5 Bad Playing Habits I NEED To Break

okay so at some point in your time as a guitar player you're gonna start to develop bad habits and you're playing oftentimes these will set in early on in your time learning guitar when you first start to pick up the instrument especially if you are self-taught like I was you don't have anyone telling you how to play things how to pick things how to voice chords in the left hand I mean the range of bad habits that you can develop is is pretty huge now the reality is most of us find ways of working around these issues or just flat out ignore them but I don't want to do that anymore I want to face some of these bad habits that I have in my playing head on so in today's video I'm going to show you five bad playing habits that I need to break now I've let these issues go on am I playing for too long I've made all kinds of excuses about why I don't need to face them or I don't have the time to face them under normal circumstances I get to travel and gig and tour quite a bit and when I'm not on the road I'm home making YouTube videos but given the current circumstances all of my gigs and all of my tours have been either postponed or just canceled through the rest of the year so I have all the time in the world now on my white board over here I've written down five bad habits that I have am I playing that I think a lot of you might also have so we're gonna talk about what they are and some different ways of getting past them but first if you're new here welcome to the channel my name is Rhett Scholl and make new videos every week be sure to subscribe down below if you haven't already also I just released a brand new impulse response pack for all of you helix users kemper users acts of ex iridium these are my cabinets that I miked up with my microphones here in my home studio these are how I record my guitar sounds at home so check those out in the link down below you can also find links to the tone course and the green room down there if you're interested with all that other way let's jump into the first bad habit so the first and probably most glaring bad habit that I have is noodling and I would bet that most of you watching this video also have this same bad habit however if you're not familiar with what I mean by noodling it's this or this noodling is simply the act of playing but playing nothing you're not playing anything musical you're not playing really anything in time and you're not even really thinking about what you're playing and if you're like me you get sick of hearing yourself play the same cliche lines and chord shapes in little progressions over and over and over again now this was really brought into focus for me a few weeks ago when I started watching Tom Bucca VAX videos on YouTube now if you don't know who Tom Bucca vak is he is an incredibly accomplished Nashville session guitarist and he's one of my favorite current guitar players out there I've known about toms playing in his work for years and he's one of the guys that I really look up to as a guitar player and a musician partially because he never noodles if you watch any of his videos which I highly recommend by the way you'll notice that every time he sits down to play he's playing something musical he's playing something that has a complete musical idea they're complete musical phrases and statements even if it's just a couple of chord voicings he's messing around with he stitches them together to make a complete chord progression or if he's noodling around on a lick he'll combine his lick with different chord voicings to basically bring your ear into hearing a complete musical phrase Tom also has some of the best touch and guitar tone out of any guitar player alive today I mean seriously every single time I watch one of his videos which is pretty much filmed on an iPhone I believe it sounds incredible he's just sitting in his garage talking to a smartphone but it's still some of the best guitar tone I've ever heard so how do we stop the noodling I think the first thing to do is to recognize when it's happening and just immediately stop playing anytime you start to go to those old cliche lines that you played a hundred times before just stop playing then take the idea or the riff or the lick that you were just playing and maybe find a chord shape based around it and then put it in time that's one of the worst things about noodling is you're never really playing in time so take that initial idea and stick a few chords together no matter how simple or basic they may be and instantly we've gone from noodling to now playing at least a basic musical idea but I think the most important thing to remember is to recognize when you're noodling and just stop the next bad habit that I really need to work on is using too much reverb now I love reverb but it's come to my attention over the last several weeks that I probably use too much reverb in my everyday playing and also in my life playing give you an example this is one of my Kemper presets and last time I pulled up this particular preset I made some changes to it that I really liked and well this is what it sounds like now it sounds good but there's obviously a lot of reverb on that patch now using effects when you're playing is not inherently bad in fact it's one of my favorite parts of being in guitar players using effects to shape your tone and to find new parts and new ways of playing the instrument but if you're not careful it can get away from you and you can start to rely on these effects so much in fact that when they're stripped away you feel like you're playing naked like you can't actually play your guitar unless you have that nice lush bed of reverb underneath you now I don't always play with this ridiculous amount of ambient reverb but I do always play with at least some kind of reverb on my amp or model or whatever I happen to be using at the time now several weeks ago I had the opportunity to interview Tomo Fujita for my podcast and it was an incredible conversation if you don't know who Tomo Fujita is should check out the episode I'll have it linked down below but Tomo told me that when he practices at home he never uses any reverb none and this is deliberate because he knows that he likes the way it sounds he likes the way it feels so much so that he'll start to rely on having that reverb to possibly cover up some mistakes or some shortcomings in his playing and when he told me that it was like he was reading my mail I do that all the time my effective choice is using reverb as a mask as a crutch to sort of mask over any slight imperfections or shortcomings in my playing now for you this may be a different type of effect maybe it's overdrive or a compressor or delay but something that you're using to sort of cover up your playing so what I'm gonna start doing is turning off my reverb and practicing dry [Music] see even right there that feels a little unnatural which tells me that this is something I need to start working on it's the next bad habit that I need to address in my playing has to do with my right hand and this is a really common thing that I see a lot of guitar players doing and that is taking the base of your hand and anchoring it against the bridge of the guitar now sometimes you need to anchor your wrist so that you can palm mute but the way I play guitar I always end up leaving my wrist anchored against the base of the guitar here and I switched to my strat so that I could show you I've actually worn off most of the gold plating around the bridge and the saddles and these pickguard screws here because every time I play this is where my hand lives and all of my guitars that I've had for more than a few years have the plating eaten away because of the oils and acids in my skin