what do you include in your practice regimen?

[rollypolly]

My question is, at what point did you feel yourself turn that corner and do you have any tips or things to practice that you can recommend that I include in my practice time? Right now my practice is focused on CAGED positions, scales, triad reps, but is there anything else you'd do?

[TBman]

I play finger style. So what I do is I learn instrumentals. Many of the tunes I want to learn and have learned have enough challenging things in them that learning the tune covered a lot of bases from a practice point of view. What I started practicing again in addition to learning tunes are simple worm exercises going up and down the neck and right hand arpeggios.

[rick-slo]

Playing repertoire and learning new pieces.

[tbeltrans]

For me, it is:

1. Note finding exercise that I learned from Ted Greene's "Chord Chemistry". This takes about 30 seconds.

2. Run through Robert Conti's chord melody chord collection. This takes about 2 minutes.

3. Open a Real Book at random to a tune and arrange it in chord melody style on the fly. I do anywhere from 3 - 5 of these tunes. This takes maybe 15 - 20 minutes.

4. Study one or more of the lessons I have on my tablet from Jake Reichbart or Barry Greene or Walter Roderigues Jr. or Tim Lerch or Chris Whiteman or Robert Conti.

5. Whatever else I feel like doing that day.

I think that the important thing is to have some sort of overall goal in mind that provides focus to what you choose to do in a given day. For me, it is chord melody. By adding lessons to the "just play tunes" (which is important), I am expanding my musical vocabulary instead of just doing the same things over and over.

Listen to any interview with Tommy Emmanuel or Chet Atkins, and they both talked about continuing to learn new things throughout their careers AND then incorporating these new things into their music. If you have a practical application for some new thing to learn, then it is worth learning (i.e. always learn new things in the context of the songs you are playing). That is how my "filter" works since there is so much available to learn from these days.

Since I am not currently interested in learning slide guitar, open tunings, Travis picking, and so many other equally potentially interesting subject areas, I can keep my focus instead of wandering aimlessly through youtube or lesson sites.

I can enjoy listening to all these styles that I am not current interested in learning, but I keep my focus on chord melody. If I didn't, I would just end up frustrated due to not getting anywhere with my efforts.

Tony

[Silly Moustache]

Regimen ? I don't have one of those.

I occasionally learn new numbers mostly of late requested by my Zoom clients (which is fun) and as I'm currently running my club twice a month, I try to sort out what numbers I'm going to play.

Sometimes I even play the ones I've remembered, sometimes, not.

I am very very old, and have a rather large repertoire much of which, I've been playing for years.

[jaymarsch]

I am primarily a singer songwriter working to become a better guitar player. My practice regimen looks like this these days:
- Play one or two of my songs at a slower tempo as a warm up, paying attention to clean right and left hand technique
- Work on a new strum or fingerpicking pattern, slow tempo with focus on rhythm and clean sound. Then maybe doing one of the following:
- Take a song that I’ve completed and improve the guitar accompaniment, what about a grace note here or dropping a note here to add more space,etc.
- Learn a new chord progression or melody
- Work on writing song lyrics for a new song

That’s about it for me these days.
Best,
Jayne

[EZYPIKINS]

As an shall i say, older player. Being without a band, for the first time in my adult life, the last 3 years. And having an intense rehearsal discipline.

And being a singer. I find a song I want to sing. Figure the chord progression. Find a key to suit my voice.

Then come up with a fingerstyle progression trying to utilize as many open notes as possible.

[phydaux]

My practice has three distance phases - Basic skills, song practice, and learning new songs.

The first phase is a warm up/basic skills practice, where I run through a simple I-IV-ii-V7-I-iv-I chord progression. I start in E and move counterclockwise through the Circle Of Fifths to C. I usually cycle from E to C three times. In once cycle I'll do the chord progression three or four times in each key.

The first cycle I'll just do some simple strumming as I warm up. The second cycle I'll Carter Pick some base runs with scratches. The third cycle I used to do some fingerstyle arpeggios, but I stink at fingerpicking so I've abandon that in favor of flat picking/cross picking arpeggios.

The second phase is playing through songs I already know beginning to end. And I'm going to make a controversial statement here that some people may not like - You do not know a song until you can play it through beginning to end without looking at a chart.

