And a little more about practice, in between guitar lessons!

So how’s that guitar practice going? If you find you’re 6-12 months into playing and have realised that you’ve found your calling in life and you’re destiny lies in at the very least being a bedroom rock star or at the most one day filling stadiums with your god given brilliance, then I recommend you begin to develop a bit of a routine when practising. Don’t be afraid to go as far as to write down all bases that you want to touch on for that session.

The obvious place to start is to tune up…….or not. If you feel you better express yourself on out of tune guitar then don’t let me stop you, you may need to break that habit down the track though. Secondly, I strongly recommend doing 10 – 15 minutes of finger exercises, here’s a little ink to a great beginner finger exercise I put up on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTYATwUA0Oo. Doing this does tend be a great preparation in that it will make whatever you’re practising thereafter a lot easier, kind of like a professional sportsperson having a short jog before competing. Practicing with a metronome is also strongly recommended particularly when doing your finger exercises, I could and possibly will write a whole 129 page blog on why a metronome is important!

The next part, the ‘guts’ of your practice routine is what you really want to do most, or improve most at. If you’re wanting to improve your soloing then probably best to work on your scales, or a guitar solo that you’re trying to nail. Or if you’re really wanting to work on your rhythm playing spend your time strumming away on that. This part of the practise is usually what I enjoy most.

In my teens, particularly on weekends, I would practise sometimes ten hours a day, just walking around the house with my guitar in my hands…all day long (admittedly I had no life outside of guitar) I did learn though that practise really does make perfect and there’s no short cuts or substitutes for hard work, so go on, get woodshedding!!

Until next week, keep practicing and of course, never give up!

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