Advice on best way to practise with Guitar Tricks?

Hi All,

Fairly new to Guitar Tricks and have to say I'm loving the site. However I must admit, I feel like my enthusiam and engagement is weaning a bit as I go through the Rock Levels and wondered if anyone thats "Completed" the site if you will has any reccomendations or best practsie advice for structuring your practise and what to focus on to get that sense of achievement and progression?

I guess I'm just maybe hitting that first wall and feel like I'm not progresing a fast I as I could or that there is enough varierty in the levels to keep me as focused as I should be.

A short background on myself:

I first started playing guitar in my teens (I'm 36 Now), and unfortunately put it down and hardly looked at it again when I went to university at 18, until I joined the site a couple years back. I was comfortable with open chords, power chords and the odd basic/simple solo. I was into just rocking out alongisde my favourite pop punk bands like Green day, Blink, Sum 41.

While I still love rocking out to these bands, my music taste has somewhat expanded since then and I would love my guitar skills to follow suit and mature.

I started the site on Guitar Fundamentals 2 and I am now in the midst of Rock Level 2. Anders is fantastic!

What I was wondering is, is it probably best to stay with Rock Level 2 for now or if anyone has any advice on chopping and changing between modules/exercises to keep focused, engaged and to add variety such as:

Monday - Guitar Fundamentals 2

Tuesday - Scales Excercises

Wednesday - Theory

Thursday - Blues level 1

Friday - Guitar Fundamentals 2

Saturday - Acoustic

Sunday - Learn a Song

Revisitng specific exercises to keep your knowlerge up to date would be good too or to keep introducing these throughout the modules. So for example, we learned the Am Pentatonic in Rock level 1. But now as Ive moved into Rock Level 2 I probably couldnt show you how to do a minor scale in any position , which if I'm right was in Guitar Fundamentals 2 :-/

If anyone has any suggestions on the above with pointers to content/modules in the Guitar Tricks system to go with it, I would love to hear from you.

I hope everyone is safe and well during these strange and testing times :)

Best Regards

Robert

Hey Boaber22:

I'll let one of the GT instructors address the details here, but I wanna say that having a detailed schedule like the one you listed puts you ahead of the curve! Sounds like you're determined, so congrats!

I also think doing some one-on-one lessons really helps keep the energy going. I always get inspired when I learn directly from one of our instructors. Helps push me in a direction I didn't expect. Might wanna throw one of those into the mix occasionally, if you're not already.

https://www.guitartricks.com/pro/

-Carl.

Originally Posted by: boaber22

Hi All,

Fairly new to Guitar Tricks and have to say I'm loving the site. However I must admit, I feel like my enthusiam and engagement is weaning a bit as I go through the Rock Levels and wondered if anyone thats "Completed" the site if you will has any reccomendations or best practsie advice for structuring your practise and what to focus on to get that sense of achievement and progression?

I guess I'm just maybe hitting that first wall and feel like I'm not progresing a fast I as I could or that there is enough varierty in the levels to keep me as focused as I should be.

A short background on myself:

I first started playing guitar in my teens (I'm 36 Now), and unfortunately put it down and hardly looked at it again when I went to university at 18, until I joined the site a couple years back. I was comfortable with open chords, power chords and the odd basic/simple solo. I was into just rocking out alongisde my favourite pop punk bands like Green day, Blink, Sum 41.

While I still love rocking out to these bands, my music taste has somewhat expanded since then and I would love my guitar skills to follow suit and mature.

I started the site on Guitar Fundamentals 2 and I am now in the midst of Rock Level 2. Anders is fantastic!

What I was wondering is, is it probably best to stay with Rock Level 2 for now or if anyone has any advice on chopping and changing between modules/exercises to keep focused, engaged and to add variety such as:

Monday - Guitar Fundamentals 2

Tuesday - Scales Excercises

Wednesday - Theory

Thursday - Blues level 1

Friday - Guitar Fundamentals 2

Saturday - Acoustic

Sunday - Learn a Song

Revisitng specific exercises to keep your knowlerge up to date would be good too or to keep introducing these throughout the modules. So for example, we learned the Am Pentatonic in Rock level 1. But now as Ive moved into Rock Level 2 I probably couldnt show you how to do a minor scale in any position , which if I'm right was in Guitar Fundamentals 2 :-/

If anyone has any suggestions on the above with pointers to content/modules in the Guitar Tricks system to go with it, I would love to hear from you.

I hope everyone is safe and well during these strange and testing times :)

Best Regards

Robert

What I'm reading sounds very academic. Do you learn songs? You do note that Sunday is 'song' day. One of the most important skills you cn learn is to see how the skills and knowledge you've learned applies to songs. Learning songs gives you a lot of 'a-ha' moments. The best thing you can do is learn songs from all kinds of genres. It helps you contextualize how and where an A minor pentatonic versus an A Major pentatonic apply and are used. My suggestion is to spend a little more time learning songs too and from multiple genres.

