Philly Guitar Practice
Make your guitar practice inspiring
Are you tired of learning the guitar and practicing exercises that bore you? Frustrated with scale patterns that get you to run up and down the strings but don’t sound close to a musical idea? Do you jump around from one idea to the other hoping to see improvements in your playing but at the end of practice you feel like you haven’t gotten anywhere? You aren’t alone. Here are a few ideas that can help turn your practice sessions around. Advise from a Philly guitar teacher!
Set up your room properly
Make your practice area unique and inspiring to you. You are going to be spending a lot of time in here so make it a dedicated part of your house. Have it set up with a good armless chair, a footstool, and a music stand. Have your amplifier nearby (if you play electric guitar) and ready to go. On your walls, put up posters or photos of your favorite guitar players or bands or anything that inspires you musically. Having your practice area, designed and set up the way you like it, will greatly aid your inspiration to practice more.
Have practice materials ready
Before you sit down to practice for the day or particular session make sure you have all the materials you are going to be practicing on hand and ready to go. Have the music sheets, guitar lesson handouts or books beside you at all times and ready to go so you don’t have to waste your precious practice time, shuffling and rummaging through books or folders to find what you are practicing. This alone will save you time and make your practice sessions way more productive and rewarding.
Ensure there are no distractions
Before you practice, tell everyone you live with that you are not going to be available for the next thirty to sixty minutes. Tell them that you are not to be interrupted during this time unless there is an emergency. You should also switch off your phone. You want zero distractions so you can focus on what you’re working on, free from any outside influences.
Set a goal
Jumping from one thing to another in any random order, or spur of the moment in not practicing. It’s noodling and that doesn’t get you results. It leads to just playing around on your guitar. And playing around on your guitar doing things you can already do is not practicing. To prevent this from happening, set up what you want to practice before you ever sit down to a single practice session. This gives you direction and something to aim for.
Make a commitment
We all have busy lives. We have other responsibilities to consider besides learning the guitar. With these other things wanting and needing our attention it’s easy to let guitar practice slide and dismiss it. Things do come up from time to time which prevents us from practicing. That’s life. However, we need to dedicate our time to practice. To see improvements in your playing every week you have to schedule your practice time into your busy life.
These ideas call for no real sacrifice. They aren’t hard to do, however, once you start doing them you will see continued results in your guitar playing. Each week the thing that was once hard to do gets easier to play and allows you to tackle more challenging songs and material. And that is inspiring!