I have "set lists" of songs I know. I'll pick a set and play all those songs straight through beginning to end.

Finally I'll break out a song book play a song I'm working on learning until I can play it straight through without looking at the chart. Once I can do that then I'll add that song to a set list and start working on another song.

[phydaux]

Originally Posted by rick-slo

Playing repertoire and learning new pieces.

Well said, sir. Brevity is wit.

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by rollypolly

…Right now my practice is focused on CAGED positions, scales, triad reps, but is there anything else you'd do?

Hi rollypolly…
For me, everything serves the song. I'm not often building new skills, but if I need to, I know how. But the song is everything to me.

When I'm practicing I focus on the chord progression, the components (intro-vs-pre…chorus-chorus-bridge-outro). Then I focus on the arrangement, the words (if they are going to be sung), whether it's going to be vocally driven with a short solo, or exclusively fingerstyle.

Then I start perfecting the components and assemble it. And by that time it's memorized and I didn't even try to memorize it.

For technical exercises I sometimes focus on scales, arpeggios, inversions in unusual places (on purpose), and some scale work. Especially if I'm playing in a group situation and have assigned duties.

And I always leave time to goof around with the parts and make them mine. I don't copy other player's arrangements, but I will lift-n-employ licks I like a lot if they can add to the arrangement.

For me CAGED is about being able to play standard C-A-G-E & D chords while barring anywhere on the neck. It's fine for people to learn where they can play standard fingerings anywhere on the neck.

I discovered other ways to envision chord inversions and where they fall on the neck.

[tbeltrans]

Here are just a few more thoughts on my approach to guitar practice...

One thing I gave up on is memorizing arrangements because I am just not good at that even with trying for extended periods. Unless I play the tune a couple of times a day, every day, I start to lose pieces of it. So for me, this approach is a struggle rather than being fun.

I figure that since I am not playing professionally anymore and have little interest in performing, I would rather do what interests me personally.

Learning somebody else's arrangement holds little interest for me other than when I want to understand how somebody did something that catches my ear.

So I do my own arranging of tunes in the Real Books on the fly and just see what I can come up with. It is like working on the day's crossword puzzle - an exercise in problem solving. Doing that and expanding my "bag of tricks" (i.e. constantly learning new things) are what interests me.

If anybody has read "Mastery" by George Leonard, you will recall how he describes the ritual of taking off street clothes and getting into the clothing worn for practicing martial arts as being the way to change one's mindset from the day to day world to the mindset of practice. That is what the regimen I listed earlier is about.

Though I have an overriding goal of becoming more skilled at arranging and playing chord melody, the actual practice is (for me) what George Leonard refers to as "goalless practice" in which there is no "arriving", no destination. It is something to add richness to my retired life. By keeping it fresh by having many lessons from many teachers to work with, I don't have to be concerned about getting stuck in a rut.

Also, by arranging "on the fly", I am not tied down to trying to keep a memorized repertoire together, which would greatly limit the range of material I could handle.

If I ever did have to perform, I would see nothing wrong with taking along a Real Book and being able to play most any tune from it. These books contain lead sheets, which contain only the melody line and the chords written above it. It is the performer who turns this sparse information into a full performance. As with language, the larger one's musical vocabulary, the more interesting the performance would be.

While we each have our own interests and approaches, these are mine, along with the considerations for choosing them. It would be interesting to read from others here, their thoughts on their respective practice routines and interests that went into going in the direction they chose for themselves.

Tony

[Brent Hutto]

When I sit down to play I have a 3-4 minute warmup routine my guitar teacher suggested (first time I play each day).

After that I work on one or two tunes that I'm learning, with occasional breaks to play a couple tunes I already know.

I can't bear down on just one tune (frequently it's one little passage of 2-4 bards) and keep grinding at it for more than 15-20 minutes a stretch without doing something different and easier for a couple minutes. So an hour session might be broken into three or so stretches of working on the new tune with short breaks in between.

[tbeltrans]

One of the great things about being retired and owning carbon fiber guitars that can stay out all year round without concern for humidity issues, is that I can weave my guitar practice throughout the day.

