Make The Most Of Your Guitar Practice
How to make the most of your #practice sessions
We all have days when our guitar practice time is a lot less than we would like it to be. However, does this mean that you should simply accept that you have slower musical progress on these days? Absolutely not! There are many things you can do to maintain a very high level of effective and efficient practice no matter how much time you have to practice on a given day. Make your guitar teacher in Philadelphia proud of you for practicing even on the days that are off.
Don’t focus on time but quality instead
One of the biggest mistakes guitarists make related to practice is spreading themselves too thin. We focus on hundreds of exercises, lessons, resources, and materials. In reality, there are 8 core areas of guitar playing you should be focusing on at any given time: technique, music theory, ear training, phrasing, fretboard visualization, chords and scales, rhythm guitar playing and creative application to your playing. Focusing on these things, even for just a few minutes gives you a better advantage to creating good quality practice.
Maximize practice
The amount of time you spend practicing is not the point. Two people can practice the same things for equal amounts of time and get vastly different results. Before you work on increasing your total amount of practice time, you should refine your ability to get maximum results from whatever time you do have. You should focus on the eight core areas of practice to get the best use of your practice time.
Use practice time to improve more than one skill
You should rotate between the things you focus on with your guitar teacher. If you have one exercise to practice technique and one exercise to practice creative application, for instance, you can take care of all of these areas with just one exercise. You do this simply by alternating what your mind focuses on while practicing.
Set small goals for each practice session
Don’t practice just for the sake of practicing. Instead, visualize each practice session as a step toward the much larger goals you have for your guitar playing. Each practice session should move you a little bit closer to where you want to be. Every time you sit down to practice, as yourself what specifically do you intend to accomplish or improve by the time you are done practicing. This focuses on strategically moving towards a big picture goal and challenges you to maximize the effectiveness of each minute of practice you have. Holding yourself accountable for specific results is key to faster progress.
Don’t stop practicing
Even when your guitar practice time is extremely limited, you should practice anyway. Don’t let any amount of practice time go to waste no matter how small it may be. Even ten minutes of practice is better than not practicing at all.
When you take lessons from your guitar teacher in Philadelphia you want to maximize each session you have by being prepared. That preparedness comes with enough practice. If you aren’t practicing between sessions, you are doing both you and your teacher a disservice.