Safe to say he's better than all of us?

Why are some players so much better than others? Why can such-and-such play those crazy tapping arpeggio runs so cleanly and you can’t? You both practice a lot; in fact, you may even practice more than he does.

Surely some people have a “knack” for the guitar. We call them naturals, prodigies, and geniuses. There are some people who were just born to play. But in the grand scheme of things they are a relatively small percentage of the playing population.

So what is it then? For the rest of us, I mean. Assuming two people put in the same amount of woodshedding and work on the same thing, one will inevitably be better than the other. Why?

Is it because you are being half-assed?

There are two pieces to this puzzle, and both are equally important.

Practicing the Right Way

How you are practicing is the first piece of the puzzle. I’ve written about this to death already (and will continue to do so), but since we all struggle it bears repeating time and time again. In this sense, being “half-assed” means being content with getting by and not fully mastering what you’re working on. If you practice with the mindset that what you’re working on doesn’t have to be perfect, but rather just “good enough,” then you’re being half-assed. I have done this plenty of times, which is why my sweep arpeggios and alternate picking are not nearly as good as I wish they were.

Practicing slowly and methodically is the way to go. It is, essentially, the only way you are really going to nail down and internalize the material you’re working on. Most people just want to work on a lick or riff at full speed with a completely saturated tone masking all of their mistakes; are you one of those people?

Thinking the Right Way

This one is a bit trickier. Simply making sure your fingers can fly across the fingerboard doesn’t really make for being “full-assed.” (I just made that one up.) You have to make sure your brain is actively engaged when you are practicing. This involves a lot of concentration and is quite difficult. There certainly comes a point where you just want to shut your brain off and play guitar. That’s fine, but the time to do that is when you are playing guitar, not practicing guitar.

Look, it’s really quite simple. If you want to be the best player you can be, you have to jump in with both feet and work hard, really hard, to get good. “Good enough” really shouldn’t be good enough for you. At the very least you shouldn’t sulk in the corner wondering why your friend is kicking your ass all over the jam session.

My suggestion would be to pick something – anything – that you want to learn from scratch and start a one month fully-assed practice regimen to master it. I recommend you not work on getting better at something you already sort-of know how to do, as you will most likely fall back on old habits. You can always go back later and clean up some of the things you already know, but for now you want to work with a clean slate.