So you want to become better with the guitar? Well, what do you actually do to get to where you want to get in term of your musical skills? It’s all about your guitar practice
routines.
“The secret of your future is hidden in your daily routine.”
Mike Murdock.
If the guitar is just a distant hobby for you and you are fine with just knowing how to steadily strum a few basic cowboy chords, that’s great and not hard to reach. If you want to become a guitarist and a performer that gives people kicks, jams beautiful music with other people, entertains a crowd and creates his own awesome takes on different songs, you’ve got some work to put in.
What’s good about guitar and music, in general, is that you know that you will always slowly get better even with semi-regular practice. But why not become MUCH BETTER in a very short time? And get your music skills to levels you were only dreaming of not long ago?
Well, this is all reachable if only you choose to dedicate regular time daily for a focused guitar practice routine. For more details on how to exactly do it you can see in this article, but if you are still on the fence about this.
A Guitar Practice Routine: 8 Reasons You Should Start It Today!
1 – You Notice the Results on the Fretboard FAST!
After as little as 1-2 weeks you will start feeling your fingers become quicker, your precision skyrockets, you are playing more smoothly, you are able to play for more time, and much more than that. Your fingers rule the fretboard now. It’s always improving and you keep on reaching new peaks almost every week! Now imagine how a guitar in your hands will sound like after 3 months of daily practice. 6 months. a full year!
2 – It’s Fun!
Yep. Having your private guitar quality time every day and knowing that by doing that you are progressing WAY quicker is fun and very satisfying. It becomes a habit that you enjoy doing probably more than any other daily “chore” you might have, and you know that you are going somewhere by doing that.
3 – It’s All Flexible and Up to YOU
Do you want to dedicate the daily practice routine 15 minutes a day for working on 3 different things? That’s great and will give great results. You want to work an hour and a half every day on 10 different subjects? Again, that’s great and will give you tremendous results. It’s all up to you, and where you are striving to get to.
Make sure that you work with a focused agenda, for example – 5 minutes working on new chords, 5 minutes on scale speed, 5 minutes on memorizing a new song and so on. In this article, you will learn all about how exactly to structure your guitar practice schedule for maximum effectiveness.
4 – It’s a Great Opportunity to Work on Music THEORY as Well
When you work on your theory every day, you become all-around a better music man. Theory and technique go together, and when they are combined, you are unleashing your guitarist potential to the maximum. I work every day on theory as a part of my guitar practice schedule. I do that through scales, note names and their positions on the fretboard, reading through effective guitar theory books, memorizing the circle of 4ths and 5ths and more.
5 – You Can Turn Your Guitar Weaknesses Into Strengths
Fingerpicking used to be my weakness. I hated that because I really enjoy the sound of a well played fingerpicked song but I knew that I couldn’t do it myself. After a little over a month of practicing it daily for 5 minutes, people were complimenting me for my performance of “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright”, and since then I’ve only gotten better since I kept practicing it.
This can be true with barre chords, pentatonic scales, faster picking, percussion strumming, fingers accuracy, rhythm and time keeping, you name it. Whatever your weakness is, you can set it as a target to improve and become very proficient in that area within a few weeks.
6 – It Develops Your Everyday Self-Discipline And Will Power to Succeed
In the last few months I have only missed two days of practice on exceptionally busy days, and even then I tried to practice at least for a few minutes instead. I practiced in an airport terminal at 3 am, on the streets of Tokyo in the middle of the day while traveling, at 11 pm before I went to bed after some very long days, and woke up earlier at 6 am to do my practice.
This is the power of habits, and when you practice habits and self-discipline regularly through the guitar – you notice an overall gain in your every day will power with everything else as well.
7 – You Will Be Able to CREATE Splendid Music Yourself
When you are a well-practiced songwriter and you write your own material, the music you create gets strikingly better very quickly!
8 – You Strive to Your Musical Goals with Huge Steps
No matter what is your musical goal or goals right now, when you work daily on getting there – you will. Your musical goals can range anywhere from “play the solo of Hey Joe perfectly” to “get my first paid gig in a bar” and anything else you can think of.
This is it. Establishing a daily guitar practice routine might not be for everyone, but if you are serious about music and the guitar – this is the way to do it. Now check out my article about how to structure your training sessions for maximum achievement and build your own practice session exercises list!
Also, check out this article for 10 tips on how to get the most out of your practice sesh.
I hope you enjoyed reading. Peace and have fun with your new routine!
