How did you get better on the guitar.?

I like to play guitar, electric, mostly rock and blues, but none of my friends play.





I hit a lot of plateaus so far but this one I cant get past. I tried advertizing in a music store for someone to just jam with so I could just get the feel of live timing. All I got were bands looking for people to "sign on" as the guitarist.





Obviously I'm not ready for that, and its not really even a goal. I just want to be able to join in when the opportunity arises without throwing everyone off.





There has to be a phase between learning chords and getting on stage but I havent found anyone who is in that phase. What is your experience?|||maybe taking a guitar lesson or two might help? craigslist has a musicains section and community, sometimes there are people looking for other to jam with. playing with musicians that are better than you will help you progress too. maybe you could just practice with a band, as a fill-in for their guitar player or something. a lot of times practicing with a band is the stage between learning how to play and getting on stage.|||Your in a really tough phase. my suggestions are to try and find someone in the same position to jam with. Or try an open mic night at a club(could be embarrassing). Find a really good mentor that has patience. Like Kirk Hammet found in Joe Satriani. I've been there then one day I walked into an apartment and this guy was playing, he was better than me, not a whole lot, we started playing and we didn't care what it sounded like it just felt good. Now he's my mom's boyfriend. Good Luck and keep practicing.|||The stage is to find friends that play drums or bass and get them together... that allows for learning of how the instruments sound with eachother... What I did was, with a couple of friends, started up a band... one of the guys already had a couple songs going so we started playing off of his stuff... Even get a couple people together to learn a song already made.|||find some good acoustical songs to listen and play to on the net and so what if the personis not actually there . practice like that and tip your hat when the song is done|||When I first started playing I would get some sheet music of a song that wasn't to hard and then buy the CD of the song that I wanted to learn then I would crank up the tunes and try and follow along with the CD this way if you want to you can just start it all over again if you mess up or get lost. Then once you get the hang of it you can try for another song.