Classical Guitar Practice
Looking for tips on classical guitar practice?
Practice will be the aspect of playing a musical instrument that’ll help to make or break you. That’s why we have produced these specific proven piano practice tips that you must know included in our ‘Beginner’s Guide To Learning the Classical Guitar’ series.
Verified Classical Guitar Practice Hints You Should Know
Practice. If you do it regularly enough, you will become excellent. Everybody knows this. So why is practice so difficult?
Motivation is vital. Without motivation, you’ll not push yourself to return to the instrument every single day. Exactly how do you get motivated?
By winning. Yes, that is correct. Winning. You’re in consistent competition with yourself, and whenever things go very well, you really feel like you’re winning. When you’re in this particular mindset, it’s effortless to practice. It’s the circle of life – winning a lot more gives you much more motivation, which means you practice even more. Practising more usually means you win more, thus it gives you a lot more motivation. Which goes on and on exponentially.
If it’s that simple, how come practice still so difficult?
The answer? Because it’s not that easy! Just practising isn’t good enough. You can practice for five hours on a daily basis and not improve.
If it’s not the quantity of practice that places you in the circle of life, exactly what does?
Level of quality.
Practising for fifteen minutes per day, focused, useful high quality practice is considerably more advantageous than 4 hours of unfocused, ‘auto-pilot’ practice.
So you simply need top-quality practice so that you can leap aboard the circle of life train?
In your dreams! Nothing is that easy. Incorporate quantity and quality, and you’ll finally become a first-class passenger.
Keep reading to discover how to buy your first-class ticket, and how to stay on the train as long as you want…
Structure Your Classical Guitar Practice
How much time should you practice classical guitar for each and every day?
15 to 20 mins is a fantastic place to begin and in all likelihood not any more than 45 minutes each time. After this length of time, as human beings are likely to zone out – and therefore the practising ends up being much less effective. As a rule of thumb, when you feel your focus waning, stop. Become proud that you simply showed up to your practice session, and don’t be concerned over the length of time you practice for.
How frequently should you be practicing the classical guitar?
This one is a simple answer – practice each day. This way, you’ll change your classical guitar practice into a routine. A concise, targeted day-to-day practice is much more useful than twice each week for one hour at the same time. And bear in mind, in case you’re wondering “but how can I find the time to carry out twenty minutes per day? !? – just grab some of your time from social media over to the classical guitar. We do, after all, dedicate on average 142 minutes on social media a day!
When should you be practicing the classical guitar?
It will make no big difference when you practice, simply just so long as you do practice. Experiment with developing a fixed schedule for yourself as opposed to being ad-hok. Find which options work best, and stick to it.
Classical Guitar Practice Top Tips
1. Stop Potential Interruptions
It is ‘you’ time. The same as when you visit the cinema, be sure you turn off those nagging gizmos that may ping, ding and interrupt you. Concentration is definitely the name of the game.
2. Get Comfy
Cumulatively, you’ll be spending considerable time at the instrument, so get relaxed. Establish things just how you prefer them. A glass of water nearby. A pencil and pieces of paper for making notes. Then similar to a Jedi Knight, zone in and concentrate.
3. Set up Objectives
Decide on what you wish to accomplish, and make it a thing you can achieve in the session. By focusing on the end result, you get there faster and more successfully.
As a bit of advice, Monday you can fix one aim, subsequently Tuesday another. Wednesday could be a moment of integrating your results of Monday and Tuesday. Thursday might be the last ambitious goal, with Friday your day of getting all the things together. However you assign your aims or objectives, remain consistent – and most importantly, always be strong with yourself to keep your system going. As a reward, ensure you treat yourself to a box of chocolates…
4. Say Hi To Bad Habits
Nobody is perfect for the very first time. Consciously know that until you’ve repeated a section several times, you’ll make mistakes. Become as methodical as possible handling these errors, because if you don’t, you’ll discover bad habits start to creep in.
So if you experience a terrible habit appearing out from no-where, say a nice big HELLO to it. Then swat it just like the most annoying fly.
The only way this will work though is if you’re reliable. Don’t ever allow undesirable habits to creep in. You’ll regret it!
5. Keep It Fresh
Perhaps you have driven to a place, and when you arrived, you had simply no recollection or recall regarding the trip. You drove completely on ‘brain auto-pilot’. The same can take place when practicing classical guitar.
If you practice much the same way each and every time, your progress will slow down, your commitment will shrink, and playing the classical guitar will turn out a chore. You can actually combat this tiny annoying fact by changing your practice techniques.
There are lots of options. Close your eyes to perform. Try playing the music backwards. Consider standing up or sitting down. Play whilst wearing earphones. Play every little thing quietly, or maybe loudly. The list goes on and on. Creativity is definitely the name of the game, and whatever you do, don’t become bored!
