advice

Establishing a routine to reach your guitar practice goals can be hard, especially for beginners. I’ve outlined a few tips here to get in the habit of practicing that I hope you’ll find helpful.

I’ve never been much of an athlete, but lately I’ve been trying to exercise more (I hear it’s good for you). Like many people, I have a history of an on-again-off-again relationship with exercise. I’ll get excited about it, go full bore for a week or two and then burn out and neglect it for a few months until I decide to start the cycle again.

What does this have to do with guitar practicing habits, you ask? Don’t worry, we’re getting there.

Recently, I’ve been a lot more consistent with my exercise, and I think the reason is because I’ve adjusted my expectations. I’ve learned that when it comes to most skills in life consistency is the first order of business. Lasting growth (or perhaps the opposite… depending on your exercise goals!) comes slowly over days of consistently showing up to spend focused time developing whatever skill one is pursuing.

We all hear over and over that our society loves instant gratification. Delayed gratification seems to require more of us than we have, so most would rather kill ourselves to accomplish something in a week or two than have slow, moderate progress over the course of a year. When we don’t see the results we want in a week or two, we get frustrated and give up. The enthusiasm we feel at the beginning of an endeavor quickly sours, and we find that now we are enthusiastic about some other thing.

It’s true that learning the guitar or another musical instrument is a skill that you acquire. Some will acquire skill faster than others, but whatever the pace of your development, you are seriously undermining your efforts if you start regularly skipping days of practice. It can be difficult to make yourself practice if you’re discouraged or not seeing the results you want, so let me make a suggestion: if your enthusiasm is waning for your guitar (or your instrument or other pursuit of choice) practice routine, commit to five minutes a day of focused, dedicated practice.

“Five minutes isn’t enough to get any better!” some might say, and they’d be right if getting quick results is what we’re after. We’re doing something different. We’re planting a seed that will grow. I think that if you practice for five minutes a day you might be surprised at how much you grow; however, if you’re consistent with it, you’re probably going to end up wanting to practice guitar more. You don’t have to stop at 5 minutes if you want to keep going.

So, don’t think of learning the guitar as a skill that you will work on for a while, and then once you’ve “arrived” and acquired enough skill you can stop. If you do it right, it becomes a lifestyle, and you’ll keep looking for ways to keep that seed growing.

Have any tips to share for starting a successful guitar practice routine? Feel free to leave a comment below!

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Wes Freeman is private guitar lesson teacher in the Atlanta metro area of Georgia. He teaches lessons primarily in the cities of Lilburn, Snellville, Marietta, Decatur, and Brookhaven. Learn more about taking lessons with Wes on his Lessons page.

Ever felt frustrated, wondering how to get better at guitar practice?

I’ve been reminded recently of the importance of being content in the present moment. This idea seems a little at odds with the whole concept of taking guitar lessons; the whole point is that you’re trying to get somewhere, right? Why fork over money if you’re just fine with where you are?

But, accepting your current level of development is not the same thing as lacking the desire to improve at guitar practice. We should always have a desire to improve, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find enjoyment as we’re in the process. In fact, I would argue that the only place we can find enjoyment is in process, because we are always growing. I have no desire to be morbid, but if you’re not developing it’s because you’ve either given up or you’re dead.

We all like to think that there will be this moment where we arrive as a musician (or in some other area of life), but that doesn’t really happen. Certainly there are milestones in life, but these are rare, and the satisfaction that we gain from such moments is not enough on its own to fuel continued practice on your instrument if you view such practice as drudgery. Somehow, you have to find a way to enjoy the process of practice itself.

I’ve done it both ways, and I can promise you’ll be a much happier person if you follow my advice here.

Perhaps you have a goal of playing “Thunderstruck” at full speed. Well, join the club! The bad news is that, unless you are gifted with dexterous hands and coordination far beyond what most people have naturally, it’s going to take a while. It’s going to be best for your peace of mind right now AND for fulfilling your long-term goal if you learn to enjoy the process of working on it — slowly, with a metronome, bit by bit. If you’ve patiently practiced it for some time, you may need to take a break from it for a while, work on something else, and come at it again with fresh eyes and ears.

