Free Download - 30 Minute Practice Template
The stream of summer goodies continues with this epic template. A full 22 pages of help to remedy your poor practice habits.
About this Practice Template
Everyone's schedule is different.
We all have different demands, work days, school obligations, the list goes on.
Depending on what stage of life you're in, it might be quite tricky to find meaningful,
regular practice time with goals being the major focus.
Even if you have hour upon hour per day, it is easy for an entire day to turn in to a
noodle-fest.
This template guide is not meant to design any one program for you, but rather to
show you how to design your own programs, set your own goals, and evaluate your
progress.
This way of disciplined, goal-oriented practicing is more efficient and beneficial than
any other method by far. The great part about this way of thinking and planning is
that it works at any level of guitar playing. Get ready to think critically and honestly
about your own playing and let's get some work done!
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The Benefits of Designing Your Own Programs
You know your own playing. You know what you need to work on, you know what
your strengths are, and you probably have a pretty good idea of where you want to
go long term.
It can be quite daunting to look at a long-term goal while seeing where you are in the
present. Sometimes it leads to discouragement, but it almost always leads to long,
pointless practicing with no mini (mid-term) goals or milestones in mind.
Now imagine if you could (or maybe you have seen something like this already) go
down to a gas station or find something online that had a bunch of "X weeks to
better X" plans for you to work through as a guitarist.
These might work, but the people that designed these plans have no idea where you
are at in your playing.
Only YOU really know.
When you design your own plans, you are not just inventing something out of thin
air. You are pooling all of the resources you have available to you as a practicing
guitarist, and organizing them in a way that helps you stay on task for a very specific time frame. Once you have come up with your slogan or goal statement, go
searching for resources that will help you with your plan. We'll talk more about this in
a little bit.
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Coming to Terms With Your Playing
Even though we know where we are at with our own playing, there is a certain amount of delusion that we all carry with us as guitarists.
A few examples of these delusions are as follows:
Practicing means going in to your music room and playing as fast as you can for 15
minutes, strumming a few familiar chord progressions, then walking away feeling
pretty good about yourself.
...or you decide to spend all you have got on the first 30 seconds of that 2-minute
guitar solo.
...or you start giving away all your licks with absolutely NO musical context during a
sound check!
We've all been there! If these programs are going work, we have to slow way down
and really examine the fine details of our playing.
We have to strip everything back. There is no room for medicating ourselves by overindulging
in the things we already know how to do. Regardless of what your plan(s) end up being here are a few questions to ask yourself
regularly when examining your own playing:
Am I playing in time?
Whether strumming, finger picking or shredding it is all too easy to get over
confident with your technique, speed and efficiency if you're not checking yourself
against a metronome or other steady players.
Am I playing in the right key?
Always be checking the note choices you are using when you're playing with people.
Blowing through licks based on muscle memory (what you already know well)
sometime results in really wrong sounding "good" licks. This may seem obvious, but
just make your playing always makes sense musically -- even with technique building
drills. If you get to make your own exercises, why not design them to be musical?
Is my playing 'clean'?
Start keeping track of when you play dead notes, or have unwanted string buzz. This
happens to every player. Maybe you need to woodshed a specific line for awhile to commit it to your playing but don't be afraid to rework or simplify something so that
it comes across cleaner, and at the same time, set the more challenging task aside for
a future goal.
Do I regularly listen back to my own playing?
All of these questions can be answered with greater accuracy when you don't have to
play and listen at the same time. Since we all listen to other people's playing,
recording yourself and listening back to your own playing gives it a certain context
that is very important for consistent improvement.
If you own a laptop, odds are you already have the ability to record yourself well
enough to help you examine your playing in greater detail.
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This practice routine spans another 18 pages of information, as well as the template to develop your routine. Feel free to download it now and begin making your
sessions more effecient, effective, and beneficial towards your development as a guitarist!
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