I need some serious help. I guess i overloaded on the guitar playing so much that i dont want to anymore. i cant even look at my guitar! i sit down with it and dont know what to play, and i also dont want to play anything! Its so bad that im considering not buying the new strat ive been looking at just because im scared the same thing will happen. I dont know how to get back into really playing a lot and learning new stuff, and i dont want this to be the total end of my guitar playing. and people have already told me to take a break from it, but that really didnt help.

Just take a longer break dude. It happens to everyone if you over-do it. Things will become fresh again. I remember Slash saying that after the Use Your Illusion tour he didn't touch a guitar for months.

You're only human! Sometimes after a good few days constant I take breather for a while. Keeps it fresh.

Get that Strat, you'll love it!


CC

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Fender Stratocaster (parts build)
Fender Telecaster 72 Custom RI
Fender Telecoustic Deluxe
Gretsch Electromatic Pro-Jet
Gibson Les Paul Standard Plus
Gibson ES-135
Zenith Type-17
Marshall 70's JMP Superbass 100w
Blackstar HT-5

I have to agree just go do other stuff for a while. Before you know it you will here a new song or riff somewhere that is going to make you reach for your ax and you will be wood shedding hard again.

Hello HendrixWorshipper,

My son laid off the guiter for six years, now he is
getting back into playing. Hes not trying to set the
world on fire just having a bit of fun with it.

If it ain't fun then whats the point.

Cheers.

I suggest you completely refocus your music for awhile. A rut is just that, stuck doing the same ol' same ol'. If your mostly an electric player with a heavy blues influence (I'm guessing from your user name), pick up your acoustic and practice some fingerpicking. Do something completely out of your norm, James Taylor, Jack Johnson, it doesn't matter, try something new. Ever try alternate tunings? Tune your acoustic to open D and teach yourself Little Martha or Frampton's Penny For Your Thoughts. Better yet, try a different instrument. Do you have access to a mandolin, piano, keys, bass? Nothing gets me excited to pick up my Strat like spending a week focusing on my mandolin playing. Shake it up!

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“All music is folk music, I ain't never heard no horse sing a song.” Louis Armstrong

I find that if I pick up my aucustic or my Les Paul, just the different feel and sound will get me playing again. So my suggestion would be to mix it up.
Try to learn some songs you wouldn't have thought of learning. Try to take a hokey song and make a cool version. Find some friends to play with. Make it fun and not like work.

That's happened to me a couple of times too. I took a break, listened to whatever music inspired me the most, and get back to it with more love for it than I had before. Setting goals (even if it's something as simple as deciding to learn a particular song) helps too.

"You have to stick with it. Sometimes you are going to be so frustrated you want to give up guitar. You'll hate guitar. But all of this is just a part of learning, because if you stick with it, you're going to be rewarded." - Jimi Hendrix, The Stratocaster Chronicles p. 134

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HW, I'm going through a bit of a slump myself, but I'm trying to have faith that I will get back into it and still keep progressing.

If taking a break isn't working, another piece of advice I've heard (actually about Writer's Block but it probably applies here too) is to not worry about goals or accomplishments or the long term, just do the "next right thing".

For me, I've been trying to just pick the guitar up and hold it in my hands. If I make a chord shape, or strum, or play a bit of a scale, that's a bonus, and if I do that once a day, that's enough. I'm hoping these little things will keep me going, and when I get inspired again I can pick up the pace where I left off.

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2008 MIM Strat w 3-tone sunburst
2002 LP Special Ebony Faded
2008 G-Dec
'59 Reissue Bassman 4x10 combo
TS 808
DS 1
Gretsch 6120DS (on loan)

I take breaks all the time. Right now, I haven't played in about two weeks. I go through that from time to time.

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"I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people, and I require the same from them."-John Wayne

Yeah, take it one baby step at a time. Worrying about the long term will just make your head spin.

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I could /NEVER/ go without playing a guitar for a day without having a HUGE feeling of guilt afterwards.
I've only had a mere handful of days where I've either been /WAY/ too lazy to practice, or have physically been miles away on vacation where I couldn't take my guitar.

