Daily Routine

Im needing to put together a daily routine to help me get better, as well as maintain my current skills... Hoping someone out there might know a link to , or a post to, a tried and true method. In my mind, Im thinking strength workouts, stretches, scales, tempo practice..... but Im not incredibly creative, and Id like to make sure I dont stymie my progress.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

At best, you might say Im an intermediate guitar player.

Thanks in advance!

Apologies for the bump, but I sure could use some advice from the more advanced.

Everyday I fool around on my guitar, but.. I'd like to get more serious.

I'm going to begin a regiment of some sort, but I want some advice from anyone who has some to offer.

Right now, I'm looking at...

Finger Stretching, 5 minutes

Chromatic Practice, (maybe a 1,2,3,4 down and up the fretboard) ?5 minutes? (No idea whats realistic)

Scales (5)

New/Difficult Chord practice(5) (I really have a hard time getting on Barre Chords in a timely fashion)

Chord Change practice (5) - Like, a song with LOTS of chords (Hotel California, perhaps)

And some sort of practice that utilizes the length of the fretboard. (no clue how ill go about that).

ANYTHING that will help me learn the fretboard more quickly over time.

So much stuff to include.... is this like Upper Body/Lower Body type stuff? Half on one day, half on another day?

Any tips or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Before you define your daily routine, you need to define your goals. To maintain motivation, you need well defined near and short term goals. Saying "I want to play better" is too vague.

A long term general goal could be "I want to play in a band". I could also be "I want to write songs" or "be able to improvise blues or jazz solos". What exactly is it you want to do with your music? Short term goals could be certain songs you'd like to play. Near term goals would be the skills you need for those songs...perhaps a technique like a trill or legato run, or difficult chord changes.

There are some things that no matter what your goal, you need to do...tempo and timing being the biggies.

To learn the fretboard, one way I've hard of is to work on a single note each week. So, on week one, spend time locating all of the A notes on the fretboard. The goal is to be able to identify them immediately. The following week, B...etc. This knowledge will not only help you with playing melodies, but help you move chord shapes around and know what you are playing.

I suggest you record youself on a regular basis. This will help you hear progress in your playing. It will help you know what is working...and what isn't. It's not always bad news...often you will find things sound better on playback.

Scales are important, but be sure to spend time with jam tracks to put them into action. A scale on it's own isn't music or a song. Better to know one scale and one scale position really well and be able to use it musically than know a bunch of scales and shapes but have no real knowledge of how to use it. When you learn something, know why you are learning it....what will you do with it and how will it help you.

Hope some of that helps.

Sure does help.

My current goal is fretboard understanding, and anything to help me work up to lead. So Ill find exercises that focus on those.

Other goals are to switch chords cleanly, so Ill see what I can find on that as well.

And, Ill just throw in anything that seems to be a MUST for everyone.

Thanks so much for the input!

Something that I found helpful for learning the fretboard was to always say the note I picked while doing warm up exercises (spider fingers and such). After a while my fingers just knew where to go for certain notes and it helped with ear training.

You can also name the notes as you test chords (strum each string to check the quality of your fretting).

Originally Posted by: slsnare

Other goals are to switch chords cleanly, so Ill see what I can find on that as well.

To get better at switching chords cleanly first try to figure out what fingering is used to the differnt chords. This is important because if you switch through chords with different fingerings you have to know where you fingers have to be to do that smoothly.

Then start to get comfortable with the chords you want to improve separately!!

After that start to switch between those chords and notice the similarities in the fingerings in those chords. And switch between them

[br]After you get more comfortable set up a metronome and start to switch in time

Hey, there! Sorry I missed this thread until now. :) Rich asked you exactly the right question. What are your goals?

You said you are intermediate level, so I'm assuming you are beyond the Guitar Fundamentals course material. So, I encourage you to start working through the style course that fits your goals best. If you want to play lead guitar, then what style? Rock, Country, Blues? Pick a style course & work through it!

Even if you can do most of it, it will give you structure & give you some professional instructor insights on building your knowledge & skills.

Having said that, I also want to stress one the most important part: Learn songs! :) And if you want to play lead, then learn songs that have lead parts in them that inspire you & you aspire to play.

I'm going to address your other topics point by point to give you some links to tutorials that can help.

But overall, you should be:

1. Building, refining your playing skills.[br]2. Learning songs.

Originally Posted by: slsnare

Finger Stretching, 5 minutes

[/quote]

Stretching is always good!

Originally Posted by: slsnare

Chromatic Practice, (maybe a 1,2,3,4 down and up the fretboard) ?5 minutes? (No idea whats realistic)

[/quote]

It's important to make sure that any exercise you do has some real world application. With that in mind, why do you want to play chromatic exercises? What will you use them for? Unless you are going to play advanced jazz or rock leads, the only value in chromatic patterns is finger strength & dexterity. So I say after a quick stretch, then do 5 minutes of this type of thing to get warmed up.

