practice schedule?

What type of music you want to play will determine what you should practice.

sight reading is playing from sheet music.
you have seen orchestra musicians and piano players flipping pages.
they are reading music notation.

starting out learn proper hand position, open chords, and rhythm.
once you know a few chords start learning songs.
I think there is no better way to improve, learn and have fun.
'applied knowledge'.

I've just started as well. I'm mostly focusing on chords right now, but also fit in some single-string work. This is what I do...

I start by playing first position chromatic scales, up and down a few times...increasing the metronome each time until I break (pretty quickly right now . :roll: )

Then I go through the chords I know...random changes and different strumming patterns I know.

Then I work on the chord(s) I'm adding new. (right now the 7th chords for me)

Then I work on a new strum (right now muting the strings for a percussive strum)

Then work on a new song

Then go through a few songs I already know

With any time left, I kick off a 12-bar blues backing track (key of A), and fiddle around for a while trying to make something sound good.

I figure that this way, I am reinforcing what I know...but I keep trying to stay at the edge of my "comfort zone", adding new stuff, and finishing up with something I can really have fun with.

Oh...and I've always considered sight reading is to read (from some printed music....either standard notation or tab) a song that you've never seen before.

you are dedicated.
and I like that you play songs.
you will go far. 8)

I usually try to play something different each time I practice. After going through my warm ups, scales-struming open chords, I try to play a song that I've not yet learned. After working on the new stuff, I fall back to either the songs I already know..from "Wish you were here" to "In Repair" (John Mayer). If I have the time, (with 2 kids I usually do not) I like to do some 12 barre blues.

Hey...quick question. Does any one use a recorder (a hand held???) to track improvement? If so, are they expensive?

sight reading is playing from sheet music.
you have seen orchestra musicians and piano players flipping pages.
they are reading music notation.
.
I always say sight reading as more then just reading music. A lot of people can read music but they are at the sound out the word stage. A sight reader can see and play the music cold without ever hearing the piece in the a performance time, with phrasing close to how it will actually be played. Or atleast that is how I seperated sight readers from the rest of us school band players.

Hey...quick question. Does any one use a recorder (a hand held???) to track improvement? If so, are they expensive?
Absolutely.
Actually, what I use is my computer, but it's the same idea.

I'd bet that 3/4 or more of us here use some sort of recorder to track our progress.
It's a lot easier to be objective about your playing by listening back to it after.

For beginners, there are a few things that really do help you go further faster:

How you achieve those things are really up to the individual player.

For myself, I've always found that I need to delineate practice time where I'm focused on specific goals compared to what I call noodle time where I just play whatever I feel like. Other people find that too restrictive.

For most beginners, one of the honest advantages of a good teacher is helping establish a practice routine that (a) helps you achieve your goals and (b) doesn't let anything fall through the cracks.

I tell my students that a practice session should have five parts:

1. Warm up. Depending on your level, this can be scales, chord changes, technical drills, or anything else that gets the blood moving and your mind ready to go.

2. Review. As Jhengsman pointed out, many sight readers are at the "sound out the word" stage - it takes many repetitions (thousands, literally) to see a chord and immediately know it's such-and-such a voicing of Dm7 or whatever. Other musical skills are similar - grabbing chords, knowing the notes in scales - they take LOTS of repetitions to really master. So after you're warm, do a couple things you can already play.

3. New stuff. This is whatever your goal is for the practice session. The key here is to stay focused and play it perfectly - it doesn't matter how slow you have to go to do that. You've heard that practice makes perfect... but that's not true. Practice makes permanent. Only perfect practice makes perfect - be hard on yourself when you're doing your new stuff! If you make an error, no matter how small, stop - play the part you messed up, and do it right. Then do it right a second time. Now back up a measure or two and play through the part where you messed up - and don't mess up this time!

4. This part I call a "study piece". It's not enough to play something right... you also need to play it musically. A study piece is something you can already 'play' - you're trying to perfect its performance as much as you can. Work on phrasing, dynamics, tempo changes - make it talk.

5. Have fun. Take whatever skills you're doing in the "new stuff" area and play around with it. If you're working on arpeggios, play with a jam track and use them. If you're learning to grab a 9th voicing, play through some songs and replace the 7th chords with your new 9th. This integrates your new skills with the old ones and makes them useful to you - it's not just about 'book learning'.

But that's a general outline. I'm not a big fan of highly structured practice (10 mintues on this, 30 minutes on that, etc.) At one point, I was highly structured in my own practicing, but I found I can get the same results in about 40% of the time by being really focused on what I'm doing. So now, rather than saying "I'm going to spend 10 minutes on scale studies" I'll just play them - if it feels right and sounds right first time through, I'm better off putting more of today's efforts into something that's challenging me to improve.

