How to Organize Your Guitar Practice

This article offers suggestions on how to organizethese all the time only leads to becoming a good
your guitar practice time effectively. Whatexercise, scale or licks player, though.
material should you work on? How much of it?You should include some fundamentals in your
What can you leave out?practice time, but make sure that this is just a
The article looks at four important ideas that helpsmall part of your practice and dedicate as much
you create a good guitar practice plan.of your time as you can to learning and playing
1. Decide what to leave out.whole songs. You can always practice new
2. Balance your material.technical skills by adding them to a song you
3. Favor songs over exercises.know already.
4. Prepare a practice album.Make a Practice Album
Let's take a look at them in more detail.As you plan your practice it's good to have a
* Decide What To Leave Outtarget that motivates you and gives you a
There are thousands upon thousands of guitarvariety of things to work on. You will quickly get
lessons, exercises, and songs available in books,bored if you spend days or weeks working on
videos and on the internet. You can't possiblythe same problem. That's why it's a good idea to
learn and play them all. You will do yourself a bigplan to learn several songs at once. Pick six to ten
service then by deciding not to try.songs you love and and organize your practice
Decide what to leave out of your practice time,around them.
be ruthless and throw out as many things as youYou can think of this as your practice album, and
can. This will free you to focus on what isit gives you a satisfying result to aim for. When
essential to you right now. Choose just one styleyou get bored, or stuck on one song you can
of playing, then one small set of skills in that stylesimply switch to another for a while. Often times
and concentrate on that.you will discover that problems seem to have
* Balance your materialdisappeared when you return to them after a
David Hamburger, author of numerous guitarbreak doing something else.
tutorials, suggests a good practice organization inYour album makes an excellent supplement to
his Beginning Blues Guitar book. Your practice planyour repertoire. You can plan a small concert to
should balance physical and mental exercises asshow what you learned, even if it's only to the
well as repertoire.family dog.
- Physical exercises build your fingers ability toLet's review what you've learned in the article
execute your musical ideas quickly.now. Here's how you can create an effective
- Mental exercises develop your musicalguitar practice plan.
knowledge and its application to the guitar. For1. Decide what to leave out, you can't do it all.
example, playing a chord progression in several2. Balance your material, include physical, mental
different keys forces you to think about theand repertoire time.
position of the starting chord in each key and the3. Favor songs over exercises, because people
relations between the chords.want to listen to songs.
- Finally, build your repertoire in your chosen style4. Prepare a practice album, for added variety
by learning songs from a teacher, book orand interest.
recording.Learner guitarists often worry over what to
* Favor songs over exercisespractice. "Am I working on the right thing?", "Am I
The end goal of a guitar player in any style is todoing enough?", "Am I making enough progress?"
play songs, and if songs are what you want toare frequent questions. Use these tips to create a
play then songs are what you should practice.balanced plan and then concentrate on having fun
Many learners make the mistake of spending lotspracticing.
of time on exercises, scales and licks. Practicing