How to Improve Your Guitar Practice Sessions
If you practise guitar regularly you will get better, there's no doubt about it. But if you make your guitar practice the best it can be, your skills will develop faster and more consistently, with fewer bad habits picked up along the way.
In this guide, I'll look at some simple guitar practices that you can repeat whenever you have time, which will help you to stay disciplined and build the muscle memory you need to play more naturally at a higher level.
Top Tips for Better Guitar Practice
Let's start with some of those simple guitar practices that focus on specific skills and parts of the guitar, to build your familiarity, fluidity and fluency when playing for practice or for fun.
Guitar Chord Practice
Chords give your playing a fuller, more professional sound than just plucking individual notes. As you gain confidence, practise playing chords at different positions along the neck or transposing one chord into a higher or lower key. You'll gain an appreciation of how different chords relate to one another, and build your innate musicality too.
Guitar Sight Reading Exercises
Sight reading - playing from sheet music - is a skill in its own right, but it means you don't have to memorise entire songs or limit yourself to improvising all the time. Guitar tablature (or 'guitar tabs') are an easier alternative, if you're not confident with classical-style sheet music written on a stave.
Find out more in my blog How to Get Better at Guitar.
Pentatonic Scale Exercises
A pentatonic scale has 5 notes instead of the usual 7 (A-G) most people are familiar with. In fact, standard guitar tuning uses the E-minor pentatonic scale, with strings tuned to EADGBE, so practising some pentatonic scale exercises will help you to get to grips with this, as well as some of the alternative guitar tunings that can change the sound of your instrument.
Practise Fretboard Positions
The fretboard is what makes the individual notes and more complex chords you need when you play music, so make sure you practise fretboard positions and techniques. Challenge yourself to play specific notes or chords without looking at the fretboard - it should not be angled towards you and you should not crane your neck to look down at it. Learning to play without constantly looking at the fretboard can help you to adopt a posture that will allow you to practise for longer without feeling uncomfortable.
Set a Routine
With a list of simple guitar practices that you can fall back on, it's a good idea to set yourself a routine, so you keep up with practising on a regular basis. This could be 30 minutes to practise your chords and scales once the kids have gone to bed - even if it means plugging headphones into your amp! Try to make it sustainable, but also remember it takes time to learn guitar properly, so try to make a real commitment to practising whenever you can.
Tune Your Guitar
An out-of-tune guitar makes it impossible to practise, as you can never be sure if you're hitting the right notes or if your instrument is at fault. Make sure you know how to tune a guitar and spend a couple of minutes at the start of each practice session just checking you're happy with your guitar's tuning.
Find a Good Practice Space
Guitars are relatively small and portable, so you can spend some time on guitar practice almost anywhere. But it's better to practise where you won't be disturbed, and if you're not yet confident, you might find it easier to play where nobody will overhear you. I give guitar lessons in my home studio, which is perfect if you want to learn in a professional space, but I can also help you to find top practice spaces in Leeds when you're ready to practise independently.
Warm Up
Warm-up exercises can get your fingers feeling more nimble and the guitar resting comfortably in your hands. Always warm up at the start of a practice session - this is a great time to refresh what you have learned recently on fretboard positions, guitar chord practice and pentatonic scale exercises, all of which can form part of your warm-up during future sessions. This is especially important for ‘shredders’ - players in rock/metal who play very fast!
Review What You Learnt in Lessons
Reviewing skills you have recently learned will embed them into your memory - both in your brain and in your hands' muscle memory - helping you to become a more natural, instinctive player with good musicality.
Start Slow, and Gradually Speed Up
Those few minutes of warm-up time are a great way to get back up to speed, literally. Start by slowly picking out notes and chords and then build them together into a rhythm at normal speed. For beginners, this is a great way to set your own pace until you get good enough to play at speed.
Learn the Fretboard
I've mentioned it above, but learning the fretboard can make a big difference not only to your playing, but also to your posture, so that you can practise for longer without feeling uncomfortable. Even if you don't learn to read guitar tabs or sheet music, learn to read the fretboard and you're a good way towards playing longer and more complicated tunes.
Use a Metronome
A metronome is a good way to control your pace. Adjust it to a speed you feel comfortable with (or slightly faster to challenge yourself) and then try to land each note on the metronome's steady beat, to improve the rhythm of your guitar playing. An example would be placing the click on beats 2 and 4 in order to generate that swing feel in jazz music styles such as bossa nova and bebop.
Challenge Yourself
You get better by trying the things you can't already do (as well as by becoming more fluent in the skills you have picked up) so whether it's a new skill, a faster metronome or trying to play a song you haven't mastered yet, try to set goals and don't worry if you can't achieve them immediately - that's what practice is for.
Record Your Practice
Self-review is a powerful way to spot parts of your playing where you'd like to improve. You don't need an expensive microphone - even just listening back to recordings on your phone can be helpful, and some smartphone apps can help you to spot missed notes or poor rhythm.
Don’t Be Too Hard On Yourself
When self-reviewing, don't beat yourself up over the mistakes you make. Learning any new skill is about making those mistakes and learning how to not make them anymore, and guitar practice is no exception. It will take time and patience, but almost everybody can learn guitar to a good standard in the end.
Enjoy It!
Practising guitar can feel difficult at times, especially when you've set yourself an ambitious goal or you're trying to master a specific skill. But playing guitar - and practising guitar - should be fun! So kick back, take your time, and just enjoy building your musicality and technical skill in tandem. That's my preferred way to learn - you can find out more about my method here.
Want to Get The Most Out of Your Guitar Practice Sessions?
If you want some professional help to improve your guitar playing, get in touch with Bryan today. I welcome beginners, intermediates and experts alike, and I'll help you to improve in the areas where you need some extra advice.
We can work on technical skills, fluid playing and more general musicality, as well as focusing on the genres that interest you most. I'll be honest with you, but I won't judge you for the parts you find more difficult. Just friendly support to help guide your guitar practice in the right direction.
Read more blogs about guitars, music, and learning.
https://www.bryanguitar.co.uk/blog
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