Oh, one more thing beginners have trouble with in practicing: they spend way too much time working on things that don't need work, and not very much time on things that do. Let's say you're practicing a 5 minute long piece, and you keep messing up 2 bars from the end... a lot of beginners will stop, and go back to the beginning to try again. Big mistake! That means you'll only play the problem spot 6 times in 30 minutes!

The first time I go through a piece I'll have a pencil handy. I'll mark the trouble spots - that first run through is just to see where the problems are, and I play each part just once. Now I know what I've got to work on... I can take a trouble spot and work on it methodically, trying different things to get it right. If a trouble spot is 10 seconds long, I can play it 30 times in five minutes - that's five times the actual practicing in just 1/6th of the time!

Oh, one more thing beginners have trouble with in practicing: they spend way too much time working on things that don't need work, and not very much time on things that do. Let's say you're practicing a 5 minute long piece, and you keep messing up 2 bars from the end... a lot of beginners will stop, and go back to the beginning to try again. Big mistake! That means you'll only play the problem spot 6 times in 30 minutes!

This is so, so true. I used to waste so much time in my practicing by not breaking things down. One of the first things my instructor did when I started taking private lessons was have me break things down and work on the "hard" bits. This gave such an enormous boost to the efficiency of my practice. I still sometimes fall back into just repeating the whole thing when I really just need to work on a small piece.

As an instructor I struggle constantly with students who simply refuse to make good use of their time. Some folks will listen really well around technique, musical theory, etc. But when it comes to the real meat of instruction -- how to practice so that you do improve -- they just tune out.

I see bad practice habits, rather than not practicing, as the single biggest limiting factor in student progress.

Someone will overhear a student who had a lesson before them nail some really complicated bit, and they'll inevitably have the following conversation with me:

Student How long has that guy before me been playing? He's really good?
Me Oh him, umm I think he started a month after you did.
Student No. No. I don't mean with you. I mean how long has he been playing total?
Me That's what I mean. He just started a few weeks after you. Maybe a month.
Student Wow. Really. He must practice all the time.
Me No. He practices about 1/2 hour a day, sometimes a little more. But I know he plays basketball and football, so it's not more than that.
Student Man, it must be nice to be such a natural talent.
Me It's not about natural ability, it's about how you use your time, let's take a look at this song you've been struggling with and I'll show you . .
Student I wish I had that kind of talent . . .

Me: sighs deeply inside and tries to accept another student has defined his own limitations based on a refusal to accept instruction around how to practice efficiently

Student I wish I had that kind of talent . . .

People believe too much in talent. They attribute their failures to lack of talent instead of lack of efficient practice, and it gives them an excuse to not practice (which doesn't make sense since they should practice more to make up for the 'lack of talent').

It's all hard work people!

Hi,

There many different ways that you can organise a practice schedule. We all have different characters and different goals, so unfortunately one method doesn't fit everybody. But there is one essential thing about whatever practice style you adopt (even if it's completely disorganised and erratic) -

It must be one which you will actually keep up.

The golden rule of getting better is to keep practising. A big chunk of beginners flounder and give up because they never sorted out any kind of motivation to plough on through the tough parts. It's pointless drawing up the most perfect practice plan imaginable if you can't find ways to keep it fresh and interesting, and you can't keep up your enthusiasm for doing it.

I vary between periods of intense interest and enthusiasm for particular aspects, and times when I have very little structure or focus. I've tried the '20 minutes of this, half an hour of that approach' and it's never worked for me, so I've stopped trying to plan that way. But the most important thing is that I do keep practising and playing, and every month I'm a bit better than I was before. Other players could possibly need pretty much the exact opposite of the way I go about it, so don't be discouraged if it takes a while to find out what's the most effective way of doing what you need to do in the way that suits you. Good luck. :)

Cheers,

Chris

Yeah, it's a fine art trying to balance out productive practice with fun practice. Or, ideally, to make "fun practice" productive.

My problem these days is that I feel like I have a hard time fitting everything in. I usually start off with 15 mins of running through scales, followed by 15 mins of some sort of chord/rhythm stuff. Then I'll spend maybe half an hour working on songs (existing songs, not songwriting). That all already adds up to an hour, and I don't think I can realistically practice more than an hour a day on average.

So basically I feel like there's no time left for improvising/soloing, theory, songwriting, technique training (such as HOPO exercises, bends, vibrato, etc). :(