Practice Schedules

Description

Practice schedules - The long way to mastership

The motivation of the guitarist from the absolute beginner to the advanced
- semiprofessional or professional guitarist is very important since the way
from the absolute beginner till a good advanced or even professional player
takes several years. From my experience as a teacher and as a student myself
I know, that every upcoming guitarist dreams about learning to play as fast
as possible. This gives you a great boost in your motivation once you started
to play guitar.

Quite often after this first boost the motivation of most guitarist starts to
go down. This might have several reasons. On the one hand this might be because
the better you get the smaller the steps and the progress are which you can
reach. On the other hand you can loose your motivation because you might did
not reach the level quick enough which you where expecting when you started.
This effect happens quite often since most guitarist do not have a realistic
view of their own playing abilities. In both cases described this can really
stop your enthusiasm or even can stop some of the upcoming guitarist from playing.

How to create a long period motivation and to keep it up.

My own experience is to see the guitar - playing or its development like a
long-distance run such as a marathon. When you start normally your motivation
and your power is big and you really go for it. But once you have been running
or practicing for a while you might loose your starting boost a bit and suddenly
you starting thinking how far you still have to go and how much energy you might
use to get there . If you start thinking this way you will really start to weaken
your motivation and your power in practicing.

This does not work. I have seen so many students which did this way and when
they reached that point I described some of them even gave up guitar playing
because they lost complete their motivation and therefore there power to keep
it going.

To really get your guitar playing on a good - or even professional level it
is necessary that you keep on playing over years and that in all those years
you always keep your motivation high and that you always work on getting your
playing to the next level. From my point of view this works when you keep the
following steps in mind.

Create a practice plan.

1. It is very important that you practice regularly. It is better when you
only practice a few minutes daily then to only practice on your free day for
a few hours.



2. Divide your practicing time in 2 parts. Lets name this Duty
and Fun. The "Duty" - part is what you have to
work on and what really causes you problems and you have to concentrate hard
to handle the exercises you have to do. I would suggest that you make this part
on the very beginning of your daily practice work. If you can only practice
a few minutes daily then take this first and do this for maybe 5 or 10 minutes
depending on your daily practice schedule. Here it is very important that you
work with a good concentration and keep it slow that you always can control
the difficulties of your exercises. After finishing the hard part just play
for fun and don�t think about anything just keep the music flowing. Play
what you love as long as you want.



3. If you practice more then 1 hour daily you have optimize your training work.
Researches have showed that the concentration of a individual starts to go down
after 20 min. and can be optimized by this following practice plan. :

20 min. practice / 5 pause / 20 min. practice / 5 pause / 20 min. practice
/ 15 min. pause - now start from the beginning on.

If you are practicing material which really forces you to repeat it on and
on. Don�t do more than 3 repetitions. Do it 3 times with a high concentration
level and do something else. If you practice several hours daily you can do
this exercise later but do not do it more then 3 times in a row.

Resume

If you have followed my instructions carefully you might have a idea now how
you can get your practice schedule together to get the maximum output on it.
This way you get yourself a routine which keeps you going and which helps you
to gain your playing over the years. If you work on your exercises this will
boost your motivation when you recognize that your playing is improving slowly
but surly. Don�t expect to much and don�t think too much about goals
which can not be reached in a short period. You must focus on the moment you
are playing. It does not matter which level you are playing when you focus on
the music which is inside and the fun and the joy you have by playing this will
keep up your playing for years. Through the � Duty � part you will
always improve your playing so that you never reach the point where you get
bored by your own playing which has a negative effect on your motivation as
well.

All this should help you to get into music. And this is it what it is all about
!

Greetings

HP