Practicing Guitar – the Right Way!

Finding the right guitar practice exercises can be an overwhelming process. Searching, look stuff up and filtering through the countless number of exercises takes time. And this is even truer now with the advent of online courses, as one now has access to plethora of options, in the form of books, videos, courses, lessons, and other resources.

Wouldn’t it be just a whole lot easier if you know exactly what to practice on, what to choose and how to do it? Personally, I think knowing this would make you progress the best, especially when it comes to learning the guitar.

I’ve been playing the guitar for a pretty long time now, teaching the guitar for a good part of the decade as well. And from what I’ve seen, most guitarists – new and old – feel that there is a lot of information, exercises and guitar-resources online and offline and most of these musicians fail to make sense out of these resources and material – both online and off.

If you can relate to this, and if you feel you’re unsure where you should be focusing your practice time on, firstly I’d like to tell you that this is a problem faced by a lot of other musicians as well, and secondly, I might have a solution for you. The following write-up will show how you can start making real progress with your guitar-playing or learning exploits once again, and what exactly should you be doing during your guitar-playing time which would help you become a better musician.

One of the biggest errors that guitar players make is have too many options, having too many guitar exercises at their disposal. As a consequence, these people tend to spend a great deal of time and energy jumping around from one exercise or another without making any real progress. Instead of focusing on something that would yield the most results and the highest return out of their guitar-playing, their vertical growth and learning is minimal.

The fact is that it is generally a good idea to stick with a single (or a small number of) targeted guitar exercises that you can learn from. This would allow you to make some real vertical progress, and really see yourself grow as a guitarist as well as an artist.

Mistake number two, from what I’ve seen, is musicians not defining what their goals are, as well as what steps they would take to achieve those goals. Instead, most guitarists tend to simply look for stuff they would want to practice on the guitar. This is a big mistake, because looking for what to practice on the guitar is totally pointless, and to go through random and monotonous repetitions of guitar exercises will have very little effect on your progress.

Instead, you need to focus on the following: what problems are you trying to solve, when you practice a specific guitar exercise, and how this particular exercise will help you achieve your ultimate goal, or the skills you are trying to develop.

It is imperative to understand and remember that these guitar exercise are nothing more than just simply tools that are used to accomplish goals and overcome specific problems during your guitar playing journey. It is extremely important to be specific. Instead of saying “I need to improve my guitar playing”, identify a specific problem, such as “I need to work on so and so aspect of my acoustic-guitar playing skills” (e.g. “I need to start learning how to put different chords together in order to play a solo”).

Pinpoint the problems and work on getting better at those aspects of your guitar-playing skills, because the more specific you become and the more explicitly you define the problem, the easier it will be for you identify the best, most effective guitar exercise to solve that problem.

So in essence, whenever you struggle to achieve any meaningful or tangible results from the exercises that you do or practice on, or when  you feel overwhelmed  from not knowing which exercises you would want to include in your routine, take a step back and ask yourself what specific guitar-playing problem are you trying to solve, how is this exercise going to help me solving this problem and how does this particular exercise fit into the big-picture as far as my long term objectives as a musician are concerned? Here are a few tips that will aid you through this process:

1. Be clear about what your objectives are, and what you want to achieve with your guitar-playing exploits.

2. Split your long-term guitar playing goals into a list of skills that you would need to develop to reach those goals.

3. Narrow-down your guitar-playing and practicing exercises to a select-few, based on the list you developed in point no. 2 above. After you’re done with step 2, delect the guitar exercises that will help you develop those skills, and focus on vertical growth.

4. Be organized and cut down on time wastage (such as during procrastination). Organize your time in order to determine the most effective exercises that will develop your skills and solve the problems you identified before.

5. Accept that you alone are responsible for your guitar-playing progress. Your mind should be focused on the fact that you want to overcome a problem and this will ultimately determine how much progress and what kind of progress you make. Instead of just playing the guitar on auto-pilot, try to focus on the solution of your problems and development of your skills, and as you progress with time, you will not be practicing as much as you thought you would need to.

If you follow this 5-step process, and approach guitar playing this way, you will notice that your guitar learning becomes more enjoyable and a whole lot easier! In addition, I would recommend learning the guitar with an experienced teacher – someone who’s been teaching for a long time and someone who has a proven track record of nurturing the developing great guitar players.