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The Art of Practicing Your Guitar
Practicing Verses Playing
Many students who take guitar lessons tell me that they
practice every day, but they don't have their assignments mastered
by their lesson time and they are not satisfied with their rate of
improvement. Here is what I tell them:
There is a difference
between practicing your guitar and playing your guitar. Playing is a
very good way to spend your time, and you will definitely build some
important skills if you play your guitar everyday. But when you play
guitar, you are not necessarily practicing. Remember: Play is what
we do for fun.
Practicing involves working on something that
does not come easily. Often times it makes you feel frustrated,
inadequate or bored. If you experience some of these feelings, you
have no doubt found an area that needs work. To address the
challenge, break it down into smaller parts. Ask your teacher to
help you isolate the problem if you cannot find a solution right
away.
Because practice takes so much energy, mental focus and
determination, I encourage my students to practice with full
concentration for only 10-20 minutes a day, and then play music for
about 30 minutes a day. You won't necessarily become a better guitar
player by practicing more; it's the combination of practicing the
tricky parts until they become easier and playing a lot of music
that comes easily and gives you enjoyment that leads to better
playing.
Daily Practice
Studying for your guitar lessons
is not exactly like studying for your other classes. You may be
successful in another class by simply cramming the night before a
test, but because you need to develop small motor skills and muscle
memory to play the guitar, daily practice is crucial to your
progress.
You will be much better off if you practice 20
minutes each day than if you practice for three hours right before
your lesson. That's because your muscles need to learn the music,
and to do that, you need to give them breaks to properly absorb each
task. If you want to improve at the fastest rate, practice for short
amounts of time, several times a day.
On the days when you
are extremely busy, practice for 5 or 10 minutes; but make it
quality practice. Work on the areas that need the work, and don't
spend your time playing things that you can already play well.
There is a way that practicing the guitar is similar to studying
for your other classes: If you are reading and you do not understand
a particular word, you don't simply reread the paragraph with the
hope that you will magically understand it the second time. You stop
reading, find the definition of the word, and then reread the
paragraph. If you are working on a piece of music and you cannot
play a particular section, you should stop and work on that
particular section until you can play it, then go back to the top.
Frustration!!!
Many guitar students tell me that they feel
frustrated when they practice the guitar. That statement actually
makes me pretty happy because it tells me that they really want to
learn how to play the guitar. The students who do not occasionally
feel frustrated actually frustrate me because of their lack of
desire.
It is important for students to keep learning new and
challenging material. A lot of guitar players become comfortable
with a handful of chords, a scale pattern and a few cool-sounding
riffs. After a while, they may try something that demands a new
skill, but they give up because the frustration overwhelms them.
These players forget what it was like when they were first
learning how to play the guitar. It was not all fun and it didn't
come easy. There were sore fingers, complex diagrams and the fear
that no matter how much time they spent at it, they had no idea if
they would ever be able to play anything at all. But they worked at
it anyway because they had a strong desire to learn how to play.
Those players need to remember how frustrating it was when they
couldn't "get it," and they need to remember how good it felt when
they did "get it." That's the process that all musicians go through
when they are first learning how to play, as well as when they have
been playing for 20 or more years.
I believe there are a few
very important skills that good musicians develop over the years.
Here are a few: A strong desire to play an instrument, the ability
to concentrate for long periods of time, and a way of dealing with
the frustration of not being able to perform new skills immediately
or consistently.
Good teachers welcome a certain amount of
frustration because we all feel it. It can be helpful for students
to talk about it and to be reminded that the learning process
involves feelings of frustration from time to time. But if a student
has an overwhelming amount of frustration, it might be a good idea
for the student to take a break for a while. The student can then
see if her/his feelings can be better understood and managed so that
playing the guitar can still be a fun activity.
You Are So
Talented, You Don't Need to Practice
Some students think they are
fooling their teacher, or they must be very talented musicians if
their teacher doesn’t notice that they have not practiced their
assignments. What it really means is that the teacher doesn't care,
as long as tuition is paid.
I have seen guitar teachers laugh
at their students who keep coming back when absolutely nothing is
being accomplished. "I just keep wondering when they'll notice," one
teacher told me.
These students think they are fooling the
teacher, but really, the teacher is fooling the students. Stop
taking lessons or find a teacher who will hold you accountable to
your assignments and you will accomplish your goals and feel good
about the time and money you devote to you guitar lessons.
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