Practice Session Concepts
Learn Stephen's Techniques for Planning and Arranging
Practice Sessions for Maximum EfficiencyDon't Just Practice—Make the MOST of Your Practice Time!
Practicing is obviously a huge component in someone's musical journey, and often it can mean all the difference in that person's success or failure. Here are some basic guidelines that I suggest for all players, to help make practices the best that they can be:
—start with warm-up; I recommend anywhere from 5-15 minutes or up to 1/3 of practice time to be a warm-up (but generally speaking, the longer the practice time, the lower the percentage that needs to be warm-up time)
—warm-up material should be something you know (like a familiar scale pattern/variation/etc.), played at a comfortable speed at which you can play the pattern correctly without much difficulty (no need to encounter challenges at this point in the practice session)
—after warm-up, spend the bulk of the time (50-80% of the total practice time, depending on how much time was spent on the warm-up and how long the total practice time is) working on things where you are actively trying to improve skills: learning/perfecting new exercises/scale variations/etc., learning new songs/riffs (or perfecting/polishing ones that you have already started working on), and so forth…the idea is to be consciously thinking of things to improve during this portion of the practice session (“Can I play this smoother, or more connected?” “I’m going to focus on hammer-ons and/or pull-offs and use a metronome to increase my accuracy with those” and “Today I plan to get better at transitioning from this chord/riff/section of a song/etc. to the next one” are all examples of ways to approach this)
—length of practice is tricky: as much as possible is always good, as long as you don’t overdo it and stress your hands/fingers, or something along those lines; be on the lookout for fatigue in either hand or arm, and if you notice any patterns with that then we should try to figure out how to minimize or eliminate that undesirable potential side effect by examining the situation (what causes it?/when does it tend to occur?/what relieves it?/etc.) and looking for things to alleviate the issue (adjusting the thumb position on the back of the neck often helps left hand issues, for example); but even if you only can get an average of 20-30 minutes a day or even less, you can still make good progress (you just have to be much more careful with how you proportion your practice time if there is very little of it)
—how often is also tricky, but a little less so: once a day is ideal, but it becomes more essential with shorter practice sessions…but if you get a cumulative weekly total of practice time that’s at least somewhere between 2-5 hours, then you should see some notable progress (but the higher that cumulative weekly total, the better…of course, assuming that the practices are focused and efficient :D)
—the idea of practicing one thing until you get it sounding great (or at least very good) before moving on to another thing, versus juggling multiple things over a number of practice sessions and polishing several things/concepts/riffs/etc. at the same time (basically): this one is really tricky, because everyone learns things a little bit differently and feels more comfortable with certain approaches than others may…and to complicate things even more, sometimes folks don’t necessarily feel drawn to the way that they truly work best with; so I generally suggest, as a rule of thumb when practicing, to work on a single thing until you either A) start noticing substantially diminishing returns on the practice time investment, or B) you feel that you’re plateauing in your ability (or at least, the specific abilities needed for the part/riff/etc. in question), or C) you are ready for a change of pace; when B happens, it’s best to switch over and start working on something else (either something totally new, or something else that you are currently working on…or even something that you already have a good handle on, and that just needs a little tweaking); it can also be good to get a change of musical environment, so to speak…and then when you go back to the other thing/riff/concept/etc., you will hopefully have a new perspective (and possibly some new/improved skills from the additional, different practice) that will make the riff/etc. more within your reach now
—and lastly, you want to save ~5 minutes or so (or more for longer sessions) at the end of a practice for “free time” period, where you just play material that you enjoy playing and/or hearing; this is really just for your enjoyment, but it’s also a psychological technique to end on a positive, enjoyable note (no pun intended!) so that your mind doesn’t want to shy away from this thing/concept/etc. in the future (like it might if someone last touched the guitar when they put it down out of frustration after running up into a wall, metaphorically speaking, with something specific in their last practice session)
Want to learn more? Give me a call (or send me a text) at VIP-PLAY-GTR (847-752-9487), or contact me through the website to set up your FREE intro lesson today!
