Getting In Practice Time Without A Guitar

None of us practice as much as we’d like to, let alone as much as we think we should. There’s work, school, family, friends, and no end of the little things that happen in life. And when a moment of free time comes along, well, who wouldn’t like to sit and just enjoy it by doing nothing once in a while?

And then, there are the times that we could practice, but alas we don’t have our guitars with us. Practice without a guitar? Sure! As much as we might think otherwise, we tend to concentrate our guitar practice on just the “finger” aspect. We strum and play scales and riffs and songs and work on getting our muscle memory in shape. But there’s a lot of “head” work that could be going on as well. And when better to practice using your head when you’re not preoccupied with your fingers?

When I lived in Chicago, I realized that I could have easily gotten in anywhere from an hour to two hours practice time a day by playing my guitar on the bus or train during my commutes to and from work. But that’s not an ideal place to practice, with a guitar anyway. So I started working on the other aspects of playing, the “head work” as it were, during the commutes and found that it truly helped me a lot when I got that guitar back in my hands.

You may not be able to practice guitar as much as you’d like, but don’t think you can’t be improving your skills just because you don’t have a guitar with you. Here are four easy things you can practice when you’re away from your guitar:

Rhythm. Strumming and keeping rhythm tends to be one of the biggest challenges for beginning guitarists. Often it takes a while before the act of strumming becomes fluid and natural. But there are a lot of ways to develop your sense of rhythm and timing that don’t require you to have a guitar in hand.

Do you tap your foot along with the beat of a song? Take that a step further and use your strumming hand. Tap out a strumming pattern on a desk or table, or use a pick to strum on your leg. It’s a great way to get a rhythm into your hands before you try it out on your guitar.

Ear Training. Who wouldn’t like to pick out how to play a song just by listening to it? Ear training might seem beyond your abilities and skills, but it is something that most people can develop with time and practice and repetition. And there are tons of opportunities to practice!

Chances are you listen to music pretty often. Take a little time to concentrate on what you’re hearing. You can do this in a general way, such as trying to pick out major or minor chords, or in a more specific way, trying to figure out what the guitarist is doing. Are they chugging out power chords, fingerpicking, or playing a riff to help out the rhythm? As you learn more about intervals and chords, you might even find that listening in this way helps you learn songs by ear.

Print out a few of our lessons on ear training to read in your spare time. You can find them here: Ear Training

Chord Makeup. What’s six times four? Twenty-four, of course. What notes are in a G major chord? If you couldn’t automatically answer “G, B, and D,” then you might make it a point to learn three or four chords a week. Soon, you’ll know your chords as well as your multiplication tables. You’ll find this very handy when you’re trying to come up with different chord voicings (alternate ways to play chords). Combining chord knowledge and ear training makes it easier to let the music you hear in your head come out in your playing.

Start out simple, working on things that you use every day. In other words, concentrate on your major and minor chords in “guitar friendly” keys such as C, G, D, A and E. Once you’re good with those, try adding sevenths and major sevenths. Then you can really test yourself by picking two or three notes and then naming chords that use the notes you chose.

Again, and I really can’t stress this enough, learning the makeup of your chords is not all that different from learning your multiplication tables. If you take the time, it will become second nature to you before you know it.

Sight Reading. Reading music notation is another thing that gets incredibly easier with a little practice. When you know you’ll have time to read, carry a piece or two of sheet music along with””or even instead of””your newspaper, book, or favorite guitar magazine, and try to listen to the music in your head while reading it.

A lot of people couldn’t be bothered to learn to read music, preferring to argue instead about how (insert your guitar icon here) doesn’t know how and it doesn’t stop him or her from being great. I can’t help think that in the amount of time it takes to write and post a response about why you don’t have to read music, you could learn six notes on the staff.

Reading music is simply a tool, a color to add to your crayon box, if you will. And for many people, it can be a huge help, if for no other reason than to learn to read rhythms and to use that skill to enhance their strumming. Even if you decide you can’t read the notes, notation will allow you to read a rhythm, which kind of brings us back to step one again!

So the next time you find yourself without a guitar, get in some practicing! You’ll find that this supplemental work with your head will help you improve the work with your fingers.

–David Hodge