Electric Guitar Practice
Fighting to structure your electrical guitar practice?
It’s not sufficiently good to just practice for a longer period. You need to practice better. More proficiently. And as an element of our ‘Beginner’s Guide To Learning the Electric Guitar’, we shall teach you all the knowledge you need to practice the electric guitar much better.
Why Longer Electric Guitar Practice Doesn't Equal Great Practice
Practice. If you do it regularly enough, you’ll become great. You know this. Why then is practice so difficult?
Motivation is essential. Without motivation, you’ll not propel yourself to return to the instrument day after day. So how do you get motivated?
By winning. Yes, that is correct. Winning. You’re in constant competition with yourself, and whenever things go very well, you feel like you’re winning. When you’re within this state of mind, it is effortless to practice. It’s the circle of life – winning more will give you a lot more motivation, which means you practice more. Practising more means you win more, as a result, it gives you even more motivation. And this goes on and on exponentially.
Therefore if it’s that straightforward, how come practice still so difficult?
The answer? Because it’s not that easy! Just practising isn’t adequate. You could practice for three hours per day and not improve.
So if it’s not the amount of practice that puts you on top of the circle of life, exactly what does?
One thing, and one thing alone – quality.
Practising for 15 minutes per day, focused, beneficial top-quality practice is considerably more effective than 8 hours of unfocused, ‘auto-pilot’ practice.
So you just need high-quality practice for you to hop aboard the circle of life train?
You wish! Nothing is that easy. Combine quantity and quality, and you’ll finally turn into a first-class passenger.
Keep reading to find out how to get your first-class ticket, and ways to stay on the train so long as you want…
Structure Your Electric guitar Practice
How long do I need to be practicing each day?
15 to 20 mins is a great place to start, and probably not any more than 45 minutes or so at the same time. After this time frame, all of us humans have a tendency to zone out – and therefore the practising gets to be much less productive. As a rule of thumb, whenever you really feel your attention waning, stop. Become proud that you simply showed up to your practice session, and don’t fret over how long you practice for.
How frequently should I be practicing?
This one is a straightforward answer – practice each day. In that way, you’ll transform your electric guitar practice into a habit. A short concentrated regular practice is more helpful than twice every week for one hour at the same time. And keep in mind, if perhaps you’re wondering “but how will I find the time to accomplish twenty minutes a day? !? – just steal some of your time and energy from social media over to the electric guitar. We do in fact, dedicate on average 142 minutes on social media every day!
What days do i need to be practicing the electric guitar?
It makes no difference whenever you practice, just providing you do practice. Experiment with setting up a predetermined schedule for yourself vs. being ad-hok. See which solutions work most effectively, and stay with it.
Electric Guitar Practice Top Tips
1. Remove All Interruptions
This really is your time, so you absolutely do not want anyone troubling you. So be sure to shut down your pc tablet, laptop or computer, watch, and above all cell phone, to be as focused as you possibly can.
2. Get Really Comfy
With time, you’ll be spending an immense length of time with your instrument, and so it’s really essential that you become as comfy as possible. You should definitely have some water, a pen and a piece of paper to make notes.
3. Set Yourself Objectives
Think about an end result. And to achieve this, you’ll really need to set yourself some desired goals. ‘Mini-Goals’ can be better than one huge goal…
For a bit of advice, Monday you could possibly fix one goal, after that Tuesday one more. Wednesday might be a moment of merging your triumphs of Monday and Tuesday. Thursday may very well be the last ambitious objective, with Friday the day of placing everything together. However you assign your aims or objectives, be consistent – and most importantly, always be strong with yourself to keep your technique going. As a benefit, be sure you treat yourself to a box of chocolates…
4. Say Howdy To Undesirable Habits
Nobody is perfect the 1st time. Consciously realize that until you’ve repeated a section several times, you will make some mistakes. Be as methodical as possible solving these mistakes, because if you do not, you will uncover bad habits start to slip in.
So if you notice an undesirable habit developing out from no-where, say a nice big HELLO to it. Then swat it just like the most irritating fly.
The same goes for correcting specialised difficulties with things such as posture and your technique. While it can take longer up-front, it’ll fork out dividends at a later date and can save you loads of time.
5. Make It Entertaining
Have you ever been travelling, and suddenly realized that you can’t remember the last 30 minutes? Or been on a journey which lasts hours, but you are only able to recall specific sections? This is exactly what I call being on ‘auto-pilot’. It is precisely what we need to stay clear of during practice.
Should you practice exactly the same each time, your development will slow down, your enthusiasm will shrink, and playing the electric guitar will turn out a laborious task. It is possible to deal with this very little gremlin by changing your practice tactics.
