A good practice routine

I have some advice,

A month or two ago long I got too intense with my practice routine, I practiced many hours a day every day, followed the same pattern of stuff to do, and really disiplined myself. After doing that for a while, I realized that all that regimented practicing was making the guitar a chore to play, and it wasn't fun anymore. Now I practice when I want to and spend more time having fun with the guitar. Once I started doing that, I stopped worrying about my progress, and progress started to come.

One thing that has helped me recently is, practice your scales, but listen carefully and really try to recognize the intervals in them by ear.

-Dustin

My comment is similar, I got so anal about the practice routine that I created a word doc which included all the things I needed to practice like scales, chords with pictures, mini riffs, chord progressions, and songs I learned. The file got so big that practice was a chore and getting longer and longer.

Now my practice routine is: repeat my scales more for finger exercise and loosening up, then do scales to listen, then add one new chord then simply play for awhile. The important thing is the end part where I just play whatever makes me feel good like songs I love or just riffs that feel good and I am good at. Hey, sometimes if no one is in the house I even sing along and god knows how bad a singer I am :lol:

I might seem really stupid here but...what exactly are scales?

I need one too. Alas, I have none.

I might seem really stupid here but...what exactly are scales?Scales are simply notes within a key. They are useful for finger exercises but their main purpose in life, and I know I am trivializing this, but they are the basis for most riffs and solos. If you search the home page supporting this forum you will find many lessons and articles on scales. Here is a link to one I really like.

Scales within Scales

They are also the basis of chords. For example a major chord is made of the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes of a major scale for any given key. For example, the C major chord is made of the notes C E G from the C major scale of C D E F G A B.

what exactly are scales

They come from the Latin word scala, or ladder - it's a sequence of tones that rises and falls in pitch. We typically think of a scale as a sequence of tones within one octave; the pattern then repeats (exactly) in any additioanl octaves... there are hundreds of different scales, but the most important ones are the major, minor, and pentatonic.