I’ve heard it from almost every good player I’ve spoken with: if you want to master a musical phrase or chord progression, you HAVE to play it slowly.
I suggest starting by playing every single note of a short musical section deliberately and clearly with absolutely no regard to timing or tempo. The important thing to focus on here is the mechanics of what your hands are doing. What are the nuances that allow you to play each note on the guitar so well at this glacial speed? They will be the same when you speed it up, but you have to memorize what it feels like to truly get it right before trying to take it faster.
Once you can play it slowly without hesitating multiple times -then is the time to GRADUALLY increase the speed.
Have you tried this guitar practice technique? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
—
Wes Freeman is private guitar lesson teacher in the Atlanta metro area of Georgia. He teaches lessons primarily in the cities of Lilburn, Snellville, Marietta, Decatur, and Brookhaven. Learn more about taking lessons with Wes on his Lessons page.
Wes Freeman Music 
Good stuff, Wes.
Funny, the correlation with writing and trying to write.
Some of the best writing teachers I know will make students read their work aloud. Inevitability, you catch things. Tweak things. Hear things. Cadence. Rhythm. The sonic quality.
Combine them both (playing & writing) and it reminds me of a Michael Stipe interview in which he says, “Writing an original song is the hardest thing in the world.” (I’m paraphrasing.) I imagine that’s true.
-Jeremy Todd
LikeLike