I try and practice every day, because that's the way I feel myself progressing the fastest. And obviously, it's paying off, because I just got this huge inspiring talk from my guitar instructor just this past Tuesday in my private make-up lesson. He's also a Berklee graduate, so to know that he has that much faith in me is just amazing.

I could never go weeks or days straight without playing guitar. I'd feel too guilty, but more importantly, I'd be suicidal because I love it too much!!!!

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"If it's planned, it's boring." - Freddie Mercury

I agree with other that say mix it up and try other instruments. It will also help to have a change in the type of music you've been playing also. I go through this every now and then and just a change in music and grabbing my electric since i play mostly acoustic really helps keep me in love with playing my guitars. A little break all together won't hurt either as long as it's not too long. You wouldn't want to have and retrain your fingers do you?

A long term antidote to feeling uninspired would be to have several children... suddenly you can think of all sorts of amazing things you'd like to be doing with your guitar! While you're waiting for that to happen, perhaps it's a good time for a bit of housekeeping — change your strings, clean your fretboard, buy a new pick or three. A while ago I acquired a Red Bear Heavy D-type and a Wegen Gypsy Jazz pick, and... man... admittedly they seemed stupidly expensive at first, but what a difference each made to my playing approach! I don't think the price of a couple of packs of strings is too much to pay for something that'll make a lasting impact on your playing, but maybe that's just me. If you play through an amp, try and score some NOS tubes cheap off eBay, stick 'em in and that may get you looking at your familiar setup in a new light... tubes can make a serious difference, I find.

Basically, any small, (relatively) inexpensive factor you can change without having to force yourself to play if you're not feeling it. If you have a bit more to spend, then maybe a new pedal would get you going — or maybe I just daydream too much while performing tasks on my "honey-do" list... heh.

Once you're feeling like putting fingers to fretboard again, maybe try just playing up and down one string for a bit. Try to play the stuff you'd usually play, but only on that one string. Sure didn't do Hendrix any harm! Work out as many different scales as you can along each of the strings, and you'll perceive their relationships much more clearly.

After that, try imagining that your guitar is comprised of only the open strings and the notes on the first four frets. What a drag! And yet, everything ever written for the guitar is playable in some form from that one position.

Learn as many different voicings of major and minor triads as you can, all over the damn place. There'll be a whole lot of pentatonic shapes you recognise, right under your fingers... mix 'em up with your single-string stuff and you'll be thinking that maybe all those free-form intros to Eric Johnson's songs aren't so impossible after all (and no, I can't play like EJ either, but we can at least learn the syllables that form the words that make the phrases... heh).

Check out some players a bit outside your usual circle of influences... if it's Hendrix-inspired bluesy-type stuff, maybe go listen to Robben Ford. Do that anyway, if you haven't already. I'm going to, after I finish up here... Adrian Belew's just released 40-plus minutes of chromatic guitar madness ("e") that is truly magnificent — you can order it from his website and he'll personally send it out to you with his loopy handwriting on the address label... how many bona fide guitar legends will do that these days? Maybe more than I think, but anyway, the world is teeming with inspirational figures and it's a shame to mope around and overlook them. OK, OK, I'll shut up now.

Good luck!

We all get frustrated and bored with it at time. Go see some local band play, that'll make you want to pick up your guitar again. The ultimate goal should be to have fun, it's a hobby for most of us, shouldnt be an obligation.

HW... like so many here have been saying... take the needed break. Forcing something to happen is not the answer... you'll only become more frustrated. I am an artist, and am now working on some new pieces to get away from the music for awhile... I have a CD in the works, but ran into a dead end with song writing... but while I am taking this break, I am listening to many other songs and ideas are coming to me... so probably in the next few weeks another new song will be in the works. Always, and I mean always, have patience with your music and anything else you do in life. Best of luck to you my brother in music.

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Limber Fingers to all you Guitar Players...

Regards,
Bratt Scovil

www.myspace.com/brattscovil