HowToPracticeGuitar

Guitar players: setting long-term goals is crucial for progress, right?

❌ WRONG!

At least - the way most people do it. ☝️

Saying: “I want to reach outcome X by date Y” is stupid.

Why?

1. The deadline is random af and almost certainly - realistic. The longer the time frame - the less accurate your prediction.

2. If you don’t hit the goal (very likely), you’ll feel like a failure.

3. If you do hit the goal, odds are - it’s because you’ve set the bar way too low and could’ve aimed for something far more ambitious.

4. You have to wait a long ass time to know if you were practicing correctly to hit your goal. And The whole time you’re practicing, you're feeling unhappy because you haven’t reached it yet.

5. If/when you ever reach the goal, it feels not enough because you want more... so you're left unfulfilled.

A better strategy?

✅ Set process-based goals you can knock out in a single practice session.

e.g. Spend 10 minutes on:

... building muscle memory with a new pick grip…

… relaxing tension in your jaw,

… cleaning up your finger rolling with sweep picking…

… playing a riff in time, etc.

This way, every repetition gives you feedback on how well you’re practicing.

You end each session feeling accomplished.

And the more of these practice sessions you stack up, the better your playing becomes.

6 months ago | [YT] | 22

HowToPracticeGuitar

Guitar players: struggling to find practice time?

Do this: 👇

1️⃣ Create practice schedules for the WHOLE week in advance. This way you won’t waste time ‘on the day’ wondering wtf to practice. You’ll not just save time, you’ll make BETTER schedules, because they’ll be more strategic and less random.

Next:

2️⃣ Remember what Gus Fring said to Walter White: “What does a man do? A man provides. And he does it even when he's not appreciated, respected or loved. He simply does it.” Similarly, make ‘practicing every day’ part of your “I’m a guitarist” identity. Because what does a guitarist do? He practices, damn it.

Then:

3️⃣ Make use of time away from guitar. e.g. driving to/from work, eating meals, washing dishes, walking, standing in line at the store, showering, falling asleep, sitting on the toilet. You can use this time to improve all kinds of musical skills…

... especially if you do the next 👇 point, which is:

4️⃣ Learn ‘about’ practicing and how to do it better… same way you’d learn about scales, theory or technique. The more you see your practicing pay off, the more you’ll want to do it… and the easier it suddenly becomes to ‘find’ time.

More:

5️⃣ Plan to practice just 80% of the time you think you’ll realistically have. This way, if you go over it- you’ll feel good for exceeding your goal. If you just do the minimum, you’ll still feel good, because you’ve hit your daily goal.

Then, on days you're REALLY busy af:

6️⃣ Pick up the guitar for just 5 minutes. You’ll almost certainly NOT want to put it down after 5 minutes… but even if you do, at least you’ve done ‘something’.

Finally:

7️⃣ Take lessons. The more expensive, the better. When you’re on the hook for paying money every month...

... you’re way less likely to slack off and more likely to practice and do what your teacher tells you than you’d be if you just dick around watching random YT videos.

Do those ☝️ 7 things and I dare you to NOT improve like crazy.

6 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 20

HowToPracticeGuitar

How do you fix bad guitar technique habits if you have little time to practice?

Here is what NOT to do:

Do NOT put your entire playing on hold just to fix one bad habit. Doing this can cause your other skills to go backwards and kill your motivation to practice.

A better way?

Work on changing your habit for 5-15 minutes a day to get consistent reps in that build new muscle memory.

When the time is up, move on to practice other things (even if you see your bad habit flare up again)… and come back to working on it again the next day.

Follow this process every day for 1-2 weeks and your bad habit will gradually weaken and vanish… while you keep getting better with other skills.

7 months ago | [YT] | 46

HowToPracticeGuitar

The #1 guitar speed mistake I fix in my students' practicing is…

…

Cranking up the metronome tempo way too soon.

You’ll build way more guitar speed when you can make a lick harder to play ‘without’ playing faster…

(e.g. play unplugged, play with the picking hand only without fretting notes, accent ‘every’ beat, play on the lowest (or the highest) frets, combine it with another lick, add string skipping, etc.)

