[Newsletter] 10 principles to get over your plateau and make your practice time more worthwhile
Cory Wong shows a metronome exercise; Play the guitar like a bass
Something to think about
Searching for practice routines made by others is fine, but it’s one of the first steps toward hitting a plateau and losing track of how your practice time actually makes you improve.
I get it.
I’ve definitely searched for something like, “half hour daily practice schedule for Blues guitar players.” It’s helpful, but I feel like I’m grasping at straws. For beginners and intermediates, the problem is not only not knowing how to create a practice routine, but also knowing what musical concepts to put in the routine. Someone else figured out how to play Blues guitar this way, so why won’t it work for me?
Everyone’s musical filter is different. Everyone’s hands and fingers are different. Everyone’s taste is different.
Since all guitarists are different and learn individually, there are no absolute rules - what worked really well for one person may not work at all for the next person. Instead of trying to jam yourself into a framework of rules that can’t work for everyone, it’s better to practice with a group of general principles that can be mapped over any particular case.
Here are 10 principles that will make your practice time more worthwhile.
Playing and practice are different. The more you separate them, the better you will feel about both.
Practice complete musical ideas. Playing through songs, etudes, solos, finger exercises, rhythmic exercises, or anything else, make it a habit to finish what you’ve started.
Perfectionism causes diminishing returns. You need to get 75% the way there before you get 100% the way there. The trick is to not call 75% perfect, but also not spend an eternity going from 75% to 100%.
Smaller amounts of daily practice is better than large amounts of practice once in a while.
No one is responsible for your guitar playing but yourself. Not even your guitar teacher.
The foundations are more important than new and shiny.
First principles thinking (knowledge) is better than procedure. Thinking in first principles allows you to connect what you’re learning with other things you know. It leaves you with an anthill of interconnecting tunnels rather than an archipelago of islands.
The most important practice sessions are the ones where you really don’t feel like it, but you do it anyway.
Everyone has a practice routine whether they know it or not. If you want to improve, it’s up to you to optimize it.
Spend 80% of your time on the 20% of concepts that don’t just move the needle, but blow it over.
Something to watch
My opinion is this: having good time is the most underrated skill for guitarists.
Bassists and drummers are time-focused musicians by default. They spend a lot of time listening to each other and driving the bus in a band setting. Guitarists can often be more forgiving with their timing during solos or background parts and, as a result, skip the practice of developing a strong strumming hand.
Cory Wong cannot abide this type of behaviour.
He lays out a reductive metronome exercise to put yourself more and more on the hook.
Much like playing like a vocalist, this type of exercise changes everything about your guitar playing experience:
It forces you to focus more on what’s happening outside of you rather than inside;
It makes you value repetitive patterns and how that plays into general enjoyment of music;
It illustrates how notes can happen not just on the beats, but anywhere on the spectrum of a measure.
I love this exercise and I do it all the time. Here’s a clip of me playing with the metronome on the backbeat. It’s a head exercise and it doesn’t really matter what your hands are doing, just that it’s consistent. Try this out with some finger patterns you have locked down.
Something to practice
Another great way to work on timing is to pretend to be a bass player. Even just for a few minutes.
It’s funny, guitar players who pick up a bass are always made fun of because they play it like a guitar. Guitar players seem to have a natural desire to play melodically. The issue is that, on a bass, too much melodic playing in the lower register gets in the way of the other instruments playing. Depending on the style of music, a good bass player will be happy playing 2 or 3 notes with rock solid time.
Try this:
Combine the metronome lesson above with walking a bass line in a Blues style on the low strings of your guitar. Even if Blues isn’t your favourite thing, it’s worth putting in the effort to learn. It’s good for a number of reasons:
Outlining chords is good for your ears and helps make connections between leading to a tone (tension) and arriving at the tone (release).
Playing quarter notes in time is harder than it looks.
Blues music is the blueprint and in the DNA of a lot of common genres.
Check out this video lesson and try to learn the bass line starting at around 6:00. (buddy shows how to do it and there is tab). With the metronome playing on all 4 beats of the bar, you have a guide for each note. Cut the metronome in half and play the steady quarter notes against the metronome hitting on beats 2 and 4. Getting down to this point is a great musical exercise and you should be proud if you can pull it off.
It might take some time to get used to, but what’s the rush?