In the book "Outliers", Malcolm Gladwell explained it takes ten thousand hours of training to perfect an art or area of interest. But with guitar (along with other talents) the time you put in rehearsing is merely part of the puzzle. You must also understand what and HOW to practice to help get the most from your guitar practice time.
Consider this: If you carried on performing exactly the same song for ten thousand hours, you would not get much better on guitar. You'll just be getting better at that tune. It really is a basic concept, but many people forget it. Many new students reach out to me to have instruction simply because really feel they're in a rut. It is typically because they are not moving their selves towards diverse musical areas.
The main cause is not having a reliable approach for your practice sessions. I am about to go over an ideal guitar practice session for you.
This is predicated on a 30 minute session. You are surely allowed to rehearse for a longer period if you would like. The more the better. Stretch every one of these steps, but keep the ratios similar. And because the human attention span has limitations, take a little five minute break near the thirty minute mark. You'll notice that your head is rested and it will be easier to focus on the remainder of your practice period.
During your respite, avoid getting caught up in something different that will divert you. Just stretch a little, grab a cup of water, and get back into it.
Before Practice: Listening - Get yourself enthusiastic about playing guitar by playing a few of your favorite guitar songs. Find songs that get you truly excited to play and draw on that energy when you begin your session.
2 Minutes: Stretching - Getting Carpal Tunnel Syndrome or even Tendonitis is a bummer. You can easily avoid the pains simply by adequately stretching before you'll play. Do a number of wrist and shoulder stretching exercises in order to relax everything up prior to beginning. You can do these when you are enjoying the pre-practice songs.
5 Minutes: Technique Exercise and Warm-Ups - What? Aren't you meant to devote hours upon hours mastering scales and arpeggios? Absolutely not. They are monotonous. Get warmed up with some of these exercises: scales, arpeggios, string skipping, finger combination exercises, diagonal picking, chromatic four-finger runs, etc. Then begin using these in songs within the next segment. Technical training is comparable to studying grammar. Learning musical pieces is much like writing a book. You should be sure to perform all of these with a metronome and also change up your exercises every few days.
18 Minutes: Project Songs - This is where you apply the most focus, practicing whatever your present project pieces happen to be. It's the place where you are going to put the technique lessons to work and actually love playing guitar instead of just practicing scales. Do not try and work on any more than a couple of pieces at the same time. And besides just learning how to play it, make sure you investigate the theory and structure as well. The more knowledge you get on the way music can be built, the easier it truly is for you to master more songs down the road.
If you're challenging yourself adequately, you probably won't have the ability to learn the whole song in one training session. It could take weeks or months to master a song and that is ok. Sometimes however, chances are you'll hit a wall in which you won't be able to improve it any additional. No biggie. Just set the song away for a couple months and attempt it again after you have improved your skills elsewhere. You do not have to strive for flawlessness with everything.
If mastering an entire song inside eighteen minutes is common for you, you aren't challenging your self quite enough. Try to find tunes to work on which are slightly above your degree of skill. Challenging yourself continuously is definitely the best approach to improve on guitar. Put aside the easy pieces for the free play component of your session.
8 Minutes: Free Play - Everything goes at this point so long as you're playing something. Simple pieces, older songs you enjoy jamming on, improvising, composing tunes, whatever. But not only will you have fun at this point, you will also learn how to play without reservation.
Once again, if you are intending to conduct a extended practice session, for example 1 hour, just increase every one of these time periods in proportion. Ten minutes of warm-ups, 36 minutes of project pieces, sixteen minutes of free play. You could also do it as two separate half hour practice sessions.
A couple of extra helpful hints:
- Work with a metronome for everything you work on. You probably want to smash it to bits from time to time, but it's your best friend in becoming a tighter guitar player.
- When you are practicing, particularly mindless technical stuff, different ideas may occur to you for riffs, tunes, lyrics, and even non-music stuff. Keep your notepad and little sound recorder within reach while you practice in order to capture those creative ideas quickly and get them off your brain allowing you to focus on the practice tasks at hand. Come back and develop them during the free play chunk.
- "I did not have time to practice" may be the worst type of excuse you could have. And I hear it on a regular basis. To cure this, plan your rehearsal session into your day just like other "have-to's". Classes, work, prepare dinner, put the youngsters to bed, practice guitar. If it is important to you, treat it in that way.
- Keep a guitar readily handy to play should you have a moment. Stuck on telephone hold? Rebooting the computer? Pick up the guitar and play just a little. Yes, we would like to always keep the guitar clean and safe, but don't stick it in the case while you are at home. Even that small process of getting it out from the case will keep you from playing as frequently as you might. However, if you happen to be worried about a good guitar staying out in the open, invest in a cheapo beater guitar and use that. Mine is always sitting close to my desk to be played at a second's notice.
Developing a dependable schedule and regularly challenging yourself to try out something a bit more complicated will guarantee that your ten thousand hours of mastering guitar are very well invested.
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