by Rowlandwithaw

Created on: November 18, 2011

How to practice the guitar

Learning to play an instrument takes time. Yes  - it sounds obvious but learning an instrument also takes passion, determination whatever you want to call it. If practising becomes boring or hard work then you’re doing the wrong thing. ‘Practice’ almost sounds boring! Look on it as training – feels better already, doesn’t it? Half an hours ‘training’ every day is better than five hours once a week. If you love the instrument you’ll find it hard to not pick it up and play it. If you play electric guitar – solid body with no acoustic sound – try to always play it with amp of headphone amp.

Why? Two reasons: first of all the way the sound is generated is based on the pick ups and therefore the small amount of acoustic volume you get will have little similarity to the amplified sound. Secondly if you play with no amplification, you will tend to play harder with your right hand and as a result you will grip harder with your left hand which can damage your muscles – I know, I did it. Not good.

Always ‘train’ with a clean sound – obviously you will want to experiment to find your ‘own’ sound, whether it’s clean, round or distorted. But it’s important to ‘train’ in a way that is as ‘exposed’ as possible – i.e. you need to know whether you’re playing a barre chord properly or not. A bit of distortion can mask a lot of mistakes and you could end up with a lot of bad habits and sloppy ways of playing which are hard to correct.

Always practice slowly when you start a new chord sequence, scale riff or rhythm. Once it’s precise (or at least getting more precise) then you can try it at a faster speed. But be patient.

Finally if you perform then practice the guitar in the same way that you perform. I have a student who came to me, who was already quite a competent player. She put her guitar on with the strap and then sat down. I realised immediately that she was in effect performing with one guitar but practising with a different guitar. The ‘performing’ guitar was low slung and the ‘practising’ guitar was much higher. With a shortened strap her playing changed enormously.

So a few tips on guitar practice/training, but above all else enjoy playing!

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