On Guitar - SoundSage

How To Create Solid Guitar Practice Habits

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” –C.S. Lewis

THE 5-MINUTE PRACTICE SOLUTION

AN EFFICIENT AND EFFECTIVE METHOD THAT GETS RESULTS

In the early 80s, I taught guitar at a music store owned and operated by the great jazz guitarist Johnny Smith. Johnny was there every day and was always playing his guitar, and I learned so much just watching him. One day he was playing, and he looked up at me and said, "You know, I hate practicing." That surprised me, and I said that he was always practicing. He replied. "Oh, that's not practicing. That's learning something new."

Learning something new is fun. Playing music is fun. Practicing is work.

Practicing is reinforcing things you've already learned. It's developing muscle memory, hand-to-ear coordination, learning the neck, and so on. It's repetitive, and frankly, it can be a little boring.

Still, there's only one way to get better at playing guitar, and that is to practice. But practicing itself isn't the answer, and in fact, it can do as much harm as good. You see, practice doesn't make perfect, it makes permanent. You have to know what and how to practice if you are going to start playing better. Because in the end, you'll play what you practice.

There are generally two problems with practicing. Some of you are practicing a lot but not really getting anywhere. Usually, this is because your practice is random and inefficient. It's not you that's the problem, you just need a better plan.

On the other end of the spectrum, if you're not practicing, it's not because you're lazy, so you can stop beating yourself up. We procrastinate when we don't know what to do, either because we are overwhelmed by the task or simply don't have a clue. You need a better plan, too.

KNOW YOUR GOAL

The first step is to understand your goal. As young players we often have dreams of stardom; I know I did. If your goal is to become a professional musician, you will need to practice. A lot. And there's no time like the present to get started.

For the rest of us, dreams of fame and fortune were traded for career and family a while back. We lead busy lives. The days when we could devote hours to practicing are behind us. It's a hobby and while it may be important to you, it's not your top priority. We also have less patience and aren't willing to learn things just for the sake of learning them.

The bottom line is that we play music for fun and pleasure. Playing by yourself can be rewarding, but when was the last time you had fun doing anything by yourself? Face it, to have real fun playing guitar, you must do it with others. It doesn't matter whether it's one person or an orchestra, music is team sport.

And there's another reason. The best way to improve your playing is to play with others, especially if they are better musicians than you. There's no substitute for this experience and you can't get it in the practice room, not even with backing tracks. So we need to get you out of the practice room and into the band as quickly as we can.

The solution then, is to learn to play songs you love and only practice what you need to be able to play them. You'll focus more on learning something new and less on practicing, yet each song you learn will add to your skills, knowledge and abilities and you'll be able to use that when learning the next song.

FINDING THE TIME

Since we don't have hours to practice, we need to make the most of the time we do have. Practice needs to be effective and efficient and it needs to show results.

The good news is that you don't need to know everything at this stage, only the things that will transform your playing now. So you don't need as much practice time as someone training for a music career.

The first thing we need to do is establish the habit of picking up the guitar and doing something productive and enjoyable when we do.

Consider this scenario. You decide to practice. You go to your practice space, get the guitar out of the case, plug it in, turn on the amp, and then tune. After that you probably noodle a bit and play a favorite lick or riff. Then you finally start to work on something. But you've just wasted 15 minutes that you could have used to practice. Does that sound familiar?

This is where I generally sit in my living room. One of my guitars sits on the sofa, and I pick it up a lot. But usually only for a few minutes at a time. An idea will pop into my head, and I'll work it out. Other times, I'll practice something I've been working on.

THE SOLUTION:
LEAVE THE GUITAR OUT OF THE CASE

AND WITHIN EASY REACH

You might be thinking that you can't learn anything in five minutes. Let's take a look at how it works.

Say you just learned a major scale pattern. If you play it non-stop for five minutes ascending and descending at any tempo, you will start to develop muscle memory. If you do that every day for a week, you will have it pretty well under your fingers at the end of that time. I use four major scale patterns, so in one month, you can have all of them under your fingers in just five minutes a day.

Next, you can reinforce that by playing each of the patterns in one key every day and in two weeks you'll have covered all 12 keys (you can take Sundays off). Do that twice and in just two months, you'll know all four major scale patterns in all 12 keys. From this point on, you can pull these out once or twice a week until they become second nature.

Can you find five minutes a day?

You can break down almost anything you want to learn into bite size parts, that you can do in five or ten minutes. For example, most songs are comprised of two or three 8- bar sections, some of which repeat at least once. Start with the first section. If that's too much for one session, then break it down further. Each 8 bar section can usually be divided into phrases of two or four measures. You only work on what you can reasonably accomplish.

