In an earlier post I talked about how I have dabbled with different approaches to practicing guitar in the past and how ultimately any kind of practice should be based around long term goals. I strongly believe that the best way to improve in any area is to be planned and organised even with something that is supposed to be fun like guitar. With time being in short supply at this stage in my life it is important that I know what my intentions are any time I pick up the guitar even if it’s just for a five minute noodle but especially if I am sitting down to practice.
In light of recent developments and the fact that I now have a bunch of mates to get together with and jam once a month I wanted to revisit my approach to practice.
At a high level I feel that guitar time, for me, should be broken down into 1 of 3 general areas:
- Learning
- Practicing
- Playing
There are no doubt more that could be added to this but after thinking about my own circumstances and doing a bit of brainstorming these are what I came up with. Let me explain what I mean by each of these.
Learning
Learning is the process by which I sit down and take the time to learn something that I don’t already know. In general this could be an actual guitar lesson but it might also mean watching a YouTube video and absorbing what is being shown there, or it might be learning the next part of a song that I am working on. Learning can also mean taking the time to go back over and revise a lesson or something else that I did in the past but need to take the time to relearn a part of. It doesn’t always involve something new.
When in “learning” mode what I am really doing is preparing exercises that will then go into my practice routines. You must learn something before you can practice it. Learning and practice really should not overlap. And in my opinion practice exceeds learning in terms of importance, by which I mean more time should be spent practicing than learning.
If you consider a guitar lesson where you are shown a particularly tricky chord sequence, you would be shown this and at least be able to demonstrate that you understand the basics of it (or you might even write down the chords and take them away with you). Between that and the next lesson you would practice that sequence and ideally when you go to the next lesson you are more competent at it than you were when you were first shown it.
For me the real purpose of “learning” is to build up a repertoire of exercises to work on during practice routines. And as a reminder, the things you learn should be moving you towards the goals you have set for yourself.
Practice
So what then do I mean by practice? Well for me practice is where you take something that you have learnt and you spend time refining it. There is some overlap between this and “playing” but I will break that down further in a moment. For me, if I am sitting down to practice then it is to focus on something that I have identified as something that I need to work on.
Some examples of this might be:
- working on listening to the changes in a 12 bar blues and moving between major and minor pentatonic scales
- playing arpeggios over a backing track
- slowing down and trying to correctly nail down a solo or part of a song I am struggling with (for me there are a few songs that I have learnt but definitely need some further work)
- learning the next part of a new song I am learning (for me, at the time of writing this blog that might be a song I am learning for the next jam session with my buddies)
- playing through all positions of a scale
The key to practicing efficiently is knowing how long you have to practice, what you are going to practice and how long you are going to spend on each thing. It is important to also understand and appreciate that the more you learn, the more you have to practice, and that you won’t generally be able to fit everything into a single practice session. When this happens then it becomes necessary to plan what you want to practice across a series of nights rather than just one night.
I may go into more detail another time about constructing practice routines but there are some fantastic videos about this on YouTube. Here’s a particularly good one that’s not too long from the Music Is Win channel.
The key thing is that when you “practice” in the context that I am referring to here it should be planned and organised with a clear vision of what the outcomes are.
Playing
Now finally we get to playing!
Playing is something very different to learning and practice. Playing is the real goal of learning how to play guitar (obviously) and this is the real end game that learning and practice feeds into. And no, I don’t mean playing in a band although that can indeed be part of it.
For me “playing” is when it’s just you and the guitar and whatever backing track, album track or band you have available to you. You might decide to play through a setlist of songs that you have learnt. Or finally play through that current song you have been working your way through. Or you might stick on a 12 bar blues backing tracking and just jam and see what happens and work in anything you’ve been working on during practice sessions.
“Playing” can actually be part of a practice session or it can be done entirely separately. What I mean by this, and depending on the time you have, is that if you have an hour to practice you might devote 45 minutes of this to focused practice and 15 minutes to playing songs or noodling. It is always best to finish this way rather than do the playing first and having that filling the entire hour. This is the equivalent of going to football training and having a match at the end.
Alternatively what you can also do, and something that I have been doing recently, is picking a night (for me I pick weekend night) and dedicating that to just playing. I have a setlist of songs for the band that I jam with and once a week I like to hit play on that and just play along until it finishes. And if you’re old enough you can even enjoy this with some nice cold drinks (always drink responsibly, folks).
For me when I practice I like to stand up to do it. Playing guitar standing up and sitting down are two very different things so it’s important to get confident doing the things you have practiced standing up. This might seem like a silly thing but it’s a very important point especially as I’m getting the opportunity to jam with an actual band.
Too Long, Didn’t Read…
So for me practice sessions should be fed by the things that you have learnt which in turn should be formed by the goals you have set for yourself. When you practice it should be planned in advance and should be focused. Where possible always have some form of playing at the end where you play a couple of songs you know or just have a noodle. One night a week have a dedicated night where you just play (beer optional).
And that’s it. As I have mentioned before I have been jamming with a band which has slightly altered my goals. I found that during jam sessions there were things I was getting wrong that I was able to play without issue during my playing sessions and I needed to think about the best way to work on these while still working on new songs. As I have tried different ways of practicing in the past and watched lots of videos on the subject I came up with this as the best solution to this problem for me. It may help you too.
Learn, practice, play!
[…] Let’s Talk About Practice […]