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Your guitar practice is very personal. Everyone is different and we all have varying amounts of time to dedicate to our guitar practice. However, there are proven techniques that will help you get the most out of your practice session.
So here's my top 10 list of ways to get more out of your guitar practice.
1. Short practice sessions often are more productive than longer ones less frequently
If you're lucky enough to be able to dedicate hours a day to your practice then there's no doubt that this is the optimal way to become a great guitarist. However, it's not the mere duration of your practice session that's important? I believe that repetition should be the primary focus and is more important than the length of a single practice session. Let me explain. If during the week a guitar player has the opportunity to practice once a week for one hour or six times a week for ten minutes then the better choice would be to practice six times a week. Our hands respond to repetition. The muscles require repeated exposure to a particular task before the movement is committed to 'muscle memory'. This muscle memory should be a central focus for anyone aiming to develop fluency and an instinctive command of the instrument. So practice regularly.
2. Tempo, rhythm and metre are as important as melody and harmony
Many guitar players suffer from the curse of perfectionism. However, mistakes are crucial to your learning. If for instance you're learning to change between a sequence of chords, but every time you change from chord A to chord B there's a huge pause whilst you position your fingers, then perhaps you'd benefit from switching your focus to the rhythm and tempo. Without a sense of pulse, adherence to tempo and accurate rhythm nothing that you play will have any coherence, regardless of how well you're pronouncing each chord. So abandon the inner perfectionist and apply yourself to incrementally improving the quality of what you're playing whilst maintaining a focus on pulse, tempo and rhythm. It doesn’t matter how hideous it sounds at the beginning! Incremental improvements will happen every time you repeat the exercise and you will be moving towards the ultimate goal of a great sounding performance.
3. The metronome is your best friend
Picking up from the previous point about the importance of rhythm, it's essential that you work with a metronome to internalise good time keeping. The metronome is often used when practicing scales and is a great way of benchmarking your progress. However, the pieces of music that you're learning will also benefit from the discipline of a metronome making your performance rhythmically solid and musical.
4. A drum machine is a good alternative to the metronome
The metronome is fabulous at keeping time, however it doesn't provide much information about the subdivision of the beat. This is where a simple drum machine can come in handy. Drum kit players combine different patterns of rhythm to various parts of the kit and the aggregate of these patterns is the groove. The groove is really helpful in your practice as it makes you rhythmically aware of much more than the crotchet pulse. There will be syncopations (off beat rhythms) quaver and semi quaver patterns and other advanced rhythms in some of the more sophisticated drum patterns. Playing with the drum machine attunes your ear to the possibilities of rhythm within a bar and greatly improves your phrasing and musicality. You can find a free to use drum machine here
5. A balanced diet keeps you healthy
We're often reminded about the virtues of a balanced diet. The same is true for your guitar practice. Make sure that you have lots of varied material in your routine. Your practice should include a quality finger warmup to prevent any injury to your hands, scales and arpeggios to acquire fluency in your technique and a range of compositions of varying difficulty to challenge your musicianship.
6. Don’t become a riff collector!
We’re all prone to the earworm phenomenon and often the most iconic part of a song will become the focus for practice. Unfortunately, too many guitarist become riff collectors, learning to play only the iconic parts of tunes whilst missing out on the greater challenge of learning the entire composition. Being able to perform a piece from start to finish, with an unbroken concentration, is essential if you want to become a truly proficient guitarist and the more songs you learn the better a musician you become.
7. A change is as good as a rest
A change is as good as a rest, so the saying goes. I think this can be especially true for your guitar practice. Finding different places to practice can really help you to see your practice in a new light. You may find certain environments suit you better than others. Some rooms can help you concentrate whilst others are distracting and not conducive to a productive practice session. So experiment by taking your guitar practice to different places and see how you respond.
8. Practice with an appropriate tone and plug in!
This tip is for electric guitar and bass players. There's an inevitable amount of faff involved in getting the electric guitar ready for a practice session but it's essential faff if you're going to practice well. Too many electric guitar players practice without their instrument plugged in. The problem with practicing acoustically on an electric instrument is that the electric guitar has a Jekyll and Hyde personality: timid and quiet when un-amplified and potentially loud and out of control when plugged in! You'll only learn about how the electric guitar behaves at volume by plugging it in and turning up the volume. So unleash the inner rock god and crank it up now and again.
9. Posture. Posture. Posture
Good posture is so important to getting a decent sound out of your instrument and also helps to prevent repetitive strain and related injuries. Avoid practicing in a chair with arms or on a seat or stool that's too high. It's important that both of your feet sit firmly on the ground. If you're playing a classical guitar having the instrument resting on your left leg and using a footstool can really improve your general control of the instrument. If you're playing electric guitar or bass and you'd like to play live, it's important to practice standing up as the guitar feels very different in a standing position.
10. Have some fun
This is perhaps the most important tip - enjoy yourself! Ultimately guitar practice is about you. It's precious time that you set aside with no interruptions or distractions from other daily tasks. It's a time to engage with music, be creative and fire up the imagination. We all need to spoil ourselves from time to time and what more noble a way than by learning to play an instrument.