You may get a little impatient and want to learn more of the song, right now. That's great, you can do as many 5-10 minute sessions per day as you want. Just be sure to stick to one thing for each session.

Now that you've developed the habit of picking up the guitar, you'll suddenly find that you're practicing a lot more than ever before and even better, you're improving, because you can focus more intensely for such a short time. And it's all happening in time that was essentially being wasted, anyway.

THE PLAY'S THE THING

By now, you should enjoying your practicing more as you're learning a lot of new things and not just repeating the same things over and over. But we can't ignore the power of playing. This is where backing tracks come in. Playing over tracks is fun and great for developing skills you'll need to play in a band, like following the form, playing over changes and so on.

You should do this once a week or so as a reward for the practicing you've been doing, and to apply those new skills. For the most part, just play. Believe it or not, one of the hardest things to learn is to not think while you play. You listen and hear the music and try to let your fingers play. Some people call it "The Zone" or "The Space". Charles Mingus described it as being a "conduit from God." Or as Charlie Parker said, "First you learn your axe, then you learn your music and then you forget all that shit and just blow.”

ARE YOU LISTENING?

In order to play well, you have to hear it first. That's where the music is, in your ear. Learning to play from tabs, fake books, and sheet music will teach your fingers what to do, but it likely won't include your ear in the process.

As a developing player, you must listen to the music you want to play. You don't need to transcribe it, just listen. Get the sound in your ear. When no one is looking, sing the melody or the bass notes. You'll learn the song much faster when you do.

Listening needs to be an active process. It's ok to have the music in the background, but to learn anything, you need to focus on it, without doing anything else.

Can you find five minutes a day to listen?

THE MIND'S EAR

When you take a vacation, you might think about bringing a guitar, but it's not easy to travel with one and your partner might not think it's such a good idea, either. But you don't want to take a big step backwards while you're having fun.

You can still practice for those five minutes without the guitar. Just close your eyes and see in your mind your fingers moving along the fretboard. I was taught this when I was young and it does help with the fingers. But they forgot to tell me one thing. You have to hear it in your head at the same time. If you do that, you'll go a long way to connecting the hand to the ear. So don't just do it when you are on vacation.

Mental practice like this will help you maintain and improve your skills. And it's therapeutic and almost meditative. It's a great way to refresh.

AND A FEW MORE THINGS

1. Think about you've learned.

Just learning to play something isn't enough. Now you want to look more closely at it, so you can apply it to other songs. This is where theory will come in, either learning or applying it. Labeling things makes them easier to remember

2. Don’t practice the easy parts

Each year, students come to my school to audition and there are always a few who will sit down and play their piece and come to a challenging part and flub it. Then they'll back up and flub it again. The reason is this is how they practiced it. They start at the beginning and fly through the easy parts and when they get to the hard part they mess it up, back up, mess it up again and then go on and finish the piece which is more easy parts. They would have gotten it if they had spent five minutes a day on the hard part and not practiced the easy parts every time.

3. Don’t Practice Mistakes

Just because you've only got five minutes doesn't mean you have to play everything at breakneck tempos. Slow down and play it right.

4. Take a Break

You'll be making real progress which will motivate you to pick it up again and to play longer. But take a break after 20-30 minutes. Beyond that your concentration will wane and you'll see diminishing returns. That only applies to practice, not playing or learning something new.

And if you're struggling with something a little too long, put it down and come back when you're refreshed. You may even be surprised that the thing you couldn't possibly do after practicing so hard, will suddenly just come together. It works that way sometimes.

YOU GOT THIS

Some people will scoff at the idea that you can practice for five minutes and make progress, but it's something I've been developing for a few years. I use it, my students use it, and it works. You'll develop a practice routine that is easy to maintain and even one short, highly-focused daily practice session will produce results. And as you add more sessions per day, you'll see even more progress.

So give it a try and let me know how it works for you or if you have any questions. Contact me at george@georgehessmusic.com or visit my website at https:// jumpstartjazzguitar.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. George Hess is an educator, guitarist, composer and author. An award-winning teacher, he has taught music technology, jazz and theory at leading universities for over 25 years and has presented clinics and workshops throughout the world. As a professional guitarist, George has performed extensively throughout the United States with such artists as James Morrison, Bob Mintzer, David Liebman, Wycliffe Gordon, Jim Nabors, the Osmonds, Ryo Kawasaki and Myron Floren and as the leader of his own ensembles. His recent album, The Light Ahead is available on all major streaming sites.

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