How to Make Your Guitar Practice More Effective
If you’re a novice guitar player you’ll have no doubt learned that it all comes down to practice. The more time and effort you put into learning and mastering the guitar the quicker your playing skill will progress. But hammering away for hours is not always the answer.
A wise man once explained to me how we humans tend to remember beginnings and endings. I used this advice to modify the way in which I studied and revised for my college exams. Rather than sit for hours wading through books and practice questions I started to do twenty minutes of work followed by a ten minute break. This simple technique led to my acing my finals and getting a fantastic degree.
The same basic principle can be applied to learning the guitar. Although you may have heard that you need to practice playing until your fingers bleed I would disagree. A far more effective approach is to do lots of short periods of practice with plenty of breaks.
What I like to do is keep one of my guitars nearby when I am watching television. Whenever an advertising break comes onscreen I mute the television audio and pickup my guitar. Over the course of an evening I may pickup my guitar as many as 8 or 12 times for just two or three minutes each time.
Using this technique I’ve learned several new style of playing and mastered a whole list of tunes that I’d wanted to learn.
My technique doesn’t stop when I put my guitar down. Another aspect that I am convinced works for me is using positive visualization techniques. As I’m cleaning my teeth in readiness for bed I tend to reflect on the tune or technique I was trying to master that evening. I’ll then visualize my hands playing the piece faultlessly, often figuring out exactly where my fingers should be going in my mind.
I’ve often been surprised to find that the following day I can play the piece that I had previously been struggling with and all I’d done in between was sleep.
