How To Create Guitar Exercises And Learn How To Practice Guitar
by Tom Hess
You improve your guitar playing faster when you practice the best guitar exercises.
The best guitar exercises do more than just keep your fingers warm.
The right guitar exercises also: solve your guitar playing problems and (when you understand how to practice guitar) improve multiple areas of your guitar playing.
Take, for example: fretboard visualization with scales. It’s not enough to just learn to play a scale.
You need to know how to turn a scale into a set of guitar exercises that solve your fretboard visualization guitar playing problems.
See this video to understand what I mean:
The same applies to other guitar techniques and skills you want to improve your guitar playing with.
Question: “Tom Hess, what about guitar speed? What are the best guitar exercises that improve my guitar playing speed?”
Answer: Improving your guitar playing speed is about learning how to practice guitar the right way and solving your guitar playing problems when it comes to speed.
Guitar speed is a byproduct of:
- efficient guitar technique in your picking hand
- efficient guitar technique in your fretting hand
- excess tension control
- sloppy string noise control
- 2-hand synchronization
- picking hand articulation
…and more.
After you identify your weaknesses in the elements of guitar technique, then you can find exercises to improve your guitar playing with each element of guitar speed.
As you practice them, you’ll solve your guitar playing problems as they relate to speed and start playing faster.
Another tip about finding guitar exercises:
You can (and should) use 1 guitar exercise to improve multiple areas of your guitar playing.
How do you do this?
By using focus rotation – a special way to practice guitar that improves multiple areas of your guitar playing at the same time.
Make a list of all the guitar playing elements you want to improve. This is your “focus rotation list” to follow as you practice guitar.
Then practice one of your guitar exercises and focus on one of the elements of your focus rotation list at a time. (For example, focus for 1 minute at a time on each item of your focus rotation list.)
This is a very effective way to improve your guitar playing with just a small number of guitar exercises.
Bottom line:
Creating your own guitar exercises is about:
- Identifying your specific guitar playing problems.
- Exaggerating each problem to make it easier to focus on.
- Finding guitar playing contexts that force you to focus on each problem like a laser and master it.
Make a list of your guitar playing challenges and go through this process to design the right exercises to solve them. This makes you feel confident about your ability to reach any goal and overcome any challenge.
Learn more ways to create guitar playing exercises that help you master the guitar.
Learn the best way to accelerate your guitar playing faster than you ever thought possible.
 | Forward this article to your friends |