The intermediate level of guitar playing is a very exciting stage. It is the point at which you have a solid understanding of the fundamentals and can begin to apply them.
If you don’t approach it with the right mindset, though, the intermediate stage can also be frustrating.
Unlike at the beginner level, when everything is new, progress may at times feel slower, and plateaus may occur. Plateaus are periods of time when you don’t feel like you’re making any progress (even though you actually are if you’re practicing regularly).
Unlike at an advanced level, your guitar skills remain limited, and you may struggle with some of the fundamentals.
When you have reached intermediate level on the guitar is not a precise science, but there are indicators based on your knowledge and thought processes that signal that you’re in this stage.
The first of these five signs that you’ve reached an intermediate level of guitar playing is about what you know, while the others are about how you think or practice.
- Know the basics
We all started learning the guitar from scratch and gradually gained skills that, when combined, enabled us to play.
The number of skills that can be learned on the guitar is vast, and few guitarists are proficient in all of them because many guitarists (even advanced) specialize in styles of playing that necessitate specific skills but not others.
For example, a shredder (a slang term for guitarists who can play extremely fast) may struggle with fingerpicking. A blues guitarist who makes your eyes water with his phrasing may not be able to play very fast. (Advanced guitarists don’t include certain skills in their repertoire, not because they can’t master them, but because they don’t need those skills to express themselves musically and instead focus on those that do.)
However, while specialization allows different guitarists to master different skills, the fundamentals remain the same.
The following is a list of the fundamental skills that I believe every intermediate guitarist should have under his belt. If you’ve learned all or most of these skills, you’re probably no longer a beginner.
- Read guitar tabs.
- Play open chords—major, minor, dominant 7th, and suspended chords—and easily transition between one chord and another. You may not get barre chords right yet, but you know what they are and have started preparing to learn them.
- What scales and arpeggios are
- Minor and major pentatonic scales in one position
- Keep a simple rhythm and basic rhythmic patterns.
- Learn the names of the notes on the E, A, and D strings. While learning the names of the notes on the G and B strings is also crucial, the first three strings hold the most significance as they serve as the foundation for most scales and chords. The notes on the high E string are free because they have the same names as the notes on the low E string.
- Play one whole song.
- You should have a basic understanding of phrasing techniques such as slides, bends, vibrato, hammer ons, and pull-offs. Mastering all of these techniques will require you to go beyond the intermediate level. By now, you should have a fundamental understanding of these techniques and their execution.
- Dots are getting connected
While we were acquiring the basic skills mentioned above, we didn’t have a clue how these worked together to make music.
Now you might not have all the answers, but you’re beginning to connect the dots.
You begin to understand how musicians utilize tools such as scales and arpeggios to determine which notes to play, employ various rhythmic patterns to shape these notes into melodies, and employ phrasing techniques like slides and string bending to make them stand out.
If you’re starting to see links between the things you’re learning, you’re likely on an intermediate level of guitar playing.
- You understand the role of music theory
Most musical instruments are taught alongside music theory. However, music theory is less popular among guitarists, many of whom believe that it simply means reading the notes, and among guitar teachers, who believe that their students do not require it.
The truth is that music theory is not about reading the notes and finding them on the guitar; that is reading standard music notation, which you may want to learn but is not as important as learning basic music theory.
You can get your notes from guitar tabs and still learn music theory.
Music theory explains how music works and provides a set of tried-and-tested patterns, tools, and concepts musicians use to create music.
An intermediate guitarist should have a clear idea of what music theory really is, even if he knows little or no theory yet.
This is also the right time to start learning the basics of music theory. When you do so, the dots will start connecting faster.
- Know how to make something easier/harder
At this stage, you can play almost everything that does not involve advanced guitar techniques like sweep picking, pinch harmonics, or tapping, but only if you know how to make something that’s hard to play, easier.
The main two ways of doing this are by reducing the speed of the notes (sometimes significantly) and the number of notes that you play (if something is very hard, you can even zoom in on just two notes).
For instance, playing this short piece of music is easy.
What you may find difficult is either related to speed—in which case you should just learn it at a slower tempo—or the wide leap involving string skipping between the last note of the first bar and the first note of the second.
In this case, all you have to do is practice these two notes in isolation, which is much easier than practicing them with the surrounding notes.
You can also create your own intermediate guitar exercises by moving those two notes around the neck and across strings.
At this level, you should also be able to make things harder so that playing them normally feels easier.
The obvious way to make something harder is to increase the speed, but here are some other options:
- Picking each note with more force than you should.
- Playing with your eyes closed
- Switching the amp off (makes it harder to hear the notes)
- Turning the amp volume higher (if you’re playing with distortion, this makes it harder to control unwanted string noise).
- Play standing up
The more you can make music easier or harder based on your practice needs, the faster you’ll be able to master your pieces, and the more pieces of music you have available to learn.
- You’re eager to play with others
A beginner’s ability to play the guitar is strictly limited, but at the intermediate level, you should be able to do a variety of things on the instrument.
This is the stage at which you begin meeting friends to jam or join your first band.
Playing music with others is the ultimate joy for many people—a zen moment when their minds connect and become creative.
It also has a learning curve, which is why I recommend starting at this level rather than waiting until you are more advanced.
Conclusion
Though there is no exact moment when you become an intermediate guitar player, if you understand the fundamentals described in the first sign and have begun to notice one or more of the other four, you can consider yourself an intermediate guitarist.
If not, rest assured that consistent guitar practice with the right mindset will get you there pretty quickly.
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