… or easier to play ‘without’ slowing down.

(e.g. play fewer notes, play without string skipping, play in a more comfortable position on guitar, play the same frets on every string to simplify the fretting hand, etc.)

This helps you iron out any remaining flaws at each tempo before you speed from it and build WAY more control over the lick.

By the time you reach your top speeds, it should feel just as easy to play as it did at slow speeds.

7 months ago | [YT] | 31

HowToPracticeGuitar

I gathered up 51 of my very best fretting hand speed hacks that thousands of my students are using to see nearly instant boosts in their accuracy and ease of playing. And I put 'em all in this 👇 massive video, so you can do the same. Enjoy!

7 months ago | [YT] | 17

HowToPracticeGuitar

Want to build more guitar speed?

✅ Do this at EVERY tempo you practice to check if you’re ready to speed up from it:

1️⃣ Play your lick in quarter notes (1 note per click) at the tempo you are on.

As you do:

2️⃣ Focus on how relaxed you feel everywhere in your body.

Then...

3️⃣ Jump back to 16th notes (or triplets... or whatever the note values are)… and check if your playing feels just as easy as it felt in quarter notes.

If it does, great! Increase the tempo. 👍

If it doesn’t - DON’T increase the tempo. ❌

Stay at the speed you were at (or slow down) and making your 16th notes (or triplets) feel just as easy as quarter notes feel.

That ☝️ is how you’ll make your faster playing feel just as effortless as slow playing.

7 months ago | [YT] | 43

HowToPracticeGuitar

Guitar players:

Learning songs takes way longer when you try to play each part of a song up to speed before learning the next part.

❌ Don't do this.

Songs aren't exercises. Some parts within the same song can be insanely hard compared to others.

Practicing the hard part for weeks is a good way to get so sick of the song - you give up on it and never play it all the way through.

Do this instead:

✅ Learn the FULL song at your 'bottleneck' speed.

AKA: the top speed of the 'hardest' part of the song. (The bottleneck.)

This way, you can learn the full song all the way through really fast.

From there, isolate the bottleneck part and practice to make it easier and faster. When you do, the whole song will speed up automatically.

And even if you move on to another song before mastering the one you're on, at least you'll know it all the way through.

Better that than to be one of those players who only plays (the easy) parts of songs.

7 months ago | [YT] | 28

HowToPracticeGuitar

Want To Make Legato Easier?

Remember this:

A pull off is a 2-finger job.

The pulling finger does the pull off… the receiving finger keeps the string stable. If you ignore the receiving finger, your legato will sound sloppy and weak.

Practice pushing the string up with the receiving finger during the pull off to: 1. build the ‘right’ kind of strength that makes your pull offs more articulate, 2. keep the string in tune during the pull off (counterbalance the pull off motion).

For extra torture, practice this unplugged.

You’ll be using way more force than is normally needed for legato and that’ll help you rip through your legato runs when you turn the amp and distortion back on.

For more on this, watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0c6z...

7 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 21

HowToPracticeGuitar

Overwhelmed by too much to practice on guitar?

Do this to save an insane amount of time and get better way FASTER:

Step 1: Choose ONE practice item (a lick, a part of a song/solo or a riff). ✅

Step 2: Make a list of 5-6 elements of your guitar playing you want to improve. (E.g. picking hand efficiency, finger independence, tension control, string noise control, timing, etc.) ✅

Step 3: Play your item over and over and focus on the first element for 2 minutes. Pick a tempo challenging enough to force you to focus… but slow enough to make sure you’re getting better with the element you're focusing on. ✅

When the time is up…

Step 4: Keep playing, but rotate your mental focus to the next element for 2 minutes. Then - 2 minutes later - rotate to another element… then another. ✅

After 15-20 minutes, you will have improved in 5-6 areas of your playing without needing a boatload of exercises. ✅

7 months ago | [YT] | 50

HowToPracticeGuitar

This 👇 is probably the easiest and most failsafe way to boost your speed that exists. (It's NOT "slow practice" and it's not "pushing yourself with speed bursts" either.) It is my go-to method for getting my students past 200 bpm 16th notes mark.

7 months ago | [YT] | 6