A metronome is a mechanical device that provides a click sound at a selected tempo. The metronome lets you learn to control the timing of the music. Critics of metronome practice rightfully claim that real music is not played at a strict click-click metronome tempo. In live music, the tempo gets pushed or pulled back. … Read more
Charting your weekly guitar practice is a great way to keep you on track with your guitar-playing goals. You do have distinct guitar-playing goals? Don’t you? If not, stop and read, Guitar Tip: Set Your Guitar Playing Goals. First, establish how much time you can allocate to guitar practice during a typical week. In my case, … Read more
Don’t even think about practicing your guitar without having a pad and pencil handy (or pen, if you prefer). The pad/pen complement the digital timer I suggested in Guitar Practice Tip: Use a Countdown Timer. See my post, How to Practice Guitar With a Metronome.First, I like to use a mechanical pencil, with a decent eraser. One … Read more
Why do you want to play guitar? What do you want to get out of your guitar playing? Why practice? — to master a new tune? to learn to sight-read? to get faster? to pass the audition? Even if you don’t realize it we all practice to achieve some guitar-playing goal. To get the most out … Read more
The Complete Idiot’s Guide (CIG) to Guitar Exercises by Hemme Luttjeboer is a complete book of guitar exercises. It covers chord exercises based around the CAGED system, single note exercises employing scales and Arpeggios. The book also includes an introduction to fingerpicking with some right-hand exercises. While you’re likely to learn some basic theory while working … Read more
This long-awaited series covering purposeful guitar practice is here! Unless you’ve already hit the big time with your guitar, you probably want to improve your guitar playing. That means you need to spend some time practicing guitar. Guitar practice can be fun (well sort of), and it’s fulfilling to accomplish something new with your guitar … Read more
In this Purposeful Guitar Practice series we’ve offered ideas for scheduling your guitar practice time and using a digital timer to get the most out of your guitar-practice sessions. It’s important to manage your limited guitar-practice time, but it’s equally important to manage your guitar-practice energy. In Be Excellent at Anything, author Tony Schwartz feels that energy management is as … Read more
This effective guitar tip is called Grease the Groove (GTG). I learned GTG from strength and fitness guru, Pavel Tsatsouline. It’s a strength-building exercise technique that I’ve applied successfully to my physical fitness workouts. Grease the Groove is designed to get you past your “sticking points.” The GTG method for getting past sticking points involves frequent, but … Read more
When we practice our guitars, one goal is to develop our guitar muscle memory. This implies that the muscles can take over and we can check our brains at the door. But, in fact, the memories are stored in the brain like a library of frequently enacted muscle tasks. Through repitition, you can get very good … Read more