This is what the process of learning to play the guitar well is like. We never really arrive. At the same time — if done right — we’re constantly arriving. Each measure memorized, each strum pattern that we’re just a little more comfortable with, each time we listen to an old song and realize that we understand what the guitarist is doing, we arrive.

That’s where the joy of learning music is. Don’t let the tunnel vision of playing “that song,” or playing as well as “that person,” prevent you from finding it.

Author’s note: If what I had to say here resonated with you, then you might want to check out one of my favorite guitar book recommendations (click on picture at left or click here).

The Practicing Mind: Developing Focus and Discipline in Your Life — Master Any Skill or Challenge by Learning to Love the Process is a great book to review for a deeper dive into this topic.

 

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Wes Freeman is private guitar lesson teacher in the Atlanta metro area of Georgia. He teaches lessons primarily in the cities of Lilburn, Snellville, Marietta, Decatur, and Brookhaven. Learn more about taking lessons with Wes on his Lessons page.

I’m writing this on January 20th, so I have in mind the many people — I might be one of them — who resolved to practice more in the new year.

Well, life comes at you fast, and it’s easy to look up and realize that days have gone by without doing the things you promised yourself you would. Here are some thoughts on how to get back on track with your guitar practicing goals:

1. Don’t punish yourself or play catch up.
   Any new endeavor is going to have some hiccups. Unless there is a compelling reason to stress yourself out making up for days missed, you’re better off just picking up where you left off and continuing at a reasonable pace. If your new habit didn’t stick, you probably need to make it easier to stick to — not harder — which leads us to point number two…
2. Pick something modest to work on.
   Change does not come easily. In my experience, the best way to change something or adopt a new habit is to start so small, it is easy to be consistent. Once a pattern or habit is established, you can take on a little more. Start with two minutes of practice. You can always practice more if you want to, but make it easy to pick up that guitar when you’re short on time.
3. Find a way to enjoy it.
   Choose to work on an aspect of your playing that you are really excited about. Don’t make the mistake of practicing something simply because you think it’s what you’re supposed to do. At least that is how it should be at first. If you stick with it, there may be times when you need to practice even though you don’t feel like it. That should be the exception though.
4. Link your practice to something else you do regularly (or develop a routine).
   Often, the most difficult thing to do is just pick up the guitar. For most people there are so many other commitments and activities in a given day, just starting to practice can be difficult. It can help to associate your practice habit with something else that you do regularly, such as brushing your teeth, watching your favorite TV show, getting the kids put to bed, or exercising. You can be creative here. In my experience, and in that of many of the best musicians I’ve known, having a routine is the single most powerful strategy for growth.

You may be detecting a theme here: make it as easy as possible on yourself to succeed. When we set grandiose goals for ourselves, we often set ourselves up for discouragement. This often leads to giving up on our goal altogether.

Of course, your mileage may vary with these strategies; perhaps you’re more of a “go-getter” type than I am, and what really makes you shine is an impossible challenge. I’m not knocking that. If it works for you, have at it! The key is to know yourself and what actually gets results for you.

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Wes Freeman is private guitar lesson teacher in the Atlanta metro area of Georgia. He teaches lessons primarily in the cities of Lilburn, Snellville, Marietta, Decatur, and Brookhaven. Learn more about taking lessons with Wes on his Lessons page.

Similar to chunking, this tactic is a very powerful way to help you learn songs on the guitar.

The point of “Links on the Chain” is to help you memorize “chunks” (for more on the “chunking” tactic, see this blog post) that are particularly difficult to learn.

Certain features in melodies — when you play one note at a time in sequence — can be really difficult to memorize correctly. Sometimes working toward a smaller chunk can help, but if a section of music is twisty enough, it will often require more extreme measures.

Let’s say you’re wanting to learn the melody to “Somewhere Over The Rainbow.” Like a good guitar student, you’ve recognized that you need to spend some time on just a chunk of it.

The opening of the melody that goes with the words “somewhere over the rainbow” is what we have our sight set on. Each syllable corresponds to one note (some-where o-ver the rain-bow), which makes for 7 notes in all.

To use the “Links on the Chain” method, play the first note, and then add one note at a time until the entire “chain” of notes is complete. Make sure that every step in the process can be played flawlessly multiple times.

