Concentrate On The Music, Not Your Hands

Focus on the music.

Beginning guitar students tend to watch their hands instead of the music. This usually happens when they're close to having a piece of music memorized. As their confidence in the song grows, they tend to watch their fingers, look up to see where they are, and then get lost.

Don't practice mistakes.

Listen to yourself perform the song and watch for trouble spots. While I don't advocate watching your hands, I also don't advocate never looking at them. If you've made a mistake, stop, look at your hands and reposition your fingers. Narrow down the trouble area, and slowly and deliberately play through the passage several times. Don't try to speed up until you can play that section perfectly.

Don't go too long without listening to the song.

With You Tube, DVDs, CDs and iTunes available, there's no reason to not have a recording of the song you're trying to play. Listen and/or watch so you're sure you understand what the song is supposed to sound like. It's best to do that when you're not trying to play along. You'll be surprised at what repeated listening can do for you. It helps develop your ear and lots of times you'll hear things you missed when you listened earlier.

Play the song for you guitar teacher so you can gauge your progress.

I have students question why I make them play what they're working on, and the answer is quite simple. We want to correct mistakes, check fingering, and hear how things are progressing. When I took up banjo playing after years of concentrating on guitar, I made the mistake of trying to learn a song I didn't have a recording for. I practiced it for months, then when I tried to play it with others it turned out that I was adding extra notes. I actually quit playing the song for several months and concentrated on listening to the recording when I wasn't trying to practice the banjo. Only after I could visualize how the song went did I go back and re-learn it.