guitar | guitar practice | chords

Question:

What are the best practice drills to learn from scratch?


Answer:

The first thing to do before you go to practice is:

Determine what it is exactly that you want to work on! This might sound like stating the obvious , however this is the single most important step to making maximum progress on the guitar.

Here's what I mean:

(a) is it a data memory practice session?

or

(b) a motor skill practice session?

Why is that important? What is data memory etc? 

Data memory - is anything *new* you have to learn e.g., a new scale, a new intro to a song, a new chord shape etc - the important thing is that DATA MEMORY practice sessions should be only 3 - 5 minutes (that's not a typo three to five minutes is maximum attention span for developing LONG TERM MEMORY - which is what we want, we need to be able to instantly recall the information whenever we need it!).

Motor skill practice - is where we physically through repetition train out fingers to perform the information we have already learnt in the data memory sessions.

In summary with data memory sessions - repetition is BAD (keep it short - concentrate on mastering a SMALL amount of information at a time). 

Whereas with motor skills - you need to have repetition - here repetition is GOOD, practice sessions can be 20- 30 minutes you can even do this while watching TV.

A good practice drill for warming up is:

Play 1st string (thinnest string) first fret with your first finger, second fret with your second finger, third fret with your third finger, fourth fret with your fourth finger.

Then repeat this exercise SLOWLY on each string remembering to keep each finger down once you have played that note until all four fingers are resting on the string.

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