How To Practice Guitar

When you sit down to practice there are several things you need to think about.

First, though, here’s some tips on setting up a practice area:

1. Set aside a dedicated practice area in a quiet room. Away from TV, screaming kids, other noise and distractions. Having a dedicated area means everything is always organized and where you want it. So anytime you feel the urge, you can sit down and do some highly focused practice for a block of time – anywhere from 10-30 minutes. It’s just more convenient and easy that way.
2. Use a music stand if you are working from books etc. You don’t want to sit on a bed or sofa, for example, and have to contort your body to look at the book and what you’re doing with your hands. You want your body comfortable and relaxed as possible. Twisting your body, or neck and head introduces tension. Tension in your body is the #1 thing to avoid. You are programming/wiring your body to make it as easy as possible to play effortlessly and fluently.
3. Use a tuner to ensure you are in tune before every practice session. (Or, tune by ear if you are confident you can do that. And, yes, you should work at learning to tune by ear. It’s all part of ear training.)
4. Use a metronome. This helps really internalize a solid sense of time. And you can always speed it up a click or two once you are confident and are playing mistake-free.
5. Use a chair or stool to sit on. Look straight ahead at the book on the music stand. You want everything in-line of sight.
6. Use a guitar stand so your guitar is always there to pick up and practice when you plan, or, when you have the urge. It’s perfectly fine to practice in small bursts occasionally. Just make sure you’re nice and relaxed.

An easy-access area to practice, where everything is where you want it, is best.

How to practice guitar…

Think about it — there are basically two things you are doing when you practice:

1. You are ‘wiring’ your body, hands and fingers to play perfect guitar. As effortlessly and fluently as possible. This is the ‘muscle-memory’ part of playing guitar. Some people are ‘naturals’. They pick up a guitar and it just falls into the right place, they hold it right and play it right. The rest of us have to ‘program’ our nervous system and muscles to react the best way possible… relaxed, effortless and fluid.
2. You are learning new skills – new scale and chord patterns, sequences, technique and all the rest. These skills have an intellectual (head/knowledge) and a physical side.

ALL your guitar practice should follow these guidelines:

1. 

   This is the 'general' idea of posture for practicing.

   RELAXATION IS KEY! Before starting your practice spend some time relaxing your whole body. Shake your arms and fingers then relax letting them drop by your sides. Check if you have tension in your neck and shoulders and consciously relax them. Same with your stomach and other body parts. Relax your breathing.

2. You need to always be very conscious of your body. You need to keep it as relaxed as possible.
3. When practicing, rotate your attention from what you are playing to what your body is doing. If any tension is creeping in, fix it!
4. Never slouch on your chair. Sit upright and keep the headstock (where the string tuning pegs are) at shoulder-height level.
5. Never rest your  elbow of your fingering or picking hands on your knee. I see a lot of people do this. It restricts your muscles and is a bad habit.
6. Try to keep the headstock of your guitar near shoulder height. This facilitates better left-hand fingering and helps keep the wrist straighter. If you bend your wrist too much you’ll find tension in your hand and fingers – this restricts ease of finger movement.
7. Use a metronome set at between 40-60 beats per minute. Practice everything very slowly, accurately and as relaxed as possible. Once you are comfortable with what you’re playing and can do it mistake-free, bump up the metronome a couple of clicks. You’ll have to work this out for yourself, but with regular, consistent daily practice, it becomes a lot easier.
8. Have several things to practice and do a few minutes (10-15) on each EVERY DAY. this is about setting practice goals to achieve a very specific result in as short a time as possible. (More about this in another article.)
9. Get into the habit of tapping your foot in time to the metronome when you practice. This is just another way to build a good sense of time and internalize it. Just DO IT!

Here’s some other things you should also do to become a good all-round guitarist

• Listen to a lot of music. Learn how to listen to the different parts and the interplay between the musicians. Listen to the guitar, the bass, the drums. Listen to a song several times and ‘listen’ to these different parts. Then listen to the drums and bass. See how they interact with one another. Listen to how the bass drum interacts with how the bass player is playing. Absorb everything. Listen a lot. Once you get some good skills you will hear some of the things you listen to will appear in your own playing.
• Study some basic music theory. Especially scale and chord theory. Understanding how they are made and work will give you an enormous boost to what and how you learn/practice. Especially how fast you progress. It’s also important to understand how rhythm works. After all, the music is all about the ‘beat’.
• Play and jam with a friend. This is really, really helpful. Just common sense, really. You get some real experience and learn about starting and stopping songs and being able to keep time when playing with others.
• Record your practice sessions now and then. Keep a record of you practice sessions so you can listen back. It always sounds different when you’re listening instead of actually playing. You will hear what needs more work which will help your future practice. You can also hear the progress you are making. Listen to a tape when you first started and compare to where you’re at now.

I have heaps more ideas for practicing and we’ll look at those in future articles. I’ll also put all this stuff into a PDF that you will be able to download

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