Howto Get a Balanced Guitar Practice

Guitar Players...How To Get a Balanced Guitar Practice.

How's your guitar practice going?

You might have a wide variety of things that you practice, or you might be the type of player who practices a only few scales for hours a day until they are mastered. Whatever your current practice style is, having a balanced routine is essential if you want to become a versatile guitarist. If you practice just one or two things, you will become very good at just those few things, but you will be weak in other key areas.

In this basic 'HOWTO' you will learn how to create a practice routine that is well-balanced and will help you to work towards your ultimate vision of how you would like to play.

Below is a practice routine broken down into seven categories:

1. Technique
2. Repertoire (Covers)
3. Composition
4. Improvisation
5. Ear Training
6. Theory
7. Music Reading.

Everything that you practice will fit into one or more of the above areas. For example, if you are learning a very challenging cover tune by transcribing it off the CD, you are essentially working on your technique, repertoire and ear training at the same time. If you also write down the song in standard notation, you will also be developing your music reading skills.

You might be asking, "Do I have to practice things in all seven areas?" I believe that you don't have to if your vision doesn't require it. For example, if someone wants to become a very good classical guitarist and has no desire to improvise, then I believe that they don't need to practice things relating to improvisation (many times, the more we play, improvisation comes naturally anyway). We all have limited time available for practice, so it's a waste of time working on things that don't specifically help you reach your goals.

Here are a few exercises...

Exercise One:

Think about how you envision yourself as a guitarist. How would you like to play in one years time?

Once you have determined your vision or goals, think of as many things as you can that you would like to practice or think that you should practice in order to play in such a way as to achieve your goals. What specific things do you need to learn, develop and practice? Write them down now.

Exercise Two:

Next to each of the things written down for Exercise One, write down an appropriate category next to it. For example, if you wrote "I need to be able to play faster" then write "technique" next to it. If you feel that something you wrote belongs to more than one category, then write down all the categories it could belong to from the list of categories above.

Exercise Three:

Look at your answers for the previous two exercises. Once you've done that, prioritise the categories shown below, 1 through 7, 1 being top priority . For example, if you feel that technique is the most important thing you need to work on to reach your goals then put a 1 next to it.

• Technique
• Repertoire (covers)
• Composition
• Improvisation
• Ear Training
• Theory
• Music Reading

One point to remember, you should spend the most time practicing your number one priority. This seems pretty obvious, but many people do not do this properly. I've known a few guitar players who would like to be able to play incredibly fast, yet they do not do a enough technical practice.

Exercise Four:

Decide how much time every day you will spend on each category and write it next to each category below.

• Technique
• Repertoire (covers)
• Composition
• Improvisation
• Ear Training
• Theory
• Music Reading

The next step is to decide on a specific activity for each practice area. Make sure to write them down. Below are a couple of examples of what you might put down...

Technique: I will invest 15 minutes a day on alternate picking. I will start with the metronome at 80bpm and increase it by 4bpm daily.

Ear Training: I will invest 15 minutes a day on A minor pentatonic ear training exercise one.

You would have one specific activity for every practice area. If you have a lot of time to practice you could set more than one activity per practice area.

Give this method a try, and if you stick to it, I think you'll be more than happy with the results!