OK. It feels a little weird to be asking this question after I've been playing as long as I have, but I'm looking for some pointers on how to practice. What I mean by that is how to practice to really improve.

Without going into the same territory my novel length introduction covered, I've been playing about 20 years and am essentially self-taught. Not surprisingly, I hit a plateau a long time ago and haven't really improved since. Having never had any formal training, there's a lot, even some very basic stuff, that I don't know. (I practiced scales for the first time ever two nights ago. :eek: ) My idea of a practice session to this point has been grabbing my guitar and playing whatever. About the heaviest lifting I've done in the last 10 years or so is working over and over on a part of a song I'm trying to pick up that I'm having trouble with.

So I've started working with some of the exercises available here, but I find I'm at a loss how to really approach practice. For example, tonight I was working on one of Benoit's exercises. After about 20 minutes, I reached the point where I could run the exercise perfectly every time. So the question that I have now is, how do I use that when I sit down to practice tomorrow? Do I still work with that exercise some. Since I've nailed it, do I move on to the next one and leave it behind?

It seems a little silly, but I'm really looking for some guidance on this. Thanks.