6. Coach Yourself
There exists a good reason many of us go to school; and it’s because we understand best when we have a teacher standing over us, encouraging us to succeed. But unless you happen to be Founder of Microsoft, you’re extremely unlikely to be able to afford to pay for a teacher 365 days of the year. Should it matter? Absolutely not! You are your own teacher – and also you come at no cost!
In the first place, figure out how to listen closely. Many people forget to actively listen, however, it’s the ideal way to transform your playing.
Subsequent, along with the miracles of modern technology, it’s now increasingly simple to record your playing. So get your phone out, record, and critique yourself.
And even when the world’s wealthiest individuals wanted to retain the services of my own teacher, they couldn’t afford to pay for it!
7. Whatever You Perform, Don't Start off...
It seems right to start a piece at the beginning. The catch is if you do that each and every session, the initial few notes will sound incredible, but still end up being disproportionately practised compared with the rest of the piece. Mix it up. Begin right at the end! Or at the centre! Or close your eyes and randomly choose a part. Just don’t always begin from the beginning!
8. Performing The Simple Parts
It can feel wonderful to play sections we know perfectly well. On the other hand, if that’s all that you ever play, you’ll have part of the piece to a superb standard, but the more complicated half will be a failure. And yes, you’ll naturally be drawn to the straightforward bits, which usually leaves the challenging bit out in the cold. All alone. Shivering for some heat and love.
Now think of this rationally. Should you consciously pick out what requires more practice, it would be the challenging element. Right? That requires far more love and consideration. The straightforward part looks after by itself.
So don’t overlook this. Go learn that challenging aspect and warm it up…
9. Don't Perfect The Piece
One of the best techniques you can learn is sight-reading. But what exactly is sight-reading? It’s performing anything that is put before you, instantly and without fuss. The objective isn’t to be perfect. It’s to get through it as best as you can whilst always keeping the beat.
10. Keeping The Flow
Your metronome is there not as your adversary, but as your close friend. So be sure you utilize it!
For areas which might be really fast and hard, the metronome is usually a wonderful device. Set it up at a nice and simple tempo, which you can have fun with the part correctly. Then every single day, notch up the speed by a little. Ultimately, you’ll end up being at performance tempo, and it also should truly feel as comfortable as when you began at a slower pace.
Bonus Suggestion: For faster portions, try and get at ease performing the difficult parts 10% faster than you need – like that, after you return to the speed you really want to perform it at, it should feel nice and simple!
11. It Is Essential...
Recall in number 3 I mentioned a nice box of chocolates? I thought this is critical enough to mention it twice!
Classical Guitar Practice Bonus Tips
1. Take Care Of Your Brain
Each and every time you choose to do something new, your brain learns something about it and helps to create a neuron. This neuron is like a branch of a tree, and the more occasions you repeat the neuron process, you reinforce it. Put simply, the branch of the tree gets much stronger and much stronger. This only transpires though if you do precisely the same thing, again and again.
On the other hand, whenever you modify something, a different branch is generated. Should you play the very same passage of music four times, and each time you start using a different fingering or are not completely consistent, you’re developing four branches.
So what is the issue with that? A branch functions much like a path that the brain walks down. It needs to choose one of the options you’ve developed. The issue is that instead of one formidable option, you have many weaker alternatives. This just confuses your wobbly gel of a brain and slows the processing time right down. The outcome is usually a mistake.
So be consistently correct from the first time of playing something. Learn stuff at a pace you can work well. And take note of your neurons!
2. Recommended Reading
Here are some great books that really helped me when I was starting out and I regularly recommend them to students to this day.
I also highly recommend you include How to Read Music in 30 Days in your must-read list. If haven’t already read our guide on How To Read Sheet Music, then do check that out as well.
Classical Guitar Practice - Summary
In case you have realized one thing from this page, it ought to be:
Practice is the central factor with discovering a musical instrument. Do not leave it to chance. Build a practice procedure. Mix it up. Print off this post and continue referring to it. And remember to treat yourself…
About the Author
Robert Emery
Robert Emery is Founder & CEO of Ted's List. He has performed all around the world as a conductor and pianist. From Sydney Opera House to the Royal Albert Hall, Robert has enjoyed bouncing around on stage in most of the major venues in the world. As a record producer, he has worked on fifteen No 1 albums, and hopes he can get to sixteen asap!
The Times called him 'the eccentric barefooted maestro' and the Mail quoted that 'the assured baton was controlled by the rather energetic and brilliant conductor'.
Robert has a wife (Mrs. E), two children (Master T and Master A) and four cats (Merlin, Mulberry, Partridge & Penguin). Between performing, producing, composing and running Ted's List, he runs an entertainment business called The Arts Group, comprising of a symphony orchestra, choir, live event production house, digital TV company and artist agency. Any spare time is usually devoted to sleep.
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