it's not good now anchoring your hand against the bridge isn't a deal breaker most of us that do it have learned how to play with that technique in mind that's one of those habits I was talking about earlier that we've been able to work around but the reality is it's more of a limitation when the base of your hand is anchored against the bridge it's limiting your movement it's limiting the ability for you to attack the string in different ways and to move more freely up and down the string in terms of closer to the bridge or closer to the neck giving you different tones now the fact is most great guitar players that I know play with their right hand or they're picking hand floating above the strings rather than anchored with the base of their palm on the bridge now this isn't the case across the board there are plenty of great guitar players that play differently than that but allowing your hand to float above the strings is actually going to give you more control you're gonna be able to pick more cleanly you'll be able to pick more accurately and with more dynamic control than you have with your hand resting against the bridge and now I was made aware of this issue a few years ago when I was actually taking guitar lessons from a really good friend of mine named Ben forehand Ben is one of the best guitar players I've ever known and he has great picking dynamic and picking feel and part of that is because he floats his right hand above the strings rather than anchoring his hand to the bridge I think one of the best things to do is to take licks and riff ideas or cords or solos that you're already familiar with and work on them with the right hand floating above the strings start slow and focus on pick accuracy and note accuracy you don't want to be hitting the wrong strings or fretting notes out or anything like that so start slow and then slowly work up your speed and your dynamic control practice picking soft and practice digging in and then over time your speed and your accuracy will start to progress now you can always put your hand back on the bridge when you need to but you don't want to have to live there you don't want to be relegated to leaving your hand there at all times now my fourth bad habit is something that I have struggled with more recently and that is relying on muscle memory rather than relying on my ear when I'm playing this is something that I find personally happens a lot when I'm playing live if I have to take a solo for example when you're on stage a lot of times it can be a somewhat stressful environment you are in front of people you are performing depending on how prepared or unprepared you are for the music it can be a really engaging fun and comfortable experience or it can feel like you're holding on for dear life now I've found that if I'm playing in a somewhat stressful situation I tend to rely more on my muscle memory to play licks and ideas that I might have repeated thousands and thousands of times and you may have noticed this on some of my videos I tend to gravitate towards a lot of the same type of licks we'll get in a second though now you might notice this issue and your own playing if you start to jam or play with other people especially if you aren't that experienced and playing with other people yet you might be a little nervous you might not have a firm grasp of what's going on musically and so your tendency might be to revert back to muscle memory rather than to listen to what you're playing and how it fits in the context of the music that's happening around you now for me the way I'm gonna address this is by practicing improvising this is something I haven't done a lot of especially recently but sitting down and either looping a chord progression or putting a track together or looking up a jam track video on YouTube and sitting there and practicing improvising without stopping without trying to repeat ideas but sitting and trying to come up with unique ideas by listening rather than going off of muscle memory to do that you need to start slowly and start with a simple progression start with something that you're comfortable with maybe a blues progression or a simple modal progression something that you know and you're familiar with the scale shapes on the guitar and start at a relatively slow tempo start by listening for melodic ideas that you can play off of something it might have happened in one of the other instruments and the track for example rather than just relying on the same licks that you've played a thousand times that is one of my cliche muscle memory licks I've played it so many times I'm sick and tired of hearing it so when it comes to these improvisation sessions I'm gonna actively avoid playing that lick and the fifth and final bad habit that I specifically need to fix is playing the same things over and over and over again this is solos and riffs and songs that I learned years ago and have just never replaced never moved on from the most overused example that I have from this YouTube channel is the solo from Robin Ford's song help the poor [Music] it's a great solo and there's a lot of things that I learned from transcribing that solo that I've been able to implement into my own playing but I for some reason haven't moved on I play it so many times I play these licks over and over again I can't tell you how many times that particularly has shown up on this YouTube channel and it needs to stop now fortunately the way to fix this bad habit is actually pretty simple just learn some new stuff transcribe some new solos learn some new songs play things that are gonna break you out of that rut recently a friend of mine up in Nashville told me the way he practices is by simply going down into his basement home studio every morning and listening to songs he listens to songs with a guitar in his hand and just plays along with him he listens and transcribes the parts in real time and maybe tries to learn one of the solos or just simply learn the parts that are going on in the song and to me that's one of the best ways to practice you're introducing new ideas and new playing styles and concepts to your own repertoire in real time all while listening and learning from cool musicians I think it's great so that's what I'm gonna focus on over the next few weeks coming down here in the morning before turning on the camera or answering emails or doing any admin stuff I'm gonna sit down and play my guitar I'm gonna listen to music and work on these five bad habits so I've got some work to do maybe I'll post an update video in the next few weeks to let you know how these issues are coming along let me know what bad habits you have and your playing that you need to fix in the comments section down below if you enjoyed today's video be sure to LIKE and subscribe if you haven't done so already again be sure to check the links out in the description box down below if you to support the channel there's also some affiliate links down there with some of the gear that I use to make these videos also follow me on instagram at Rhett shoal anyway hope you enjoyed today's video thank you guys so so much for watching it really does mean the world to me I really appreciate the support especially in the current times it it really is very cool to have you guys engaged in watching so huge thank you to you anyways I'm Rachel thanks for watching and remember there is no plan B you

Channel: Rhett Shull

Views: 360,015

Rating: 4.8826308 out of 5

Keywords: rhett shull, Guitar, Lesson, Playing Habits, Bad Habits, how to break bad habits, guitar lessons, guitar lessons for beginners, guitar lessons for intermediate players, guitar lessons for beginners electric

Id: C5vTNHtv-Ng

Length: 17min 22sec (1042 seconds)

Published: Thu May 07 2020