Let me illustrate as best I can over a blog post. (Feel free to sign up for a lesson with me to go over this in more detail!)

Some
(Note 1)

where
(2)

Somewhere
(1)   (2)

o-
(3)

Somewhere o-
(1)      (2)     (3)

-ver
(4)

Somewhere over
(1)   (2)     (3)  (4)

the
(5)

Somewhere over the
(1)    (2)     (3)  (4)   (5)

rain
(6)

Somewhere over the rain-
(1)     (2)      (3)  (4)   (5)   (6)

-bow
(7)

Somewhere over the rainbow
(1)      (2)      (3) (4)  (5)  (6)  (7)

This may seem kind of extreme when you’re not used to it. If you cringe a little bit at the thought of doing this, I suggest you pick something small and go for it. It gets easier the more you do it — it is thorough and effective. I can guarantee that if you spend 10 minutes a day doing this, you’ll see results!

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Wes Freeman is private guitar lesson teacher in the Atlanta metro area of Georgia. He teaches lessons primarily in the cities of Lilburn, Snellville, Marietta, Decatur, and Brookhaven. Learn more about taking lessons with Wes on his Lessons page.

In my last post, I made the point that learning songs is the single most important thing to do to advance on the guitar. This can often be problematic — especially for beginners. After years of teaching, it became clear to me that there are certain mental habits that some students have that allow them to progress on the instrument much faster than others. I’ll be writing about more of these practice tactics soon, but let’s start with one of the most powerful: chunking.

What is chunking?
Chunking involves practicing only portions of music that you can make clear progress on in a short amount of time.

Sometimes my students seem a little shocked when their favorite song turns out to not be easy and intuitive to play with a few hours of work. Often, that’s just because what they are attempting is well beyond what they’re capable of at this stage of their progression on the instrument, but quite frequently the problem has more to do with the fact that they’re taking on too much of the song at once.

Unless you’re playing at a pretty advanced level, learning most songs should be viewed as a project. Most modern pop or rock songs have 2 to 3 major sections: verse, chorus, and bridge. Usually, material from these sections is also used for instrumental sections such as intros, interludes, solos, and endings. For most beginner and intermediate students, it’s probably not a good idea to try to tackle more than one of these sections at a time. If you’re trying to memorize a complex melody, even smaller segments may be in order.

What you choose to work on for a single practice session should not be difficult to hold in your head as you practice. If you find you’re making a lot of “mental mistakes” as you’re working (i.e., playing a wrong note or hesitating because you don’t remember what comes next) then you’ve likely taken on too much at once, and you probably need to chop your chunk in half!

This may seem like it will take forever, but it’s actually the fastest way to master a song.

How do you know when you’ve done it correctly?
It may take some time to get the balance right, but you’ll know you’re succeeding and practicing effectively by the way it feels: when you get up from a practice session, you should feel like you made real progress. For example, you should be able to say “When I sat down, I didn’t know that 8-bar intro, but now I can play through it slowly from memory,” or “When I started working, I could play that challenging lick from the solo at 60 beats per minute, but now I can play it at 67 beats per minute.”

Real progress is made in this incremental fashion on a day-to-day basis. You should be able to feel yourself growing, and if you’re doing it right, your motivation will grow with your skill.

Feeling a million miles from this?
If your practicing feels meandering and unproductive, don’t give up! But it’s also important to remember not to keep doing the same things. Try a different approach if you feel like you’re not making progress. Try chunking and see if it helps. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that even one lesson with a good teacher can really help, especially if you let him or her know that you’d like help addressing your practice routine and song-learning strategy. If you’re in the Atlanta area, sign up for a lesson with me and I’ll be glad to walk you through this.

Now go pick something small and learn it!

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Wes Freeman is private guitar lesson teacher in the Atlanta metro area of Georgia. He teaches lessons primarily in the cities of Lilburn, Snellville, Marietta, Decatur, and Brookhaven. Learn more about taking lessons with Wes on his Lessons page.

There is a lot to do if you want to “up your game” at playing guitar. You can take lessons from an instructor (which I, of course, think is a great idea). You can learn some things from YouTube or from tablature. There are scales, chords, and arpeggios to learn. There is theory, ear training, sight reading, and improvisation. How does one make time for it all? Frankly, it’s all pretty important to one’s musical development — so how do you pick and choose which things to spend your time on when you have school or work, family, and a social life to take care of?

