Practice Routines

Just a curiosity question. How do you practice?

I try to practice on a daily basis, for a few hours each day, although it varies a lot. These days I mostly practice tricks on this site and others, scales and such, with metronome sometimes, am trying to get the speed up. Then I just do a bit of soloing, sometimes to backing tracks when I'm bored... I used to just practice songs, which I don't do that often anymore. After my vacation I will play with a teacher which will hopefully help a bit.

The best way to practice is to leave your guitar out 24/7 where you can get to it.
If you have knowledge of midi or at the very least running MP3 files, keep your guitar by your computer at all times so you can start playing at a moments notice.

A lot of guitar players make the mistake of keeping they're guitars in the cases, all wiped down and put at the back of the closet like they're some kind of national treasure or something.

Figure out how to use midi and MP3 files... get a mixer so you can mix your guitar playing in with the background tracks... and any time you feel the urge, just pick it up and go nuts.

Who cares about the amount of electricty you're using by leaving your equipment on.
The important thing is to have everything ready when you need it.

this is very good advice !!

Get a good tuner also !

Yeah, I agree with Simon.
A good tuner is pretty much a necessity.

If you aren't into buying one there's tons of freebies on the net.

My amps and pedals are all turned on right now and my guitar is plugged in so at any given time I get the urge to I can go... hang on.

Mine is ALWAYS by my bed. I practice about 6 hrs a day; 2 in the morning, 2 around 3pm and an additional 2-3 at night when i get home. I just practice scales and chord combos and i do a different sounding scale every week. This week its minor scales, Bm in particular.

I do the same thing. I have it setup so that when I get home I only have to flip one switch and my gear is all turned on. But I like to first start out by just playing some riffs that get my fingers moving... it's sort of like stretching before you go running or something. I just feel more relaxed if I start out playing something that makes my fingers move. I like to use "Midnight" by Joe Satriani because it's a two hand tapping song that gets both hands working together. That's my stretch routine. haha. Then I just go through some scales that I'm not familiar with. I'm trying to get familiar with all the shapes so I usually try to learn a new scale up and down the neck and practice it for a week or so until I get fluent with it. I jam with drum tracks and with backing tracks a lot... or I'll go over to my best friends house where we built a studio. We jam out a lot and record a lot of stuff. If I'm in my house, I am usually holding my guitar.