It’s easy to think you can only improve your guitar skills by playing the actual guitar, but don’t get depressed if you are taken away from your instrument for a while! You can do a number of things to develop your skills without actually playing the instrument.

Read About Music Theory

It might sound a bit obvious, but tons of guitar players don’t actually pay attention to music theory. Although you can master the guitar without knowing much about theory, you will make learning a lot easier and faster with knowledge about the concepts.

The world is full of great books about music theory and you don’t even need to pay a trip to the local library. Plenty of websites have e-books and blog posts about different music theory concepts and reading these will boost your skills.

Learn the Notes on The Neck

Learning the notes on the neck is quite a hard thing to master, but you can actually improve your knowledge by drawing them on a piece of paper. Simply draw the lines of the guitar neck on a paper and name all the notes you can remember. Go through the notes by writing down all the Es and the Fs and so on, for instance.

To make it just a bit harder, try going through the notes fret by fret, as this is a bit more complicated!

Furthermore, you can practice the finger positions by drawing the guitar’s neck and strings, and then placing your fingers on the right position for playing a certain note. This is a great way to visualise the right chords in your mind, as well as creating the memory for your fingers.

Name the Note

As you develop your skills, you probably want to look into reading sheet music. This is a crucial skill, especially for guitarists who want to play jazz or classical guitar. You can improve your skills by taking any sheet music you can find and simply just naming each note you see. While you name the note, you can also place your fingers on the position you’d have them if you were playing the note in question.

Tap the Rhythms

You can also get better at timing and keeping the right tempo by tapping different rhythms. Simply look at the tab for a specific song, use either a metronome for the basic tempo or tap with your foot, and then just tap the notes at correct times with your hand.

This instantly improves your timing and helps you find the right rhythm when you are playing the guitar.

You should also practice following the rhythm with your foot. When you hear a song, try to start following the tempo with your foot. Not only does this make it easier for you to pick out the tempos in the future, but it also helps you keep in time when you are actually playing the guitar.

It is a good idea to try the above techniques whenever you aren’t able to play the actual guitar. You’ll learn a lot more and make it easier to create the right sound from your memory when you finally play the guitar.

Mixing your guitar lessons with playing and with practices that don’t involve the guitar will greatly enhance your skill set!