Practicing...

Really...how often do you practice?
I can go a week without having picked up my guitar and that has to change....even if I make it 15 minutes.

I think the location of my guitars is also an issue....as of right now they are all in my spare bedroom hanging on the walls....and its not near my living room....so I put one up there

I read where some people practice several hours a day. I just dont have that...by the time I get home from work...make dinner and all.

I try to read up on some theory when I cant get a hold of my guitar but have some down time....

whats a girl to do ya know?

i'm new to this site also ..signed up last week and just finished guitar fundamentals 1
if you put your guitar where you are most likely to be .living room kitchen where ever you will be more likely to play it just make sure you place it on a guitar stand ( less than 20 bucks )

they say if you see it you'l play it hope this helps :)

Thats good advice. Mine is right beside my computer so it is always within reach. I practice a lot I guess. Even on a day where it seems I might not be able to practice I play at least 30 minutes or so.

I remember reading one time here on the forums that a good time to practice scales is while watching TV. I know most people have insanely busy schedules but one thing you have to do is give "yourself" a little time even if it is only 15 minutes.

I have made a practice schedule to keep myself focused on short term goals. This has helped me big time. Especially with chord changes. I think there is a write up about practicing in the FAQ section.

I found it. Here is the link.
http://go.guitartricks.com/reference.php
Hang in there and I hope this helps,

Ed

Hi Itsmesilly,

I tell my students to try to go for it every day, even if it's only for just five minutes. Here's why:

You are training your fingers and your brain to learn a whole bunch of new things. The more FREQUENTLY you remind them, the more quickly they will absorb them. So even just a five minute run-through of a few exercises or chords or a song is better than waiting all week, and then giving it an hour on the weekend.

Of course, doing both would be best!

But I work with tons of adult beginners whose lives are just too busy to accommodate a daily practice routine that takes a lot of time.

Besides, you never know. If you commit to five minutes a day, some of those sessions may magically morph to ten, fifteen, twenty....and before you know it, you're putting in more time than you thought you had to spare.

And yes, location, location, location! Make sure the guitar is right there, easy to grab at any spare moment.

Keep us posted - and have fun!
Best wishes, Lisa

like I said I hang all my guitars in my spare room...its become tlike the music room I guess...and my amp is in there too

in my house....the living room is upstairs and was a coverted attic. So in the summer it gets really hot up there when the AC isnt on ( it usually is but not when Im at work ) so I dont ever leave one of my acoustics up there. But now that it is winter I have left one up there on a stand.

I have an electric, 2 acoustics and even a mandolin to futz around with though I dont devote a lot of time to it.

I think I will mak a schedule and put it on paper.....I think I respond better to routine and it will be easier if I just follow something

thanks all

Thats exactly what I do. I have a page that I use weekly. It has all of my short term goals along with some long term. As I practice each day I check off what I did and how long I did it. Then the next practice session I start where I left off. Every week I add new things and take some off and leave my long term goals there. This works pretty well as you can see your progress from week to week. I also jot down notes occasionally with my strengths and weaknesses.

Having this practice schedule has kept my focused and organized. It also keeps me hitting the things I struggle with most often (first). As I look at my schedule from last week there is quite a few things I didn't do or only did once. I will now this week put them higher up on the schedule. Best of luck and keep at it,

Ed

I want to enthusiastically second Lisa's comment here:

Originally Posted by: LisaMcC
You are training your fingers and your brain to learn a whole bunch of new things. The more FREQUENTLY you remind them, the more quickly they will absorb them. So even just a five minute run-through of a few exercises or chords or a song is better than waiting all week, and then giving it an hour on the weekend.
[/quote]
Absolutely! This simply cannot be stressed enough.

Also, oldtimehobbies had some great advice about setting goals, making and sticking to practice schedules. And an approach to practice that I've given to all students:
[quote=oldtimehobbies]Having this practice schedule has kept my focused and organized. It also keeps me hitting the things I struggle with most often (first).

Right on. Do the hard stuff first, hit it hard! Then you can finish with something fun. This is rewarding yourself for having worked at doing the hard stuff that builds your skills. Also, finishing up with something fun gives you the incentive to return to the guitar for the next practice session. You are more likely to remember that the last session was fun! And not a drag because you finished with a failed attempt to do something hard you couldn't quite manage.

Finally, the other priceless advice mentioned in this thread: absolutely make sure your guitar is handy. Put it in a place that you can SEE it when you walk in the door if it helps!

