How To Practice Guitar With A Limited Amount Of Time
By Tom Hess
Do you struggle with not having enough time to practice guitar? Are you unsure
about what things to practice within this very limited amount of time?While it may be rather difficult to increase the total time you have available
to practice guitar, it is very possible to maximize the results you get from
the practice time you do have available. Here is what you need to do to get
maximum results…The Essentials
To get any significant results in your guitar playing, you need to focus on
two essential elements: efficiency of your practice, and its effectiveness.
Being efficient means being skillful in avoiding wasted time and effort. Being
effective means having the ability to achieve the desired result.Imagine that you are trying to dig a swimming pool by using a teaspoon. Sure,
you are being effective (the pool is getting dug), but it is going to take you
YEARS working at this rate to complete the job (because you are working with
very low efficiency). A much better approach (one that will help you avoid wasted
time and effort), would be to use a powerful excavator to do the same task in
minutes!In order to become truly great guitar player in a minimum amount of time, you
should strive to maximize both efficiency and effectiveness, as they are equally
important. However, the focus of this particular article will be entirely on
efficiency, and I will discuss effectiveness in a future article.I want to share with you 3 powerful ideas and guitar practice strategies that
can be used to maximize results from your guitar practicing by increasing efficiency.
They can and should be applied regardless of how much time you have to practice
your guitar, and especially when time is limited.1. Transferability
Many guitar players become discouraged if they cannot find a large enough block
of time (for instance, an hour or more each day) to practice. I often receive
questions from students such as: “Tom, I only have 20 minutes to dedicate
to practicing guitar each day, and I want to make the most progress possible.
What should I be doing?”In this case, I suggest to practice something which has a high level of “transferability”.
A skill is “transferable”, if working on it will simultaneously
make you better in other elements of guitar playing (for example: left hand
technique, right hand technique, 2 hand synchronization, shifting from string
to string, muting string noise, fretboard awareness, improvisation and many
more…). If what you are working on helps more than one of these elements
at the same time, then you are practicing something that has some degree of
transferability. There are two primary factors which determine the transferability
rate. The first factor is the number of other areas which are benefited. The
second factor is how strong that benefit is.One example of a technique with high transferability is string skipping. It
involves the technique on both hands, challenges your 2 hand synchronization,
and forces you to focus on muting unwanted string noise. This is a good technique
to work on because its benefits directly “transfer” to other elements
of guitar playing.Legato technique, on the other hand, has a much lower degree of transferability.
It mainly focuses only on left hand technique (and some elements of muting string
noise as well). So when time is limited, working on legato playing is probably
not going to bring you as much benefit compared to practicing string skipping.By investing your guitar practice time among high transferability items, you
will get a lot more from your practicing. I want you to become aware of this
idea and think about it as you are selecting the most important items to work
on when your practice time is very limited.2. Blueprint to Success
Another way to dramatically improve your efficiency is to use a guitar practice
schedule that is targeted and relevant to your goals. Think of a practice schedule
as a blueprint to your success. If you have been stuck at the same level for
months or years, if you have the desire to move past your current plateau, and
if you have limited time to practice, consider creating a schedule. It will
keep you focused on what you need to do, and will help you to become more organized
and not waste time when practicing.This schedule must be specific to your musical goals and yet flexible enough
to adjust to your progress and any possible changes in your musical ambitions.3. Divide and Conquer
Another piece of advice that I want to give to you is to become more specific
about isolating your technical challenges. This will allow you to get to the
core of your guitar playing problem(s) and avoid wasting precious time practicing
the parts of the music you can already play well.For example, when you practice an ascending scale sequence like this one,
you may have trouble with fretting hand accuracy every time you have to shift
from string 5 to string 4. Here is where the practice efficiency breaks down
for most guitar players. They will attempt to practice this ENTIRE sequence
over and over, trying to iron out the difficulty. Even though you will still
be practicing the hard part of the sequence when you do this, your efficiency
will be greatly compromised for the following reasons:1. The number of times per minute that you can play your SPECIFIC problem area
will be a lot less, simply because you are also playing additional notes.
2. Your attention will not be fully engaged on the problem at hand because you
will have to think about playing additional parts of the phrase. This means
that your hands will need to play your specific challenge even MORE times before
you can overcome it.This is similar to the example of digging a swimming pool with a teaspoon, and
obviously this is highly inefficient.If instead you took the time to define the problem (such as the shift between
the two strings and the transition from using your 4th finger to using the 1st
finger), and focused on practicing that section only without playing the rest
of the phrase, you will practice the problem area many more times per minute!
This is something you should do regardless of how much practice time you have,
and especially in situations when time is limited.AFTER you have practiced the problem in isolation, you should put it back into
the context of the whole sequence, and practice everything together to see how
well it holds up. But working on the problem in isolation (dividing and conquering
it!) should be the first step.Think about each of these 3 practice tools. If you were already familiar with
them, have you been applying them every day? Obviously, if you have already
been using these concepts and are seeing good results, then continue doing what
you were doing! However, if you are not yet applying these ideas, and/or are
not progressing at the rate you would like, then you should think hard about
how you can implement these tools to improve the efficiency of your practice.
If you are still stuck after trying to apply them on your own, ask someone for
help!If you follow the advice given in this article, you will soon find yourself
making more progress in 30 minutes than most people can achieve in 2 hours of
practicing!
