Learning how to practice your instrument effectively is the single most important thing you can do. With out the proper techniques you could essentially just be wasting time when attempting to practice. It has taken me a long time to figure out how to really practice correctly. I believe, with the proper techniques, that everyone has the ability to become a great player. The differences lie only in each individuals willingness to adhere to the proper routine. It all comes down to forming muscle memory. We use muscle memory in everything we do like walking or riding a bike. We never forget how to walk or which leg goes next, its muscle memory. We also didn’t start out running first and, walking wasn’t easy for anyone at first. We all started out slow and worked up to it.
Learning a song or a new technique is no different. Going slow at first seems obvious but in all my years of teaching you would be surprised that almost no one does remembers to do it. Let’s face it we are just fundamentally not a very patient species and we are excited to learn. This is extremely counterproductive. If we rush ourselves through a new song before we’ve really broken it down all we end up achieving is a bunch of bad habits and mistakes. Every time we play a song and make the same mistakes in the same spots they are becoming habits. Playing it over and over again only makes it worse.
Here is the key to learning a song successfully:
1. Break the song into small chunks.
- 1 measure or less if it has a lot of notes.
2. Memorize everything– you can’t make music if you’re head is stuck in the chart.
- Notes
- Rhythms
- All fingerings
3. Practice it SLOWLY developing good muscle memory!
- Slow- speed comes only when things are committed to muscle memory and that takes time and repetition.
- Accurate- pick a speed that gives you enough time to think about what you’re doing.
- Relaxed- if you are tense it is because you are going too fast. if you are tense when you practice it will stay that way.
- When you can play it 5 times in a row with out making a mistake you can move on to the next step. If you make any mistake start counting over. This includes fingering and picking mistakes not just note mistakes.
4. Learn the next chunk using steps 2-4
5. Play all chunks together.
- Make sure the seem between chunks is clean and connected. Just because you can play them separately doesn’t mean you can slap them together. Putting the two together often needs work.
6. Repeat this process until the whole song or section is finished.
7. Polish it by playing it with a metronome.
Think of your progress like this: When practicing if you get a musical passage right 25% of the time you are just practicing your mistakes and need to slow down! If you’re right 50% of the time you’re at a standstill. If you’re getting it 75% of the time congratulations your making progress! If you’re fortunate enough to get it right 100% of the time then what are you waiting for, move on to the next spot you’ve got it! If you learn songs this way I guarantee you will remember songs well and play them better than you ever thought possible. Practice your chunks now and you won’t blow chunks later!
Here are my two absolute favorite practice tools. iReal Pro and Amazing Slow Downer.
Now click here to start your Self Taught Guitar Lessons
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Amen to memorizing. Well, all of it, but memorizing helped release me to focus more on my playing. I need to do all of this even more so.
Yes!!! It’s one of the pieces of advice that probably comes out of my mouth in almost everyone of my private lessons! You can’t put your heart and soul into your music if half your brain is deciphering whats on the paper. It’s distracting. Use it only to learn a song and memorize immediately so you can free yourself from the sheet music.