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Where To Find Highly Effective Guitar Practice Exercises
By Tom Hess - 09/27/2011 - 01:39 AM EDT
Would you have an easier time learning to play guitar if you
knew exactly what guitar practice exercises to focus your time on? Are
you being spread in many different directions by the vast number of guitar
playing resources that all seem to offer a different way of learning
guitar? Do you feel overwhelmed by trying to sift through a seemingly
infinite number of exercises to determine what you should practice on guitar?
From my experience of successfully helping hundreds of guitarists to reach
their musical goals, I have found that most guitar players can easily find lots
of general guitar practice materials on their own. Where many guitarists
struggle is in knowing how to make sense out of all those materials and
organize them into an effective guitar practice schedule.
If you can relate to the experiences above, then you are not alone.
Fortunately, the solution to this problem is very realistic and is easier than
you think. In this article I want to show you why so many guitarists
don't know what they should practice on guitar, and how you can begin making
much more progress in your guitar playing.
The first significant mistake that guitar players make with
regards to guitar exercises is practicing "too many" of them.
As a result, too much energy is spent trying to decide (at random) what
exercise to play next, instead of concentrating on getting the most benefit out
of each exercise being practiced. In reality, you can very often achieve
a lot more by intelligently focusing on a smaller, targeted list of guitar
practice materials than you can from a longer list of guitar exercises that are
put together at random (more on this in a moment).
Another mistake guitar players make is "putting the cart before the
horse", by looking for guitar exercises to practice before defining
specifically what it is they want to achieve in their guitar playing.
Remember that guitar exercises are only useful when they are practiced with
intention of achieving a specific result. Going through dull repetitions
of random guitar practice exercises (as most guitarists do) will have little to
no impact on your guitar playing unless you become clear on the following:
1. The exact guitar playing challenge(s) you want to overcome by using a
particular guitar practice exercise.
2. The long term guitar playing goals you want to reach and how a given
exercise fits into the big picture of developing your musical skills.
Above all, you must remember that the only reason why guitar
exercises are needed in the first place is to help you solve various guitar
playing problems. As simple as this concept is, most guitar players
do not practice with this understanding in mind. The more specifically
you can define your guitar playing problems, the easier it will be to find the
most effective exercises to overcome them. For instance, rather than
saying: "I want to increase my speed with scale sequences", you need
to identify an exact problem such as: "I need to practice the picking hand
motion that happens when my pick is caught inside the strings".
In order to determine whether or not a specific guitar
exercise should be included into your practice schedule, ask this question:
“what guitar playing challenge will I be able to overcome by working on this
exercise and will this exercise move me closer to my guitar playing
goals?" To help you with answering this question, here are 5 important
points to follow that will make your guitar practicing a lot more productive:
- Clearly
define your long term guitar playing goals.
- Find
out what musical skills you must develop in order to achieve the long term
result that you want. To see what steps you must go through to
become the guitar player you want to be, check out this free resource on how to learn guitar.
- With
the clarity you have achieved from doing steps 1 and 2 above, it will now
be much easier to narrow down your guitar practice exercises to those that
are very specific to your guitar playing challenges. Do this to
prepare yourself for step 4.
- Design
a highly effective guitar practice schedule containing the guitar
exercises you have selected in the previous step. Organizing your
guitar practice time in the most efficient way possible will require some
experience to be done correctly. This will help you to avoid wasting
valuable practice time and will enable you to make faster progress.
If you have trouble doing this on your own, visit this page to get guitar playing help.
- Keep
your mind actively engaged the entire time you are practicing. You
must always stay focused on the specific objective you are trying to
achieve and never let your fingers go on autopilot while practicing.
As your guitar playing improves and you get more experience, you will find
that very often you can use a single guitar exercise to develop multiple
guitar playing skills at the same time (watch this video to learn more
about this guitar
practice method).
Applying the advice above to your guitar practicing on a
regular basis will help you to speed up the process of reaching your guitar
playing goals.
About The Author:
Tom Hess is a successful professional guitar player, composer and the guitarist
of the band Rhapsody Of Fire. He also trains musicians to reach their
guitar playing goals in his rock guitar lessons online.
Visit his website, tomhess.net to read more
articles about guitar playing,
get free guitar tips
and guitar playing
resources.
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