With that said, I did a (really long) post on the pentatonic scale regarding major versus minor some months back. Granted, the instructors here are the pros but I've been playing for a good long time so the info is worth noting. Give it a read.

If you know the key of the song or the song section, you can apply the concept in my post to any song key by knowing first the key/root.

Once you've got this down, the majority of modern music falls in to knowing how to handle major/minor pentatonic. To me, all other scales across the fretboard expand outward from knowing the pentatonic.

Bringing this back to songs; songs teach you to apply theory. It also teaches you common licks and riffs. That and learning songs is pretty fun and in the end, we all do this to play music so...play music! Learn lots of different styles and you'll realize how much fun guitar is. Even if you hate country (and maybe your don't), learn a country songs. You'll realize how much you dig learning a new style.

Learning new skill is self-affirming. It gets you excited. Don't be so stuck in the 'academics' of playing that you skip the reason you're playing, to enjoy it.

Good luck, keep at it and most of all; enjoy!!!!

@Carl, thanks very much for the reply. I actually didnt know you could book 1 on 1 lessons I will definitley look into that! Thanks so much!

@Jeff, haha I'm far from acdemic that was just an example practise schedule to see if its within the realms of "normal" or whether applying varierty in what I'm practising on a day to day basis is beneficial to progress. Maybe that schedule was slightly over the top.

I do indeed learn songs and have tackled a good few on Guitar Tricks already. Perhaps diving straight into "reelin' in the years" wasnt the best place to start mind you hehe. I love learning songs however I feel like although Im more than capable of playing some, I'll never 100% nail a song in one take which leads to frustration and questioning my ability.

I had a read at your post on the pentatonic and I must say its excellent, I will most definitley experiemt with that and try and get better at improvising with this. When I'm noodling with the pentatonic I find myself always playing the same lick as it feels comfortable so I'm sure this will help expand that.

Thank you for the advice and referral to your pentatonic post.

You're absolutely right on the enjoyment. I find myself at times seeing the guitar as something to achieve or "complete" and need to remember to most important thing is to enjoy!

Best Regards

Originally Posted by: boaber22

@Carl, thanks very much for the reply. I actually didnt know you could book 1 on 1 lessons I will definitley look into that! Thanks so much!

@Jeff, haha I'm far from acdemic that was just an example practise schedule to see if its within the realms of "normal" or whether applying varierty in what I'm practising on a day to day basis is beneficial to progress. Maybe that schedule was slightly over the top.

I do indeed learn songs and have tackled a good few on Guitar Tricks already. Perhaps diving straight into "reelin' in the years" wasnt the best place to start mind you hehe. I love learning songs however I feel like although Im more than capable of playing some, I'll never 100% nail a song in one take which leads to frustration and questioning my ability.

I had a read at your post on the pentatonic and I must say its excellent, I will most definitley experiemt with that and try and get better at improvising with this. When I'm noodling with the pentatonic I find myself always playing the same lick as it feels comfortable so I'm sure this will help expand that.

Thank you for the advice and referral to your pentatonic post.

You're absolutely right on the enjoyment. I find myself at times seeing the guitar as something to achieve or "complete" and need to remember to most important thing is to enjoy!

Best Regards

Good to know. I've seen so many players over the years burn themselves out on being overly focused on theory and fundementals. Those are very important and I can tell you from experience that skipping that stuff is a bad idea. I did the opposite and learned to play with no theory and at some point that becomes very evident. It took a lot of time trying to understand what I was playing (I could play it but couldn't explain why...). So, good that you aren't being overly academic.

Reelin' in the Years....you took on Steely Dan right off the bat, that was a big bite to take! But, when I started playing in the early 80's, my first two songs were Rush-Fly by Night and Led Zep-Black Dog. Way not the songs I should have started with but I did ok. So Steely Dan? Why not?

Noodling on the Pentatonics. Learn other people's solos and I'd suggest starting with southern rock like Lynyrd Skynyrd, Allman's, Molly Hatchet and so on. Particularly their lead work. You learn there is a definate rock lick vocabulary common in rock songs. Like speaking, you learn vocabularly by listening to others. Southern rock is like a dictionary of that stuff. Also, GT instructor Chris has a module on lick too which is helpful.

Ok, I'll leave you alone now

Originally Posted by: boaber22

I love learning songs however I feel like although Im more than capable of playing some, I'll never 100% nail a song in one take which leads to frustration and questioning my ability.

Hi boaber22,

I know there are people who can just pick up on a song from listening to it. For instance, I am writing a song and Dave Celentano (instructor) is helping me with it (came up with a beautiful bridge actually).

In our last session, I sent him my audio file so he could listen to what I had down and he just started playing it in real time. He didn't even ask me the chords.

That level of skill takes a lot of time. At my age I don't pretened I will ever get there and I am ok with that. It takes me a long long time to learn songs. Even my own.

So best of luck and I hope you always enjoy yourself.