How Should I Practice? (part one)

   Practicing Guitar has never been an issue for me. I've always loved it and while trying to get better at Guitar has been frustrating at times, I've always practiced. In fact, for my first 10 - 15 years of playing, the idea of missing a day of practice was an anathema. However, even though I used to practice 3 - 6 hours a day, now that I look back on those years, I can say that the way I practiced wasn't always optimal. These days, I think I have a better method for getting things done in the "wood shed".

  At some point early in my playing career, my teacher at the time Paul Wingo, made a list of about 8 things that all players needed to do in order to get better at Guitar. The list involved repertoire, transcription, listing to others, composing, etc. What I took away from that beyond the specifics of the list, is that practice isn't only about learning tunes. While playing songs is usually the fun part of playing a musical instrument, doing other things in addition to that can actually help you play those songs even better! For beginners, I've come up with 3 areas of focus to help structure a students practice routine :

• Technique: Even working some basic scales with the correct down and up picking can sharpen your skills way beyond what you might realize. And if you don't know about things like arching your fingers, making the C chord sound clean is going to be very difficult!

• Theory: While some think it's boring, just remember, if you can't keep a beat, you'll never be able to play with anyone else or jam out with your favorite song. Remember, anyone can play a song badly; we wan't to sound good when we play, right?

• Songs / Fun Stuff: All work and no play is no fun - and playing Guitar is supposed to be fun! Not to mention that there's a lot of good, practical knowledge you can pick up from learning songs.

This list is by no means the end all of practice routines, but I think it can really help students who are just starting out or who don't have any structure to their daily practice. When in doubt, ask your Teacher to give you some pointers. Give it a try!


Tune in next week for the next installment of Have Guitar Will Travel.