My practice schedule

Hmm. Not bad. Not everybody schedules their time; it makes a lot of difference when you do.

Is this daily?

My suggestion would be to add one hour to "refine existing repertoire" and two hours to "new repertoire". Obviously if you're working or in full time education something's got to give, but more focus should be placed on new perpertoire than keeping the existing stuff ticking over.

Best,

A :-)

Yes, my schedule is daily but I have most days only 2 hours of time to practice. So I dont think I have 3 hours for only refine my repertoire and learn new songs.

I have changed my schedule to:

· Review, Refine, Existing Repertoire (10 Minutes)
· Learn New Repertoire (20 Minutes)

It depends on your goals,but I think you're giving only 5 minutes to scales and 5 minutes to chrods..I personally would give 10 to 15 minutes to scales and if possible 10 to 15 to chords (both are the basis for melody and harmony)...ear training should be something that you will gain in conjunction with the other skills, the same goes for the note recognition exercise. What I would advise as a good exercise is to play up and down one single string, then two strings, with this simple exercise you will work melody ,ear training ,scale constructions, the modes, intervals and note recognition. Give it a try!

This is great! Good work on the schedule.

Something to remember is that as you learn and progress, some of these categories will expand or shrink (or both) accordingly. When you've learned some of the notes on the fretboard, for example, that time will shrink and you can apply it elsewhere. Likewise with chords

And you can also combine them. Scales, once you know some of them, can be your "warm-ups," as can be chord changes.

Another thought is to vary your routine a bit. If you only have so much time on any given day, but you're still practicing every day, then make certain days have certain focus. Spend one day (after warmups) on scales, one on chords and changes, one on new repertoire and one on old and then use your other two days as you find you need them.

You're the one who best knows where you need to focus but you're also the one who best knows how much discipline you need in order to get there. If you're honest and flexible, you should have no trouble adjusting the schedule to fit your progress and your goals.

Hope this helps.

Peace

Excellent post, David. I will also follow your tips :)
cheers!

Little stringent. Is that how they practice in the military? Heh.

How do you determine your songs? Okay, from 0:12 to 0:20 I want to play an A-chord, from 0:20 to 0:21 operation change chord shall commence, and than from 0:21 to 0:30 I'll play a C-chord.

Just poking fun, and all kidding aside, it looks like you've set up something that will build your skills with time. My advice though would be to let it air out a little bit, playing scales is boring. You'll find that as you learn a couple songs, and as you undertake learning more difficult songs, you'll be practicing chords, scales, techniques and training your ear all at the same time.

I'm opposed to "playing scales" if you don't know the notes of the fretboard.

It leads to the very bad habit of "pattern playing" and pretty soon you'll be asking questions like "my solo's are boring what's a new scale I can use to make it more interesting?"

I'd suggest that you only practice scales where you know the notes of the SCALE, and say the note/scale# as you play it. This will help you learn the keyboard.

Here's my test to tell if my students know their major scale, for example . . I'll ask "What keys have an F in them?" or some such.

Spend some "practice" time away from the instrument memorizing the major scales and the circle of 5ths /cycle of fourths.

Don't ever get into the trap of playing patterns. It leads to stale, solos devoid of melodic ideas!!

(or if you find you're already there, learn to think in terms of notes and phrases and break yourself out of that asap!)

Sounds a little ridgid to me but hey .... if it works for you then do it. Myself, I just pick the thing up and play. I want to keep it fun and guess what? 30 years and it's still fun. 8) As for the practicing scales and theory in your head without the guitar ...... well work is a great place for that. :P

Thats a good schedule. I may steal it and modify it to my liking :D

I'm opposed to "playing scales" if you don't know the notes of the fretboard.

It leads to the very bad habit of "pattern playing" and pretty soon you'll be asking questions like "my solo's are boring what's a new scale I can use to make it more interesting?"

I'd suggest that you only practice scales where you know the notes of the SCALE, and say the note/scale# as you play it. This will help you learn the keyboard.

I'll second that. I started out learning scales to learn the fretboard but fell into the "just playing patterns" and wasn't learning the fretboard. Now I practice 1 or 2 scales up and down the fretboard and call out each note as I play it.

lol clockworked.

In my opinion, you don't really need to set aside time for chords...These will come as you learn songs, so you could, really, add more time to learning new repetoire, thereby allowing yourself more time to learn chords as well, in a much more fun manner.

Wow!

That is a fine tuned schedule for sure! My beginner 1 hour schedule usually goes like this:

* Warm up & free jamming (10 min)
* Chords (some time till I get frustated, like 20 min or so)
* Whatever easy song I'm trying to learn this week (rest of time)

I try to balance having fun and learning... more the later than the former I'm afraid :-)

I try to balance having fun and learning... more the later than the former I'm afraid :-)

Learning is fun, surely? You can't play even your favourite song without having to learn something

Best,

A :-)

I would just be wary of being too focused on the amount of time and the area that you are working on. Guitar is supposed to be fun - if you come across a few chord changes or melody lines that you like go ahead and spend as much time on them as you want; get carried away and don't get tied down by schedules!

I usually play anywhere from 4 to 9 hours a day and of that time I spend 5-ish (heavy on the 'ish') minutes on a finger warm-up exercise to get my left and right hands synchronized and the rest of the time I spend perfecting old songs that I have written and working on writing new songs. And of course I'll turn on some of my favorite bands and play along with them or come up with stuff that goes along with their songs.