn to sing well enough to provide backup vocals.
- Learn a new instrument: Learning a non-guitar instrument can give you new musical insights. Learning piano can give you different harmonic ideas. Learning sax could give you new melodic or riffing ideas. Learning drums could give you new rhythmic ideas. If you get good enough at your new instrument, you could play it for one song in your regular band, adding variety to the set.
- Learn about the electronics and production aspect of music: in the 2010s, you don't need to buy a costly 24 channel mixing board and multitrack tape recorder to learn about recording and production: your existing laptop may have enough processing power to run popular DAW recording software. By experimenting with recording loops, riffs and guitar solos, you may stimulate new musical ideas.