What to do in 10-15 minutes?

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by Deliberate1

…If you have just a few minutes with the guitar, how do you spend it.
David

Hi David
Playing songs I enjoy. Feeds my soul…

[Su_H.]

I have two main practice sessions- one in the morning and another one in the late afternoon prior to work. Often times when I come home from work in the middle of the night, I would go into the garage to squeeze in 10 to 15 minutes of practice before going to bed. My practice for the time being is strictly right hand triplets, scales, and raseado, a flamenco strumming technique.

[Deliberate1]

Originally Posted by Su_H.

I would go into the garage to squeeze in 10 to 15 minutes of practice before going to bed. My practice for the time being is strictly right hand triplets, scales, and raseado, a flamenco strumming technique.

Flamenco before bed. Imagine the dreams.
Ole’....
David

[Riverwolf]

Originally Posted by Deliberate1

Do I understand that you are practicing different forms of those chords.

No. Just simple repetition. Over and Over.
It is the progression and sequence that varies.
It is combined warm-up and muscle memory.
I also add bass walks and alternate bass notes.

[Golffishny]

Short notice sessions are usually when a song is running in my head. If its something I play easily, I try to play it in several different keys or places on the neck.

[NormanKliman]

It takes me at least 10-15 minutes just to warm up, so I guess my answer is exercises. I think they’re important, like work clothes vs. evening clothes, and knowing a lot of them for different techniques is a useful and easy first option.

I also use as exercises a few pieces that are at the very upper end of my playing ability. Nowadays I’m more focused on making simpler material sound good, but I’ve hung on to these pieces because I’ve noticed that if I can get all the way through them, everything else is easier (like vitamin-enriched exercises). They’re less than four minutes long, and a normal first attempt might take up 10-15 minutes.

I sometimes run through the hard parts of different things in my repertoire. It takes some time to identify and isolate the specific problems, and then it takes some forethought to play just the hard parts (without the music that leads up to them), so I don’t often cram that kind of playing into 10-15 minutes, but it seems like a good habit to have.

My favorite thing to play when short on time is a jazzy walking-bass arrangement of a 12-bar blues in G that appeared in the 80s or 90s in Guitar Player magazine in a spread on Tuck Andress and in a guest column by a rock guitarist (Satriani?), and I’ve seen it somewhere else, too. Anyway, if you know what I’m talking about, you can apply different right-hand techniques to the chord progression and it makes for one hell of a workout in very little time. It’s kind of outrageously hard and fun at the same time (you’ll laugh, you’ll cry...) In the Tuck article, the chords are plucked and I also play it in arpeggiated patterns, with index strumming and even Travis picking.

[mr. beaumont]

I always start with a song.

[rwhitney]

Originally Posted by Deliberate1

I really like to grab my guitar in the morning after breakfast and before I leave for work. Just kind of gets me in a good mood - like it gets my day tuned. But all I can get in is about 10-15 minutes. If I get involved with a song, it is hard to put it down. But if I do finger exercises, it is easier, mostly, I suspect, because they are harder for me, as an "advanced beginner."
If you have just a few minutes with the guitar, how do you spend it.
Thanks,
David

I usually refresh my memory on the latest song I’m learning first, then I go through a few others I already know. If they’re 3-minute songs, I’ll play 3 or 4 and probably work on a few difficult spots at a slower tempo to get them to flow right, repeat it a few times, and pretty quickly be late for work :-)

[PHJim]

It really depends on what I've been working on or if I have something coming up that I should run over.