I believe that there is one thing that is fundamentally more important than all of the others:

LEARN SONGS.

Simple, isn’t it?

Learning songs is the whole reason we pick up the guitar in the first place. Maybe you dream of doing that thing that you saw your favorite guitarist do at a concert, or perhaps you found Guitar Hero fun and thought the real thing might be fun, too. Whatever your reasons for picking up the instrument, I bet that at the heart of it is a song or songs that you love.

So learn them.

“They’re too hard,” you say?

Then learn just the chorus, or whatever is the easiest part. Play along with the recording on the parts you can, and just listen and enjoy the rest — or try to find some notes that sound reasonably good during the parts you don’t know. If you have trouble with the chords, play the bass notes only.

This is where a decent teacher can do the most good, because they can help you find an achievable version of the song to work on.

I will be following up soon with some ideas about how to implement this, but for now, let me just clarify what I mean when I say “learn songs”:

• Whether you’re learning to play the melody, the chords, a solo guitar arrangement, playing and singing together, I’m talking about memorizing the song. Whatever version you want to learn, I’m talking about knowing it “cold” — no sheet of paper or screen in front of you, no hunting and pecking for notes, no wrong notes or chords, and no hesitations. I’m talking about taking the song (whether beginner, intermediate, or advanced) to performance level.

• For those who haven’t done much of this, it might take a lot more time (even on an easy song) than you might think. I can guarantee you this process will be humbling, but ultimately rewarding.

Stay tuned for more information on some of the best ways I’ve learned to get this done.

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Wes Freeman is private guitar lesson teacher in the Atlanta metro area of Georgia. He teaches lessons primarily in the cities of Lilburn, Snellville, Marietta, Decatur, and Brookhaven. Learn more about taking lessons with Wes on his Lessons page.

Over many years of teaching beginner guitar students, I have learned that there are a few concepts and tricks that are most helpful for those at the start their new musical journey.

1. 1. Reach a point daily where your fingertips and hand are a little bit sore (this goes away shortly – your hands just need to get used to the new motions!) – this is how you’ll know if you practiced enough.
   2. Spend time switching between two chords and slowly playing each string until you can consistently make every note sound.
   3. If you have trouble switching chords, play along with a recording — strumming on every beat “1.”
   4. You may have to do some less enjoyable things to improve, but always make time for what motivates you, too.
   5. The single most important thing you can do is MEMORIZE songs.
   6. Learn to play a simple melody with one finger. I promise it won’t kill you, and it will make you better.
   7. Repetition is key to learning guitar. Turn trouble spots into exercises and play for five minutes straight.
   8. If you want to go fast, you have to start out slow. That’s so important, I’m going to say it again: IF YOU WANT TO GO FAST, YOU HAVE TO START SLOWLY!
   9. The most important skill you need to have to succeed at guitar is patience.
   10. Do something a little bit difficult every day. Over time, you’ll find you enjoy this more than you would think.

What do you think? Do you have any tips or questions? Please leave a comment below.

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Wes Freeman is private guitar lesson teacher in the Atlanta metro area of Georgia. He teaches lessons primarily in the cities of Lilburn, Snellville, Marietta, Decatur, and Brookhaven. Learn more about taking lessons with Wes on his Lessons page.

 

I’ve heard it from almost every good player I’ve spoken with: if you want to master a musical phrase or chord progression, you HAVE to play it slowly.

I suggest starting by playing every single note of a short musical section deliberately and clearly with absolutely no regard to timing or tempo. The important thing to focus on here is the mechanics of what your hands are doing. What are the nuances that allow you to play each note on the guitar so well at this glacial speed? They will be the same when you speed it up, but you have to memorize what it feels like to truly get it right before trying to take it faster.

Once you can play it slowly without hesitating multiple times -then is the time to GRADUALLY increase the speed.

Have you tried this guitar practice technique? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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Wes Freeman is private guitar lesson teacher in the Atlanta metro area of Georgia. He teaches lessons primarily in the cities of Lilburn, Snellville, Marietta, Decatur, and Brookhaven. Learn more about taking lessons with Wes on his Lessons page.