I'm back. It felt like forever. Help me please

[Dylan Burley]

Hello everyone. I have been off the school for quite some time now, and I decided to hop back on here because i finally got the time to. I have been busy with work and such and I haven’t picked up my guitar since before I went to Vegas last month. I played a bit there at the guitar center there. Which was EPIC btw. You should go sometime. But since then I have been busy with work. So anyways, I finally got the chance to pick up my guitar again, and it feels so weird and I feel like I have lost so much progress and now o feel behind and I can’t play like I could anymore. It discourages me. What should I do. I feel like crap when I play cuz I know i used to be able to play better and to here myself dropping off really sucks. What’s a good way to regain what I had. My picking has gone to crap, i can barley sweep anymore, tapping hurts and I just have forgotten so much . Help!

 

[Dominik Gräber]

Maybe not overthinking everything. I am sure that is something you can do in no time again. For me it is kind of the same, I practice way less than I used to and I feel like I am losing progress in some aspects. What helped me is just relaxing and playing absolutely for fun. Just jamming and improvising riffs, maybe throw a little solo in that you know well.
Also when you’ve done that for 10-15 Minutes you should also be perfectly warmed up to get into the harder stuff again.
Oh and yes, tapping sucks. Did it two days ago, practiced pretty long, could not tap yesterday haha.

 

[Firsty Lasty]

There were a couple times I took a few or more years away from playing guitar. For me it was far easier to regain skills and knowledge I had forgotten than it was to learn them the first time. The last time I came back from a long break I felt like I couldn’t remember more than a couple scale shapes and some basic chords, but as I worked at it it was like my music-brain slowly came out of hibernation and everything came back. Your body remembers more than what your conscious mind remembers, it just might take a little time to get going again.

 

[Calvin Phillips]

You havent forgotten a thing. Your muscles are just weak. People always say that forget. Honestly I dont think you can ever forget. Start slow…build callaspes. By then you should feel comfortable again.

 

[Andrew Fernandes]

I’m no expert but my input would be just to do the basics first and see how you do then gradually implement the more complex stuff like sweep picking. Once you have the basics like muscle memory.

 

[Sayonil Mitra]

its just a phase. do not think about it too much. fool your mind in believing that you are stil good, just needs a bit practice. Eventually, that will be the reality

 

[Jak Angelescu]

Don’t ever be in competition with yourself. There is no such thing as constant improvement without any type of set back. This is something that happens in life you’ll get it back!It’s not like you’ve completely forgotten everything. Everybody goes through it

 

[Brian Haner Sr.]

I have taken time off a few times in my career. It always sucks getting back into it. Go back to basics. Run some scales. Practice alt-picking, etc. It will come back a lot faster than you think.
Good Luck!
PG

 

[Christopher Lonski]

You don’t “suck” now. All that happened, and I hope everyone pays attention to this- if your technique feels off and you think you are playing sloppy, there’s a pretty good chance your hands are out of sync with each other. The two halves of your brain just needs to sync up. To make both hands move in unison again, just play any picking exercise SUPER slow and your pick strikes the string at the EXACT same time that your fretting hand puts a finger down/lifts one up. Play painfully slow, but just make sure that everything is played as perfectly as possible.