How to Practice Guitar

Guitar is one of the most popular instruments on earth. Almost everyone has dreamed of performing in a rock concert. But Learning Guitar is hard. Your fingers will hurt, it won't sound good, and you have to practice doing something you won't like at first.

So how do you do it?  

The first thing every guitar player can do is learn to practice. If you've never practiced guitar before, set a goal to play 4 chords 30 times every day. Count the repetitions. They won't sound good at first, that is ok.

If you have played guitar before, set a goal for what you are working to practice every day. A great starting place is to play something 30 times a day. It could be Seven Nation Army or Eruption.

Now that you know how to practice. What are you going to practice? There are 5 main buckets that every skill on guitar comes back to.

1. Songs 

2. Rhythm 

3. Dynamics 

4. Phrasing 

5. Technique 

Songs

Every Guitar Player should learn songs. This often gets lost in guitar education. Teachers tell students to practice scales and exercises but may not mention songs. This doesn't mean they don't think you should learn songs. Everyone likes playing songs, so they don't mention it.

When starting out, songs can be as simple as Mary Had a Little Lamb or When the Saints Go Marching In.

As you get better, you want to learn complete songs. Intermediate guitar players often learn riffs like Crazy Train, or Stairway to Heaven. But, they don't take the time to learn the entire song. There are a lot of useful skills that learning the rest of the song would give you. Also, learning complete songs gives you a sense of how common song structure works. You may end up in situations where you play songs that you don't know.

One time I was playing a gig in Minneapolis, and I learned like 40 songs for a gig. We’re playing the show, and the band leader goes I wanna do this song you've never heard before. It wasn’t on the list, but we did it anyway.

I had to figure out the chords and melody lines on the spot. Learning complete songs can give you the skills to get through songs you may not know.

If you wanna learn more about how to learn songs: Follow this link (Coming Soon):

Rhythm

Rhythm is arguably the most important musical skill. A wrong note played in time will often sound better than a right note played out of time.  

The easiest way to work on rhythm when you are starting out is to learn how to move in time. Literally. If you move to a drum beat, metronome, or other instrument, it is very difficult to play out of time. I recommend to always tap your foot when playing guitar. If you can tap your foot in time, you can play in time.   

90% of the time when I make a rhythmic mistake, I am standing still.  

Once you are comfortable moving to music, the next step is to master the rhythm grid. 

Below is a photo of the rhythms possible in 1 quarter note (Excluding polyrhythms). 

Practice each rhythm until you can play it perfectly with a metronome.  

If you wanna learn more about improving your rhythm: Click the Link Below (Coming Soon)

Dynamics 

Dynamics in music is changing volume over time.  

If you talk in a monotone voice for a long period of time people will call you uninteresting. But if you change the volume and when you say words, it becomes interesting.

To practice dynamics, play one note on your guitar. Play it quiet, then loud. Try and solo like this. Do an entire solo on one note while changing the volume of the note. It will sound more emotive than playing the same volume. 

If you wanna learn more about improving your dynamics: Click the Link Below (Coming Soon)

Phrasing

Phrasing is how you put groupings of notes and rhythms together. The best way to describe phrasing is like a musical sentence. You have a start and a punctuated ending.

Playing long phrase followed by a short phrase will emphasize the short phrase.

3 short phrases followed by 1 long one phrase is a very common way of creating interesting solos.

Creating interesting note choices in phrasing usually involves repeating ideas. Play a simple melody. Repeat the melody, but change the last note. This will make sound like a mini song. Play the short melody 3 times then do something new. This will also create interesting solos. 

If you wanna learn more about improving your phrasing, click here (Coming Soon)

Technique

Every guitar player needs to learn technique. It starts with learning to play a chord. Then you learn how to play a riff. Then you do barre chords and eventually graduate to playing difficult solos.  

Learning technical skills is important. People often argue that super technical guitar has no emotion. This may be true. It is harder to create dynamic range in complicated guitar playing. But if you learn to play more challenging stuff, you have more options.

Here are some techniques that will help your playing.

Keep your fingers bent. Your first knuckle should always be bent. If it is straight, it is very difficult to play accurately and quickly. The only exception is when you are barring.

Thumb placement: You always want to have your thumb pressed up against the back of the guitar. A common mistake is to leave it sideways against the neck of the guitar. You get no pressure from your thumb this way. 

Think about squeezing the neck together.

Playing fast: When playing fast, the hardest part in making sure that your hands play in sync. Slowing down is very helpful for fixing this. But, you will also need to play faster than you are comfortable playing. You can’t get faster if you don’t play at speeds that are uncomfortable. When you push to new speeds, it won't sound good. The goal of speed is to increase coordination in your fingers. It takes many repetitions before it will be clean.

 If you wanna learn more about improving your technique: click here (Coming Soon).

Electric guitar is one of the coolest instruments in the world. You can express your emotions and connect with people through music. Learning guitar requires a tremendous amount of work. If you want to dive deeper in guitar where you currently are at, fill out this form to our Roxy Rockin' Guitar Course. It will give you what you need to work on next.

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