An Effective Practice Routine

The concept of a practice routine is an often controversial thing in the guitar community. Many guitarists feel that music shouldn’t be scheduled or structured. Instead they feel like it should be a natural process and that guitarists should just go with the flow. While this is a nice thought, it isn’t a great idea for guitarists who are serious about improving their playing.

In order to improve at the guitar, you need to focus in and correct any flaws in your playing. The easiest way to correct these flaws is to develop a practice routine that works. Developing a practice routine is something most guitarists don’t want to do because they think it will make playing boring. That might be the case for some, but it is absolutely crucial for any guitarist to develop an effective practice routine. If the right practice routine is developed, playing won’t become mundane. Instead, it will become more interesting because the guitarist will see the improvements in his or her playing!

One thing to realize is that one practice routine does NOT fit all. Thus, it is important for a guitarist to sit down and think about what he or she is good at and what he or she needs to improve. Then, based on that information, the guitarist should craft a routine that will allow him or her to get rid of those flaws.

The practice routine ideas outlined in this article are merely suggestions for guitarists who are looking to craft their practice routine.

A Balanced Routine

What kind of routine you come up with for your practice depends on (1) your flaws (2) your goals and (3) the time you can invest in practice.

Let’s say you’ve figured out that you want to improve your soloing. Further, let’s say that you’ve determined that your soloing is sloppy. Thus, you want to use your practice routine to improve the accuracy of your soloing. You’ve probably come to the conclusion that your soloing is so sloppy because you are going too fast and aren’t able to control your fretting like you need to in order to have good sounding notes. Therefore you must create a practice routine that addresses this problem. A sample routine might be like so:

10 minutes of playing solo-friendly scales slow
10 minutes of playing solo-friendly scales at intermediate speed
10 minutes of playing solo-friendly scales at fast speed

Notice that in this progression, you build up to a fast speed. That’s the logical way of improving any technique—you go at it slowly, so that you can play everything perfectly. Then, you gradually increase speed, all the while keeping the accuracy. It is more important to play every note perfectly than it is to sloppily play 200 notes a minute!

Of course, the above is just a suggestion. You might not want to spend a half hour practicing scales. If that’s the case, just try to pick exercises that will improve whatever technique (soloing, rhythm etc.) you are looking to get better at.

A Traditional Routine

A lot of the great guitarists like to first warm up with scales. This allows them to get their hands comfortable and playing at a good speed. Then, they will progress into playing chords and other techniques. Finally, they will begin to play songs—perhaps their own songs or other songs. It’s a basic, but effective practice routine that allows them to keep their playing at a consistent level. One such routine might be:

Warm Ups:
20 minutes of scales
Techniques:
20 minutes of technique specific
Songs:
60-90 minutes of songs

The problem with this routine is that the guitarist isn’t really looking to improve a flaw. Instead, he or she is trying to keep their playing from regressing. Those who are happy with their skill level can employ this routine and it will be effective. Those who want to improve will want to do a different routine.

My Personal Routine:

I admit that I’m not the fondest of practice routines. For the most part, the routines I have tried to use have done nothing for me. However, I have found a routine that works for me. Here it is below:

12 minutes of Scales:
E Phrygian
Minor Pentatonic
Jazz Scale
Chromatic Scale

I do 3 minutes for each of the scales above—one minute with a metronome, two minutes without.

10 Minutes of Chords:

G Major
A Major
E Major
C Major
D Major
I basically take 10 minutes to practice my chord switching so that I am able to play good rhythm guitar.

8 Minutes of Techniques:

Select Exercises from Troy Stetina’s Lead Rock Guitar

I’m a huge fan of Stetina because he teaches techniques that every good rock guitarist must master. So I’ll pick a few exercises from his book to focus on for 8 minutes. Of course, you could use pretty much any technique related book for this.

30 Minutes of Songs:

I’ll use this time to play songs, whether they are mine own or some else’s. This helps me to stay interested in my practice routine—it’s fun to play songs!

The bottom line of this article is to evaluate your skill level as a guitarist, determine your weaknesses, set goals, and then create a practice routine to achieve those goals.