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=1829

Also anytime you are just sitting on the couch watching a show you could do that sort of mindless thing & get some more exercise. But don't spend too much valuable time on it.

Originally Posted by: slsnare

Scales (5)

[/quote]

Which scales you practice, how you practice them & how much time depends on your music goals. If you want to play rock or blues, then you should practice pentatonic scales. If you want to play jazz then you should work on diatonic modes as well!

But keep in mind that if you work through one of the structured courses, you will get appropriate scale practice along with how to apply it!

If you are just looking to build your skills to tackle solos, then you need to know the basic building blocks like this foundation blues lick.

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=1614

Or these type of targeting chord ideas.[br][br]https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=217

Or if you are working on rock lead skills, then you need to know how to sequence the scale across the fretboard. Like these.

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=185

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=737

Originally Posted by: slsnare

New/Difficult Chord practice(5) (I really have a hard time getting on Barre Chords in a timely fashion)

That's just a matter of repetitous practice. Pick a song that has a tricky barre chord change & just work on changing between those chords. Don't just do it 5 minutes. If you want to get better at some specific chord change, then really drill just those 2 chords for 10 to 15 minutes.

[quote=slsnare]

Chord Change practice (5) - Like, a song with LOTS of chords (Hotel California, perhaps)

Learning a song with a lot of chords takes a lof of time! I'd even encourage you to put other things on the back burner in order to prioritize this!

So, for example, if you practice 5 days a week, then devote 3 of those practice days to doing ONLY warm up stretches & the song. Do that until you get it down pretty well. Once you've got it mostly down, then you can dial back your practicing on it to just part of you practice time until you refine all the little rough edges. Make sense?

[quote=slsnare]

And some sort of practice that utilizes the length of the fretboard. (no clue how ill go about that).

ANYTHING that will help me learn the fretboard more quickly over time.

The pentatonic patterns tutorials above will help open the fretboard. Something like this will too.

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=843

But mostly, it's just a matter of taking your time & systematically working through one thing at a time. There is a lot to know, learn & do! It's a struggle for all of us. :)

Just be patient with yourself & try to enjoy the process.

If it helps, I recorded one of my typical morning warmup sessions. A lot of students ask, so one morning I recorded it for fun & demonstration. I got a cup of coffe, did some stretches & hit record!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW2eCYUGZRE

[quote=slsnare]

So much stuff to include.... is this like Upper Body/Lower Body type stuff? Half on one day, half on another day?

The reason we learn all that stuff is so we can apply it in playing music on the guitar. So overall, you should be:

1. Building, refining your playing skills.[br]2. Learning songs (or song parts).

Hope that helps! Please ask more if necessary. Best of success!

You guys have been EXTREMELY helpful. I apologize, as I cant quote/reply to each helpful thing., but I'm definitely going to use this thread to help me settle into a rythm for my guitar practice.

But there is ONE thing I would respond to.... The chromatic practice would simply be to strengthen and give my ring and pinky finger more dexterity and strength. But, after hearing the comments, I'll definitely put that on the back burner, and instead find something that can help me learn songs, build, refine, while at the same time using more pinky and ring.

Thanks again, guys!! I appreciate this!

There are chords you can practice to strengthen your ring and pinky. The G major chord is pretty good, since you can use your middle, ring and pinky for the three finger version. Power chords, two string versions you can use either your ring or pinky and three string versions use both.

There are some riff that you can use to help, especially if you assign certain frets to certain fingers while practicing the riffs. Smoke on the Water is a good one for this: third fret is pointer, fifth fret is ring, and sixth fret is pinky. (Note: for the single note version not the power chord version, although you can use the power chord version to strengthen your fingers too.)

Originally Posted by: slsnare

But there is ONE thing I would respond to.... The chromatic practice would simply be to strengthen and give my ring and pinky finger more dexterity and strength.

Building strength & dexterity is very important. But those non-musical exercises aren't the only way to do it. In this tutorial I discuss creative ways to do that while still playing music.

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=1292

Secret pinky exercises!

How do i save these posts to come back to later? There is a lot of valuable information here

Originally Posted by: NickFerra

How do i save these posts to come back to later? There is a lot of valuable information here

I use 3 different methods to locate valuable forum threads/posts.

1. Copy-Paste the text into a text document & save it locally (in a folder on my computer dedicated to guitar teaching/learning).

2. Copy-Paste the URL to the thread & email it to myself.

3. Use the GT search to look for key words I remember from the post or about the topic. For example, in this current thread I might remember it had info on "practice routine". So I enter that into the GT search & one of the top results is this thread.

Hope this helps!