There are so many solutions. Shut your eyes to perform. Consider performing the music backward. Try standing up or sitting down. Play whilst wearing earphones. Perform every little thing softly, or maybe loudly. The list goes on and on. Creation is the name of the game, and whatever you decide and do, don’t get bored!
6. You Are The Greatest Coach
We all understand best whenever we have someone over our shoulders, giving us their feedback. Unfortunately, if you do not own Amazon, you’re not likely to be able to manage to pay for your own electric guitar teacher 365 days each year. But Mr Bezos is able to keep his squillions because we don’t need them. We have our personalized teacher inside us.
For starters, quickly learn how to hear. Lots of people forget to actively listen, yet it’s the easiest way to improve your playing.
Second of all, we are living in an age where you can generate a decent recording of your playing with simply your smartphone. So take action. View it back and self-critique. Carry on doing this until you improve.
And even if the world’s wealthiest individuals wanted to retain the services of my own tutor, they couldn’t afford to pay for it!
7. Start out Right At The End
You read a book, you locate page one. It’s totally normal. You perform a piece of music, you begin at the beginning. Once more, absolutely normal. But when it comes to practicing, it’s not the best idea. You’ll end up being phenomenally good at the initial few notes, and pretty terrible at the rest. So change it up. Get started at the end, or possibly halfway through. Then tomorrow, opt for another different place to start your practice. But whatever you decide and do, don’t always start in the beginning!
8. Omit The Easy Parts
It can feel excellent to play sections we know well. Even so, if that’s all that you ever play, you’ll have half of the piece to a superb standard, but the much harder half will be a disaster. And yes, you’ll naturally get drawn to the easy bits, which usually leaves the difficult bit out in the cold. All alone. Shivering for some warmth and love.
Now think about this logically. Should you consciously pick what demands more practice, it would be the challenging element. Right? That needs a lot more love and attention. The straightforward element will look after by itself.
Go on then! Discover those tough pieces…
9. Don't Perfect The Piece
One of the best skills you can learn is sight-reading. But what is sight-reading? It’s performing anything that is put before you, instantly and without hassle. The target isn’t to always be perfect. It’s to get through it as best as possible whilst keeping rhythm.
10. Keeping Time
Your metronome is there not as your enemy, but as your friend. So make sure you make use of it!
For parts which can be really fast and difficult, the metronome can be an excellent device. Set it at a nice and effortless tempo, which you can play the section flawlessly. Then each and every day, notch up the tempo by a little. Eventually, you’ll end up being at performance tempo, and yes it should truly feel as comfortable as whenever you started out at a slower tempo.
And right here is a bonus tip – always make an attempt to overshoot by 10%. In order to be at 150bpm, ensure you can play it at 165BPM – that way 150BPM will appear easily manageable!
11. A Box of Chocolates
Did you detect in point number three that I described a treat? Well, I do believe it’s so important I’m mentioning it twice! Make sure you make it rewarding…
Electric Guitar Practice Bonus Tips
1. Make Your Branch Stronger
Each and every time you choose to do something new, your brain learns something about it and produces a neuron. This neuron is like a branch of a tree, and the more times you duplicate the neuron task, you strengthen it. Basically, the branch of the tree gets stronger and tougher. This only transpires though if you do the very same thing, over and over again.
In addition to that, if you play things differently each time, you are creating different neurons, different tree branches. In the event you play it differently each and every time, five times, then you’ll end up getting five neurons. 5 tree branches.
So what’s the matter with that? A branch acts like a path that your brain strolls down. It has to choose one of the selections you’ve developed. The issue is that as opposed to one formidable choice, you might have many weak options. This just confuses your wobbly gel of a brain and slows the processing time right down. The actual result is often a slip-up.
So be consistently accurate from the 1st time of playing something. Understand things at a tempo you are able to perform well. And focus on 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.
Electric Guitar Practice - Summary
Should you have discovered one thing from this page, it has to be:
Practice is the most vital point with understanding a musical instrument. Do not leave it to chance. Make a practice procedure. Mix it up. Print off this article and keep referring to it. And be sure you 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.
Other posts by this author
Discover What 4 Things I’ve Uncovered This Week
Each week, on a Friday, I send the four Feature Friday email. It’s a simple idea that contains four outstanding things I”ve uncovered that week.
On condition that it includes something related to music, it can wind up in the email. Consider it a musical pandora’s box!
Sign up for the 4 Feature Friday email list, by simply pressing below.
Read the next post in this series:
