Anyone use a practice regime?

Don't use any regime or anything similar at all, but was kinda wondering how long you've been practicing like that? Seems pretty darn tough...

eight hours a day, insane my friend. You will certainly become a session guitarist, you've got the discipline. Either that, or you'll go insane with some social disorder.

Lets hope for the first one.

I don't really have a practice "regime" either. I pick up the guitar, I play, sometimes I'll do what my teacher gave me, most of the time I won't. My goal in life is to waste as much of my money as possible. So, I'm working on that I guess. ;)

Woah, now thats a lot of practice, I consider a day where i get in two hours playing alot... Just wondering, why a session guitarist?, with that amount of practice, you could prolly go much farther than that.

I dont know what it is but i just have this drive to practice, i really enjoy learning new chords, or new licks, working with a metronome to get my speed up and that, i must be wierd!lol

Its not to bad really, if i don't get bothered then its pretty easy to do but harder when people want me to play on ps2 or go out!

Session work seems the most safe option really, anything above it is a bonus. Im not gonna set the goal of becoming a rock star, because half of that is based on luck, which never seems to favour me.

Hiya,

I try to make sure I get an hour's practice a day, and it's important to structure what I do.

I warm up with scales and arpeggios, practice rest strokes with simple melodies, practice my free strokes and two-part with less simple pieces, bring in some light classics (Vivaldi, Milan, Tarrega), and finally build up to my usual dance repertoire. Classical Gas is the encore, as it were.

So the structured practice regimen gets my vote.

Best,

A :-)

I've always used practice routines, but I vary them pretty often, every 2-6 months. My current routine, since about mid-February:

Electric - a long warmup here, starting with scales, then every day I take one key - I work through the cycle of fifths (today will be C again) and play drills, chord inversions, single string exercises, position shifting drills, etc. When I'm done with that, I'm currently doing blues pieces, chord studies, some hybrid picking drills, sight reading, some rock and funk pieces, more scale studies, more chord studies, some jazz pieces, and then a bit more sight reading.

Acoustic - a few scales to warm up, then technical exercises and some short study pieces in various acoustic styles (bluegrass etc.)

Classical - some scales to warm up, technical exercises (the Sor/Carcassi stuff), then a repertoire piece

I keep a practice log, with notes on what I focused on, what needs more work, and the amount of time I played. When I decided to become good at the guitar, back in the 70s, I practiced 5 hours a day. Over time I've found that extensive practice doesn't help me that much... the mental focus to be truly practicing instead of just playing is demanding, and it's easy to slide into mindless routine - I now set a minimum time for each part, and practice longer if I'm up to it. Looking over my log for the last month or so, I tend to actually practice between about 1:45 and 3:00 per day.

Between teaching, gigging, rehearsing, and practice, I've got a guitar in my hand a lot more than that, sometimes 12 hours a day. I actually play very little when I'm teaching - except for those lessons where students are improvising and I'm playing backing changes, I might play only 5-10 minutes out of an hour to demonstrate things.... my actual total playing time probably runs 35 hours per week right now if you add everything up.

The most important thing is consistency, I think. About 3 days a year on average I'll find I truly can't make the mental effort (if I have the flu or something), so I won't practice, but I'll still play.... the last day I didn't play at all was in March of 2003 when I was coming back from Brazil and travel time simply didn't allow it.

Oh, I also do some mental practice... I take my key of the day, and at odd moments I'll toss out a name of a scale or arpeggio and quickly name the notes while I visualize the fretboard.

I don't have a structured practise regime as such....at the moment I'm desperately trying to work up some kind of proficiency on bass, as well as practising acoustic, acoustic slide, electric, electric slide etc....wonder how Nick copes with all those guitars?

:D :D :D

Vic

That's a good point about the mental practicing, i do that when im in work, which is 4-8 everyday (gives me a nice rest and cool off from morning and nite practicing) i just randomly pick a key, map out the chords in it in my head and scales that fit over each. Didn't realise i did it so much until you mentioned it just then.

You might be able to help me with this Noteboat, i learn alot of scales, and i was wondering rather than mass repetition is there some sort of secret way to memorise them better and quicker. What i usually do is map the shape out from root to root in the five positions, and then add the other notes around it in pencil so it completes each shape. Just wondered if their is any other tricks and tips.

There's a couple things you can do...

First, once you have the basic fingerings down, practice in patterns rather than just up and down. For a diatonic scale, you might try sequences like:

1-3-2-4-3-5-4-6-7-1
1-2-3-4-2-3-4-5-3-4-5-6-4-5-6-7-5-6-7-1

etc.

Second, fingerings are a way to navigate, but you really want to know the fretboard. There will be times when you're chasing an idea and you find yourself out of position at a chord change... so in addition to practicing the 'horizontal' fingering in each position, practice 'vertical' fingerings - where the notes fall on each string. Pick a string and a finger, and when you get there with your horizontal fingering, keep going on that string with that finger until you get to the next note (you'll shift higher or lower on that string depending on the scale direction) - then try to continue the scale from the place you find yourself.

For example, if you're in C, you've got your five positions as open, second, fifth, seventh, and eighth. If you start in seventh position, and pick the D string, first finger, going up you'll go:

-------------------------------
-------------------------------
-------------------------------
-------------7-(shift)-9-10-12-
------7-8-10-------------------
-8-10--------------------------


now you're in ninth position; you need to be able to visualize where the letter names fall for that scale to grab the rest of it, reaching back to the 8th fret at times.

You can also try shifting on every string using different fingers... the idea is to move beyond pattern thinking, and see the fretboard as a unit.