In this lesson I will attempt to explain the Art of Practicing and how to achieve better results in a shorter amount of time. I can remember back when I was living in Boston, MA. and studying at Berklee College of Music.
I was living, breathing and eating music and had tons of music theory swimming around in my head. I caught up with my arranging teacher one day and asked for his help on practicing methods. What he told me opened many doors in the Art of Practicing.
The first thing you need to do when practicing is find a nice quiet room to practice in. This sounds simple enough but alot of people don't do it. The next thing you need to do is think of what you need to work on meaning, what do I stink at? Is your band members or friends holding their ears when your play a solo or sing? Sounds like you need to practice your ear training. Does your guitar rhythms sound like your falling down the stairs? Sounds like you need to practice your guitar rhythms.
If you don't know what you need to work on just ask someone, I'm sure they will tell you! Whats next you say? Get yourself a peace of blank paper and write all the things you think you need to work on. For example: Guitar Chords, Scales, Ear Training, Rhythms, Picking etc. We will concentrate on 1/2 hour lessons, not any longer for now. The trick to this method is you should have a set time for each thing you want to work on. For example in a 1/2 hour lesson, I would work on Guitar Scales for 5 minutes, Guitar Chords for 5 minutes etc.. Whatever you come up with make sure you stay at 1/2 hour total. Here's a example of what your lesson might consist of.
Guitar Scales ------> 5 mins.
Guitar Chords ------>5 mins.
Picking Technique --------->10 mins.
Ear Training -------->5 mins.
Rhythms ------------>5 mins.
Once you practice this a couple of times you will notice how quickly the time goes by. This is if your paying attention to your stopwatch or timer. Oh yeah I forgot to mention to keep track of that. Remember if you set 5 minutes practicing Guitar Scales move on to the next lesson. Once the 1/2 hour is up start over and do the same thing. You might want to change around the times you work on Chords compared to Scales etc.
Hope this helps!
