Uninspired? Maybe It’s Time To Buy Some New Toys

If you’re not feeling inspired in your practice lately, maybe you need to change it up a little bit.

In the daily course of our actions, it can be difficult to stay inspired. Simply picking up your instrument and going to the practice room may not always be enough. In fact, sometimes it can cause you to feel completely uninspired. If your practice feels less than inspirational lately, imagine that you are a small gerbil in a cage. And you only have one toy: the treadwheel. Are you bored of that thing? What if your owner put something more interesting in your cage for you to play with?

If you don’t feel excited about the guitar lately, maybe it’s not you. Maybe you should mix up your environment a little bit.

Perhaps by …

A New Instrument

What could inspire you to practice more than a new guitar? Most of us who love the guitar know that the struggle is real. What if you could get your hands on a much better guitar?

There is a fallacy which leads people to believe that the equipment doesn’t matter and it’s all about the player. It’s true that fancy toys are no substitute for practice. But sometimes getting your hands on a beautiful new instrument is just what it takes to renew your love and joy for playing the guitar.

It might feel good to go around saying that it doesn’t matter how much your guitar cost and that cheap guitars are great. But it’s a feel-good lie. Great guitars are great.

Taking the idea of getting a new guitar one step further, you could get a guitar that is a different type or style that yours currently. Many styles of music have the instruments specifically associated with those styles. Finger style players have harp guitars and seven-string instruments. Slide players have their instrument set up with high action. Blues guitar players will typically play with a Strat or Tele. Rock players often prefer a Les Paul type guitar with humbuckers. Gypsy jazz guitar players will use a guitar with a small sound hole for lead, or a large soundhole for rhythm—a type of guitar that even comes with period-correct strings. Brazilian guitar players use Nylon-string guitars, and Spanish guitars have to be divided into those designed for flamenco, with a punchy attack, and classical, with a long sustain. It seems as though every type of guitar playing has a specific type of guitar designated for it.

See more about the best acoustic guitars in every price point.

Effects Pedals

Effects pedals can help you to achieve sounds that you may never have heard before. The electric guitar player doesn’t need to be told this twice. However, many acoustic guitar players are unaware of the effects pedals available to them. If your guitar has a audio output jack, you can likely pipe it through some effects. Some more run-of-the-mill effects for acoustic guitar players would include a loop pedal, and octave shifter, a reverb pedal, and the like.

The first pedal everyboy should get? Of course looper pedal such as Ditto Loop Pedal^[?]Affiliate Link.

A Proper Throne

Do you know that most chairs are not suitable for guitar playing? The posture that is healthy for activities such as eating meals or working on a computer is not necessarily what you want to use while playing guitar. Chairs that have arms are practically unusable. And office type chairs often force your body into a posture that is ergonomically suited to using a computer, but not necessarily playing the guitar. There are a number of seating options for guitar players, ranging from custom hand-made wooden chairs to more typical factory manufactured chairs that have better ergonomics.

More about the best chairs for playing guitar.

A New Instrument

Another instrument? Who says that you can’t make another instrument a part of your guitar playing? What about getting a banjo, which would help you with your finger style technique? Or a ukulele, which in addition to being highly portable can also be used to practice your strumming rhythm?

Accessories

Did you know even the humble capo can be a source of inspiration? Sometimes just treating yourself to this kind of thing will open up new avenues to explore.

Find out about the most essential guitar accessories.

Recording

Maybe some recording equipment is what you need? With a proper set of stereo microphones and a simple recording interface compass you can record a high-quality acoustic guitar sound. Perhaps the ability to record yourself with such clarity will inspire you to improve your playing.

Study Materials

Books and other types of learning materials represent money well-spent. The quality of print materials tends to be much higher than most of what’s available on the internet. New music to read that is prepared carefully by an expert, exercises organized by difficulty, backing tracks that you can play along with on your own—these are all new sources of potential inspiration.

And maybe you don’t have to spend any money at all. Maybe just trying out an alternate tuning will leave you inspired to go places you have not gone yet with your guitar playing.

Coda

If you’re not feeling the inspiration lately, indulge yourself!

As the creator of Hub Guitar, Grey has compiled hundreds of guitar lessons, written several books, and filmed hundreds of video lessons. He teaches private lessons in his Boston studio, as well as via video chat through TakeLessons.