So you’ve been playing guitar for a while and you’re getting pretty good.  Your practice is consistent, your mindset relaxed and positive, your fingers begin to take on a mind of their own.  Then one day you realize that your progress is beginning to dwindle.  You start to wonder why you keep playing but can’t get better.  Musicians refer to this phenomenon as the dreaded plateau.  Let's examine the cause of this dilemma, and explore the ways in which guitar lessons can help fix the problem.

The dreaded plateau.  During the course of your journey as a maturing guitarist, you will find that the learning curve becomes much steeper the more you play.  Whereas you may have been able to improve by leaps and bounds in your first few months, the new goals are farther apart and much more difficult to achieve.  You feel like you keep putting in the time and effort, but you aren't seeing results.  This causes a feeling of overwhelming frustration.

Every new player reaches this crossroad more than once.  The plateau becomes so maddening that you consider putting the guitar down for a while.  Part of you wants to stay the course and keep playing, the other part begins to doubt your potential.  You need proof that you’re capable of climbing to the next peak.  In this instance, taking a guitar lesson might be the way to go.

Guitar lessons can act as a tremendous catalyst for the advancement of your playing.  Once you continue your education of the instrument, you’ll naturally eliminate the uncertainty you previously felt.  The optimism and excitement you had when you first started playing will return.  What a relief, you can finally start moving in the right direction again.  Now that you’re ready to take a guitar lesson, it’s time to find the right teacher.

A great teacher is a great coach.  One of the qualities that remain constant in a great guitar teacher is the ability to keep students MOTIVATED.  A skilled teacher is well aware of the plateau, but through their own experience they have taken effective measures to defeat it.  They will keep you on the right track, and make you practice harder than you ever would have without them by your side.  A great teacher will find your talent and bring it to the forefront of your playing.  There is nothing more comforting than being shown first-hand that you have the ability to keep progressing.

Since you’re not a beginner, you won’t have to spend lesson time learning Guitar 101.  Instead, the teacher can use the session to assess your playing, find the areas that need work, and then focus on making them better.  They will correct your bad habits and teach you new techniques.  First, let’s see how a guitar teacher can go about tweaking the blemishes in your style.

Tune-up and maintenance. Bad habits will develop naturally as your playing evolves.  Every player has them, and no player is perfect. These habits are difficult to be conscious of without an outside perspective.  One of the first things your teacher will have you do is play some scales, chord progressions, and improvisation.  After carefully examining your recital, your instructor will adjust the flaws in your performance so that their roots don’t grow too deep.  Once you are made aware of your errors, you can focus on getting yourself out of the rut.  Working on tightening your game is a great way to get yourself off the plateau and onto the next level!

Next, the teacher will ask you which areas you feel need to be worked on.  They will field all questions in order to clear up any confusion you might have.  This part of the lesson is important since you won’t find this type of one-on-one dynamic in any other setting.  Common questions may deal with the theory behind scales and chords, or a good strategy for tackling a difficult song.  Once your curiosity has been satisfied, your teacher can prep you for an assortment of brand new tools to use.

Learning new skills.  Your technique has been all fixed up and its time to learn some new stuff.  You're not a novice anymore, so it's important to be barraged with a variety of new challenges. Your teacher will be there to break you out of your comfort zone by showing you some advanced skills to keep you busy.  This will help minimize the amount of time you spend on the plateau. 

Your teacher may begin by showing you some advanced chords.  The 7th chord is widely used in jazz and blues, and should be explored if you have not done so already.  Then you can move on to some tricky hammer-ons and pull-offs.  These tactics will open up many doors for developing your phrasing and unique sound.  You can also focus on improving your vibrato, a skill that takes a short time to learn, but a lifetime to master.  All of these new moves allow you to manipulate certain notes in order to evoke more power and emotion in your playing.  After practicing these techniques, you will notice that your control over the fretboard begins to increase.  Now you can "own" the guitar, instead of letting the guitar own you.

At this point, you and your instructor can begin to jam a little bit.  You'll switch off playing lead and rhythm.  During this exercise, you will gain valuable insight on adding texture and color to your solos, and advice on creating smoother patterns of rhythm. Your teacher will tie in the different premises that you've learned together so you can really expand your understanding of the instrument.

The whole story.  It’s time for you to start coming into your own as a player.  In order to get to the level that you want to be at, you must extract new information from your guitar lessons, and continue to push yourself even harder.  Ideally, you want to be as versatile a player as possible.  You should be able to play by yourself and jam well with others.  You must know not just what to play, but when and how to play it. 

By taking what you’ve learned from your guitar lessons, you can begin to practice hard on your technique, and add points for style along the way.  With the application of your new knowledge, you will ascend from intermediate to advanced, and from advanced to master.