I teach guitar lessons for students of all ages and ability levels, but the first lesson is always the same. When I began teaching, I didn't have a set curriculum, and the truth is that I sort of flew by the seat of my pants. Several years later, I still don't have a cookie cutter guitar method for all students, but instead, I build a unique curriculum for each student, taking into account their musical background and technical proficiency on the instrument. That being said, no matter how proficient a student is on the instrument, the very first lesson is ALWAYS focused on how to practice. As I tell each one of my students, you didn't hire me to teach you how to play the guitar, rather, you hired me to teach you how to teach yourself to play the guitar. I can only offer insight and guidance, it is up to you to put that knowledge into practice. Practicing is obviously the single most important thing that we as musicians can do to improve our skill and literacy on our instrument, and yet, it seems that nobody is talking about how to do it. This is a shame, because when we practice correctly, we can accomplish so much more in a much shorter timeframe than we can when we are practicing incorrectly. It is for this reason that I pass the secrets of practicing that I have learned over the years on to you. Before we get started, I highly recommend that all guitarists practice with a metronome. You can usually find one for pretty cheap at your local music store. Practicing with a metronome helps us develop a stronger sense of time and rhythm. This, of course, is indispensible when we play with other musicians. Also, do your body a favor, and stretch before you sit down to practice. Sure, they're little muscles, but they need stretched out like the big ones do. I also like to gently massage my forearm muscles a little to get some blood flow to the area. A practice session is like going to the gym, and we all know that without a proper warm up complete with stretches, you can seriously hurt yourself. That is also true for the muscles we use playing the guitar. Now, let's get started.
My first rule of practicing comes from a book I read called Zen Guitar, by Philip Toshio Sudo. I think this book should be mandatory reading for all guitarists. If you can, pick it up and read it. You'll thank me later. Shameless plug aside, let's get on to the first rule: every time you pick up your instrument, do so with a beginner's mind. Try to put aside all expectations and preconceptions that you have attached to your instrument, music, etc., and look at the guitar with fresh eyes. Part of practicing with a beginner's mind is simply recognizing that you have much left to learn, each and every day. Without this realization, we can only progress so far before we begin to stagnate.
The second rule is just as simple: have a plan. In the words of Yogi Berra, "You have to be careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there." It is vitally important to set realistic short-term and long-term goals and deadlines for ourselves to strive toward if we intend to progress continuously. It is often very helpful to write these goals down on paper. I start out with one long term goal, and then break that down into steps, which can be treated as short term goals. Just remember that it's not a "goal" unless there is a deadline attached... Goals without deadlines are called "dreams". Before you practice, look at your goal sheet. It's amazing how much just reminding yourself what you want to accomplish will help. I like to take about 5 minutes before each practice session to take a deep breath and meditate, as well. That is the perfect time to make your mental checklist for your practice session. I also like to use a day planner to schedule my practice time into each day, and outline what I would like to accomplish in each practice session. This is particularly useful, because you can later look back at your planner and say, "I didn't get enough arpeggio practice on Tuesday, and I have a few minutes to practice that right now." Hold yourself accountable for accomplishing your goals. No one else will.
The next rule is something I learned from one of my guitar teachers: never practice for more than 45 minutes without taking at least a 10 minute break. 45 minutes is not the end all be all amount of time to practice before a break, though, so feel free to experiment with shorter times. This one is very important. When I first heard this, I didn't think it would actually help my practice at all. So I didn't try it out right away, but stuck with my "lock yourself in your bedroom with the guitar for 4 hours" plan that I'd been using for several years. Then, one day, I decided to give it a shot. Lo and behold, IT WORKS! The way it works is like this. Scientists have studied how we learn, and have found that the effectiveness of practice/study is variable across time, with the peak of our learning efficiency occuring about 20-25 minutes after starting to practice/study. After that, we are overloading our mind with information. They also found that if you take at least a 10 minute break to every 45 minutes of practice/study, and think about/do ANYTHING BUT the guitar for that time, when you come back to practice after your break, you can actually learn things better, quicker. In that same spirit, when you return to practicing, take a moment to touch on what you were practicing before your break, but don't just practice the same thing for each 45 minute practice session. Another recommendation has been to choose 3 or 4 different trouble areas to work on during a session, and devote 5 minutes of intense focus to each one, and then move on to the next thing. Come back to it after you work on other things for a few minutes and make sure that you have retained what you learned. So break out your egg timer!
If I had a nickel for every time someone told me "practice makes perfect," I'm pretty sure I could retire... But it's a lie. That's why I prefer to tell my students, "Perfect practice makes perfect". This is where your metronome will come in quite handy. Probably the single biggest mistake that most guitarists make when practicing is that they don't start out slow enough. There is nothing lost by practicing EVERYTHING so slowly that you couldn't POSSIBLY miss a note. This applies to everything you practice. If it is worth practicing, it is worth practicing SLOWLY. I mean glacial, guys. So break out your metronome, set it as slow as it goes. Once you play something PERFECTLY 10 times in a row, you can move the tempo up by about 5 beats per minute. Lather, rinse, and repeat. Just remember, every time you make a mistake, you have to fix it right then, or you are practicing making that mistake. Essentially, if you can't play it at 60 bpm, what makes you think you'll be able to play it at 200 bpm? So many guitarists will sit and run scales or arpeggios as fast as they can, but after hours and hours, there are still no real results. If anything, they are slowly "un-learning" how to play the guitar. So slow it down, and strive for accuracy and consistency instead of speed. Speed will come later, once the accuracy and consistency are taken care of.
This last rule is all about ears. It is very important that we dedicate some time to ear training as part of our daily practice routine. Unfortunately, most people don't really *practice* their ear training at all. That's why I recommend that you take about 10 minutes a day to work on your aural skills. There are 2 very simple exercises that you can do to train your ears. The first is to practice solfege. Everyone knows "do re mi...", so I recommend practicing your scales and singing your solfege syllabels as you play. But don't stop there, it's too easy to say do re mi fa sol la ti do... Then try playing your scales in thirds (do, mi, re, fa, mi, sol, fa, la, sol, ti, la, do, ti, re, do), fourths, fifths, sixths and finally in sevenths. Sometimes the "do re mi" syllables may get very tricky, so go slowly and make sure you say the correct one. Practicing this exercise helps to ingrain in your mind the function of the scale degrees. The second exercise is best done right after you practice your solfege syllables. It's simple and very rewarding: pick a random radio station and try to identify the quality (major, minor, diminished, augmented, and seventh) of the chords you hear. See if you can sing the solfege for the main theme. Don't worry if you stumble at first, your ears will become more and more accurate with practice.
This is far from a comprehensive guide to practicing, so feel free to share your thoughts and experiences as well. Some approaches to practicing might work better for you than others will, so take those things that work very well for you and construct your OWN method of practice. I hope that this blog helps at least one person out there to take their practicing to the next level. Happy practicing!
Jacob teaches guitar in The Colony is Texas USA. Please visit our website at http://www.g4guitarmethod.com.au for more information on guitar lessons with Jacob.
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