Tips for Practicing

Obviously there are no shortcuts to getting proficient on a musical instrument. No matter if you're singing or playing the guitar, oboe or piano, you have to get those 10,000 hours in.

On this site, I present a number of exercises that can help you make those fingers stronger, more limber and coordinated, as well as some common scale patterns, in order to familiarize you with the materials one can use for leads. It's you who are going to have to do the gruntwork.

In order to get the most out of the time you spend practicing, make sure you go about it properly. Don't spend time and energy acquiring weird habits that are going to be a pain unlearning at a later time.

I cannot promise you any results. But I do know that applying the following tips and tricks has helped me significantly. Some of them are old chestnuts that music teachers have been preaching for centuries. Maybe you're the same as me, and need to be reminded of them constantly.

Hands Clean

One surprisingly effective way to prepare for a lengthy practice session is to wash your hands thoroughly in warm water and with lots of soap and/or some kind of hand scrub. Then you dry off equally thoroughly using a fresh terrycloth towel.

This not only improves the circulation in your hands and fingers and serves as a pre-warmup warmup, getting the dirt and dead skin cells off your hands will have a marked effect on the longevity of your strings. Not to mention it makes good sense in these post-COVID times.

Proper Playing Position

If you're anything like me, you'll grab a guitar, sit down on your couch, put it on your right thigh (I am right-handed and will use that as a reference point; sorry, southpaws!) and hunch over it. Have you ever seen a classical guitarist in action? Adapting those techniques actually makes a lot of sense even for the electric guitar.

Sitting up straight has all sorts of general benefits for your posture. But more than anything, it's the footrest and the placement of the guitar that matters. Elevating that left leg and then placing the waist of the guitar on it provides several ergonomic advantages that are also beneficial to developing good technique:

• The neck is elevated in relation to the body.
• Your entire left arm hooks around the neck, not just the fingers or the left wrist.
• Your elbow is forced away from your body.
• Your fingers approach the fretboard with the fingers parallel to the fretwire.
• You don't have to reach across your body in order to get to the upper frets.

This playing position encourages the proper positioning on your left hand on the neck: with only the fingers touching the neck and the thumb firmly anchored on the back of the neck. In actual practice, I have found that this is just about the first rule that I break, and frequently so. I tend to keep my thumb closer to the bass side of the fretboard, where I can extend it quickly in order to mute or perhaps even to fret bass notes with my thumb.

Warm Up

Once you've washed and dried your hands and sat down properly on the chair with your left leg on the footrest, it is time to warm up. Never sit down to practice without warming up first. You will find it infinitely more productive if you do.

The proper way to approach guitar playing is to take for what it is: physical exercise, albeit using fewer and smaller muscle groups than for instance running or swimming. No athlete would go for broke without getting their blood pumping through their muscles first.

Tempo

When you're running through your exercises, whether they be something from this site, from the places I originally stole them or something else entirely, make sure to do so with a metronome by your side. I probably don't have to point out just how important it is to be able to play in time.

More important, however, for practice purposes, is to start out slowly. Increase the tempo only when you can perform a passage or an exercise cleanly and without dragging the beat. It might even be a good idea to log your metronome marks so you know where to start every time. This also enables you to track your progress over time, like timing your runs or logging weights and reps at the gym. It is a lot more efficient to start slowly and then increase the tempo, than to hit the ground running and then try to get rid of the sloppiness afterwards. I learned that last one the hard way.

Economy

In business, they tell you to work smarter, not harder. In Pilates, the principle is don't use ten pounds to perform a five-pound movement. What I'm after here is not to hit the strings harder than you need to in order to get the sound you're after. Dial that right hand back.

If you play acoustic guitar, or electric with a clean tone, it's a slightly different prospect. It is also subtly different for players who prefer edge-of-breakup tones and then use their pick attack etc. in order to control the amount of drive.

If you're into medium to high gain, then you're in luck. Because as long as you set your amp and pedals so that you get your sound no matter how loosely you're hitting the strings, that becomes your benchmark. You're not going to need to play harder, because it's only going to give you miniscule amounts of extra gain, and it sure as hell won't give you extra volume. The amp is there to help you get heard. Let it.

The best way to work on that picking hand economy is to consistently practice through an amplifier. Only when that light touch has ingrained itself into your muscle memory can you start practicing unplugged.

However: the best approach might just be a mixture of clean (or acoustic) and distorted practicing. Clean and distorted sounds have diametrically opposed drawbacks and advantages:

• If you consistently practice with high gain, you will eventually come to rely on the compression inherent in distortion as a crutch. It will make the flubbed notes sound smooth and even out any inconsistencies. That can be a rude awakening when suddenly called upon to play something cleaner.
• Conversely, if you spend most of your time playing acoustic or clean electric, your technique will probably be spot-on. But undistorted sounds don't put as high demands on your muting technique. High gain will inevitably call attention to any glitches.

Optimization

Make sure you are using the optimal string gauges and picks for what you want to do. I can tell you my preferences, but I cannot make any kinds of recommendations. I don't know how you want to sound, what kind of guitar you're playing or what your preferences are. One thing I can say is that you should always keep experimenting.

Try to use as light strings as you can get away with. Beefier strings resist violent playing like a champ—but that's not what you should be doing. They might sound slightly chunkier and more midrangey unplugged, but it does not make a difference in the amplified tone. (Cite your source, Nick!)

The same goes for picks. Go to the store, buy a bunch, and sit down and try them out. Find out which material has the unplugged tone that you prefer. That's going to come through even with distortion. Then try out picks with blunt tips, regular tips and pointy tips and see if you prefer the positive contact of the latter, or the reduced friction of the former. The thickness, well, you get the idea.

Key

Sooner or later, you're going to find yourself practicing scale patterns, or just sitting around noodling. Make sure you do so in all possible keys and across the whole neck. It is tempting to get stuck on E as a root note because of the way the instrument is built. But if you only learn how to play in one key, then your hand-eye coordination will be off, and the strings will feel subtly different because you're playing further up or down the neck. The markers on the side and possibly also in the fretboard proper are there to help you find your way, but speaking from experience, it is easy to start feeling tied to them.