Practice tips for guitar

Practise Practise Practise! That’s the advice given to us by countless teachers, parents and other musicians to reach our goals, and it’s correct. But it’s often difficult to know how to divide our time efficiently when we practise and what we need to do to improve and make the most of our time. So I hope this article helps anyone out there that needs some guidance on effective techniques and time management.

Practise tips for the burgeoning Musician

How and what we practise is much more important than the amount of time we dedicate to it. Now I’m not saying that playing for hours and hours a day is meaningless, if you can do it and be efficient with your time then you will obviously see more rapid improvement in your playing, but spending hours a day just noodling will not be as efficient as spending one hour a day onquality practice.

Simple and Powerful Guitar Practice Tips

Whenever possible learn only what is useful to you and has relevance to you now or in the foreseeable future. Can you see yourself using this information in a months time and it will benefit your playing now? If the answer is yes then practise it, if the answer is no, then find a technique, scale, chord or whatever that will be useful to you now and learn that. The more relevant the information is the more your brain will remember it. Know what you are playing and why you want to play it.

How long should I practise for? Great question! The answer is whatever you’re comfortable with. For some this will be hours, for others it’ll be thirty minutes. Dedicating approximately the same amount of time to sit down with your guitar everyday will see you reap the rewards. So forty minutes six days a week is better than four hours on a Monday followed by five days off! Doing the latter will result in your brain forgetting what you did on the Monday and you having to relearn that material again.

Tips to Boost Your Practice Session

Variation is key as it’ll stop boredom creeping in by playing the same thing everyday. Change your routine to keep things fresh. If you studied major seven chords on Monday, why not look at minor seven chords on the Tuesday. You played Blues licks on the Wednesday, try out some Country licks on the Thursday. Remember, find out what works best for you and stick to it and try and dedicate the same amount of time each day to specific areas of your playing.

There’s no hard and fast rules! As long as you’re learning material that you’ll use, is relevant to you and your growth as a guitarist and you’re consistent, then you’re doing the right thing.

Learning is a treasure that will follow it’s owner everywhere – ancient Chinese proverb