To anyone with the luxury of more than one guitar, put one in each room you frequent. I have guitars on stands and in corners all over our house. Even though I don't keep one in the kitchen, I can see one from there, through the doorway in the corner of the dining room. :)

I try to make time every day, but with 2 boys AND a wife it's kinda hard to do. I usually can't get one out without my 2 year old wanting to play it, so he gets more time on it than I do. lol Yesterday we went to the new local music store and bought him a Lauren 1/2 size for $35, so we "practice" together. I know he's too young, but he LOVES it. On second thought, I guess they're never too young to brainwa... I mean influence. :p

jwb...

thats awesome
start em young
and getting to watch daddy play....priceless...it really is an influence
they learn more then how to play but the values behind it all

Hey all-

That's exactly how I got started. 10 years old, and my Dad knew a few chords which he showed me. C, F, and G. I thought F was surely the invention of an evil overlord. I think my first song was "Blowin' in the Wind" by Bob Dylan.

-Lisa

If only I would've started at his age! lol He tears me up, he sits there just strumming it singing "Daaaaaddy Daddy Daaaaaddy". I'll definitely be taking those videos to the desert with me!

I don't want to hijack this thread anymore, but about practicing and setting goals. After Fundamentals 2, where should one go from there if they really don't know which type of music to concentrate on? Are there lessons that kind of pick up from the fundamentals, or do we just look around at the different lessons available for what we need? I guess what I'm asking, is there a structured path, or do we create our own way from here?

Thanks!

Lisa

I agree...an evil underlord it must have been
I can get into many odd jazz chords but god for bid I can make the F sound nice...lololol

then again...I think someone must have been drinking when they took an already complicated jazz chord and said how can I possibly make this even more uncomfortable? lolol

on the practicing note....
There is so much I want to learn but I think I am too ADD to focus and end up all over the place.....I need to make structure my friend if I am going to progress to a level I want to be at.

is there a practice template on here? i think I saw one but cant remember where or if I did.

how do you order what you want to learn in a priority list? Should one thing get more time then another or equal times for all? Ive gotten as far as putting things in folders...instead of a pile of papers.

I would like to learn basic theory, get more scales down( how many do you tacle at once? ) , increase my jazz chord vocabulary...I really dont know any songs but have some tabs for things Ive started and abandoned....I am sometimes play on my electric and sometimes the acousitc so there is so much going on I lose focus.

any ideas for this ADD guitar wanna be?

JWB
dont worry about hijacking the thread....your little boy is part of your practicing experience and ya know what...he will always have that memory. I started this thread and I dont care...would love to see the video of the little dude jamming the daddy diddy!!

I think I am in your boat....I have down the fundamentals and then some.
I feel like someone who cant crawl....but I can skip...know what I mean?
I know some advanced stuff but missed a lot of simple things...

the few things I can do I do great and sound more impressive then I really am. I took lessons once and the teacher was impressed and was always like well you know this and you know that but I had no clue.

I think I really need to seek stucture and an order to things which is why I was worried about online lessons...but even a bad in person teacher can have you all over the place.

I would like to learn basic theory, get more scales down( how many do you tacle at once? ) , increase my jazz chord vocabulary...I really dont know any songs but have some tabs for things Ive started and abandoned

I think you answered your own questions :) What I did was start with a pretty big list. The list got shorter as I decided exactly what I wanted to do and exactly where I needed to spend the most time. For me if was chords so I practiced chords first each session. In addition to working my way through fund 2 chord stuff I found other individual lessons I also did at the same time.

Itsmesilly,

I'll try to post it on here if I can figure out how. :rolleyes:

I think I'm in the same boat you are, needing structure, but not sure what, when, and how much.

I, too, feel like I jump around too much getting bits and pieces. Hopefully we can figure something out. I guess that's part of the fun!

As a newbie myself I found one major problem that I feel others may share.
When I first started out 2 months ago I bought numerous books and CD's on learning the guitar. This does not include the many free sites that I downloaded lessons from.
This turned into a nightmare in trying to stick to a scheduled practice scenario. I found myself trying different lessons from 5-6 different sources and therefore had no way of really juding any progress made.
I now only use Jamorama which is fine for a beginner but most of my lessons now come from Guitar Tricks as I can track any progress made.

I wonder if there are others out there who have experienced the same?

