Things to add to your Guitar practice routine
Aditya Balani
Practicing is something every musician inevitably has to tackle with , some hardly get to it and some spend hours in the woodshed .
A lot of guitarists just noodle on the guitar for hours and feel like they are not making much progress . I personally feel that quality of practice is far more valuable than quantity in terms of hours . So don ’ t count the hours in your work , count the work in your hours ! A good way to ensure productivity is to list out the things you ’ d like to work on and allot a specific percentage of time to each item . I ’ d like to share with you some important areas to focus on to better your guitar playing skills .
Warm up
Warming up is very crucial . I ’ ve seen many guitarists pick up the guitar and play lightning speed licks right off the bat . Even though that may sound really cool , you are at the risk of injuring yourself . So before you set the fretboard on fire , loosen up your body , your neck , shoulders and arms . Stretch out the fingers of both hands and start playing some chords at a very slow tempo . Then you can move on to simple fingering patterns and run them across the neck gradually increasing the tempo .
Technical exercises
I usually break this down into 2 sections .
The Right hand : alternate picking , sweep or rest stroke picking , string skipping , strumming , finger style exercises
The Left hand : Legato playing with hammer-ons and pull-offs , trills , playing more than one note with one finger and chordal playing .
Make sure there is no unnecessary tension in any part of your body . Check your neck , shoulders and jaw periodically .
Also remember to mute the unwanted string noise from the strings that are not being played . Always strive for a clean sound with each note ringing clearly .
Linear Ideas
This constitutes scales , modes , arpeggios , lines , licks and any melodic device you ’ re working on . Play your scales in 3rds , 4ths , 5ths , 6ths and 7ths to help you get out of the scalar sounding ideas and get more contour in your lines .
Try to learn the same line in different positions and octaves . Also learn your scales on single strings - most guitarists learn two octave patterns in vertical positions but ignore the horizontal dimension on the guitar . Try it , it will open up a world of ideas !
Harmonic Ideas
In general guitarists have very limited harmonic knowledge . Once we ’ ve learned our open chords , learning those ripping solos becomes our top priority ! But believe me , if you are serious about learning the guitar there is no way around knowing your fretboard harmony well .
Learn your triads across the fingerboard and inversions on each string set . Learn Drop 2 and Drop 3 voicings and their inversions for 7th chords . Explore the idea of adding tensions to chords while removing the Root and 5th . Take a tune you already know and see if you can play the chords in different areas of the fretboard while voice leading . This will help you discover more voicings and chord shapes rather than feeling stuck in the same area of the freeboard .
Rhythmic Ideas
We all aspire to improve our time feel and add interesting rhythmic ideas to our playing . First off , practice with a metronome , your foot tapping skills may not be as great and as reliable as you may believe them to be . Work on different tempos subdividing the beat and making sure each subdivision is even . The goal is to sound clean ( even more so with drive or distortion ) and feel no effort while playing . Let ’ s say you ’ re learning a line and want to play it at a desired speed . Work with it slowly at first and keep increasing the tempo in small increments , while making sure you sound good and there is absolutely no tension in any part of your body .
A good way to learn new rhythmic ideas is studying new styles . Explore Brazillian , Afro-Cuban , Indian Classical , African , Middle- Eastern music and see how they interpret time feel and pulse .
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