There is a concept called "spaced repetition" in which instead of practicing in big time chunks such as an hour (or two or three) you practice for between 15 minutes and a half hour (or less if concentration is an issue) at a time and do it multiple times over the course of a day.

Doing that, the guitar is usually front and center in my life without burning out on it.

Tony

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by rollypolly

My question is, at what point did you feel yourself turn that corner and do you have any tips or things to practice that you can recommend that I include in my practice time? Right now my practice is focused on CAGED positions, scales, triad reps, but is there anything else you'd do?

I like these questions, because I always have the same - unhelpful! - answer:

I have no "regimen". I never "practice", and never did. I just "play".

I never felt I turned any kind of "corner". I've just enjoyed what I do, right from the start, and (naturally) got better all the time. But I never played in order to get better - that's what I mean by not "practising" - I just played because I liked doing it. Obviously I got better, because that's what happens...

I liked learning to play songs. That's why I wanted to learn guitar in the first place - to play music. Obviously some songs I wanted to play were difficult! So I'd just "play" them more and more until they got easier.
If you want to call that "practising" them, that's OK. My point is that I never did "exercises", "drills" or "reps". The songs themselves were my "exercise". If a particular song required a new technique, then I would learn it, as well as I could. If it proved too difficult - well, I'd probably abandon the song and move on to the next one. There's a law of diminishing returns there: sometimes difficulty gets to the point where it's no fun any more (it changes from being an exciting challenge to an arduous bore). So there's no point in continuing. There's lots more good music out there which is easier and still enjoyable.

Also, I would never plan my practice time. I had no "schedule." I would play whenever I could, whenever I felt like it, and for as long as I felt like it. That might be for a few hours on one day, it might be not at all the next day. That's still my process, 55 years after I started.

I could never see any point in turning "playing" into "work". Playing guitar was (and is) recreation for me. I was teaching myself from the start, because for me (as a teenager) the guitar was diametically opposed to "school", which meant "being taught" (and being taught things I regarded as boring and pointless). The recreational aspect applies to both playing at home, and gigging. I.e., even though you could call the latter "work" (I was getting paid), I wouldn't have done it if I didn't have a good time doing it - so much so that the money was a nice extra. Now I teach guitar, so that has become "work", and is less enjoyable because of that. I.e., I do enjoy teaching, but I also have to adhere to certain rules that don't apply when I play music for pleasure.

As for "practice", IME you never learn anything useful if you're not enjoying it. So don't make it a chore. Don't make it something you feel you "have" to do. Because you don't have to! I mean, not unless you really are a professional musician, and your living depends on it. (I've been lucky never to have been in that position - aside from a recent period, 10-15 years, where teaching music was my main source of income.)

If you have to discipline yourself to practice, if you actually need a schedule or regimen to follow, you need to ask yourself why you are playing guitar at all. There is no point you get to where you have "finished". The journey is a lifetime one. As John Lennon once put it, "life is what happens while you're making other plans". If you're always thinking about a destination, and how far you have to go, you'll forget to enjoy the scenery on the way.
The destination is death - don't get there and look back on what you missed out on! Music is an activity of the present moment - that's its magic and its value. It's not something that exists in the future, that you need to strive towards. Either it's happening now, or it doesn't exist. So, make it happen now, and enjoy every moment. When you don't enjoy it, stop.

[Andyrondack]

Originally Posted by rollypolly

My question is, at what point did you feel yourself turn that corner and do you have any tips or things to practice that you can recommend that I include in my practice time? Right now my practice is focused on CAGED positions, scales, triad reps, but is there anything else you'd do?

I have to go through some songs/ instrumentals from my repetoire otherwise I forget how I played them, that's just practice which is intended to prevent my playing from deteriorating.
When I'm feeling fresh and ready to explore I look for new ways new positions new harmonies to apply to old material, hopefully that helps me move forward rather than just stand still, I play a few instrumental pieces which are at the limit of my technical ability, sometimes with practice the difficult passages become easier, sometimes it seems like I am just banging my head against a wall which won't fall then I search for a physically easier way to play that awkward bar or passage. Every now and then I record myself and try to identify any glitches which might need sorting.
Certainly for rollypolly something you don't mention and to my mind the most important skill to practice is developing your ear. I think for anyone who has limited time the most important thing to practise is playing allong with recordings and listening .