Jazzn

im just so all over the place
so much I want to do and I skip around too much
I too was using so many sites it was crazy so I picked one...this one and am sticking with it
but I still feel like there is so much to know and do

I just made a simple practice schedule using excel but it would be just as easy to make a list. Start with the things you struggle with the most. That way you make sure you are practicing those things each time you play. After that I have just been putting down each lesson I want to do. I make them for just one week. I add stuff as I go. At the end of the week I decide what I need to leave on the list and also what I want to add for the next week. This has been working great for me. I really concentrated on switching chords for a long time. Now that I can finally switch them I have started the finger picking lessons (they have been on my practice schedule for months) and I love them. I decided after the first week of playing that I needed some kind of structure. Without formal lessons it was up to me to make a plan.

My schedule has mostly short term goals but also a few long term goals also. I don't practice these but I have them on there as a reminder of what it is that I am working toward. It is easy enough to modify your schedule to you find what works best for you to get to where it is you want to be. Try it out I think you will like it,

Ed

Just my suggestions from the years I've played...

First, don't skip the theory like I did. I wanted to be one of those cool 'I never took a lesson' dudes. I got good but always had to overcome the lack of knowledge. I did that pretty well and got pretty despite my absence of knowledge but see in hindsight that I was being an idiot. Even though I even taught on the side a long time ago, I was only giving very beginner stuff (ie songs, chords and pentatonic) and technical skill.

My thought on structuring. Each session should be broken in to (in order):

1. Physical Technique
Spend time getting your fingers to do what you want. Whether it fretting chords or scales, Spend time walking through your physical challenges building the physical skill up to speed.

2. Work on a 'Theory' Lesson.
Say for instance you were working on the lesson for chord/scale relationship. Take time to really work though playing what you learned and hearing the result from your fingers. Your mind may get what you see but it's not really anything until it comes from your hand. You should, I think, chunk out a path of theory lessons. You don;t have to achieve them in a time frame so much. It isn't a race. Keep on working on a theory lesson even over multiple sessions until it is a part of what you play and know. The idea is to have as part of your general knowledge so that it comes back out when you play in a natural manner. I think it's far better to be slow and methodical and 'get it down' before you go on to the next thing. Although I applied it to physical technique back when and I could, as they say, shred...I would spend very focused time to get something down even if it was a short lead run that was hard. That kind of focus on getting it makes it part of what you play. You may have to take some time to go through the GT lessons and make a roadmap of what order you'd need to learn them. Although, if you start here: http://www.guitartricks.com/category.php?input=theory ...and follow the order of them, that's a pretty good path.

3. Play something fun
Let face it, if it's all 'nose to the grindstone', what fun us that? Take some time in a lesson to learn something fun like an artist lick you always wanted to play. For that matter, if you have enough noodling material in your repetiore, just let it loose. That was usually how I ended practicing. Just unloading. By the time I had practiced on other stuff, I was pretty warmed up and since I got to the point where I was a solid player, I'd just unload me a barrage of noodle-palooza. Just because it was fun to see what I could do. Basically though, just a take a little time for yourself to fart around and give yourself a good pat on the back.

...from someone who is REALLY a beginner...

I think that all the advice here on practicing is exactly what I have found myself doing. I guess it's just lucky that we live in a smaller house maybe, but we have a computer in a corner of a large living room off by itself with my guitar on a stand right next to it. Perfect for me.

I actually find it difficult to walk by the thing without picking it up. I'm only two months now into guitar, having never picked one up in my life, but I find it's one of the best, and certaily most accessible ways to relax and forget a stressful day.

Funny too, I probably now know good pieces of about ten songs or more now that I can somehow summon up on demand. What the 30 to 45 minutes a day has given me is that memorization of not only pieces of songs, but chords. I wish that doing faster chord changes was as easy as learning the darn things in the first place!

You can't not improve if you are at least doing something.

Now I'm ready to start adding a few pages a day of theory and have a couple books to get me going there as well. Next, I'm going to try a community college group lesson class that starts in a few weeks. I'm hoping to get from it the feedback I could never give myself on what I do good, and of course, what I do bad. Learning on your own might seem convenient and simple, but I thrive on knowing what I am like to others when it comes to something like this.

I'm hoping an instructor can offer me some structure because like others I think that I'm bouncing around a bit too much. I like this site a lot and I love Guitarnoise.com. Those two are it for me mostly. I have a few books I like and more that I don't. Luckily I bought most used at Half Price Books.

But unlike many hobbies, I find that every tiny little thing I learn on the guitar has such an instant amount of satisfaction that I don't think of myself as being in a hurry. I go to friends houses who have many more years than me, but they are SO PATIENT and I know why, it's because we all have to go through the same steps and trials.

Soak up as much as you can, but definitely listen to the experts, because they have all been there and there really aren't shortcuts, just shorter trips.

TD