When I was a kid, I was very regimented about the way that I practiced music.  I was break it up in to sections, and train my fingers to do endless scales and such.  And in those years sitting in my basement, I gave up a lot of my high school years.  Now that I am older and have been playing music for years, and briefly went to music school, and then dropped out of music school, been in bands, and played with lots of different people (no one famous), I feel that I was a little misguided back then.

Scales and practicing are definitely needed, but I was way too anal about it, and I feel a little too regimented.  And the net result was that when I went to music school I needed to unlearn stuff so as not to sound stiff.  I guess we got to remember that I grew up in the eighties when “shredding” was king.   Maybe I could have used my practice time as a kid better. 

But if you are starting out, or learning to practice, and don’t really have a plan for practice and want to get better, then here are some thoughts…

PLAYING SONGS NOT BY ROTE

One of the things that I could have done more of was playing songs.  It’s probably been this way all throughout history, where you learn a song you want to play and then you learn to play it.  Rather than spending all your time preparing your technique to learn a song.  Of course, some songs are going to be too hard to play at first, but finding a simple song that you like to strum to, and then practicing it, gives you a sense of accomplishment once you succeed.  It’s much more satisfying than learning to play a scale at 160 bpm.

Here’s a link to guitar tablature on line:

http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/

Or you can just type in guitar tablature into google and go to town.

The trick with learning to play songs is that in order to get better at playing music, you should learn it exactly as it was played.  And try to land every strum, rhythm, beat, note exactly.  The reason is not to be anal, but to train your ears to listen intently to the music.  And listening is something that takes a long time to master, but it will put you on the right path to playing with other people.

THE PLAN

Playing songs doesn’t mean that that’s all that there is.  It is only a part of it, but it’s also important to do the other stuff to get better.  Basically, you need to train your fingers to have some technique.  Then you got to train your brain by learning music theory.  And of course, there is the songs, and playing and listening skills.  ETC.

SONGS-for listening skills, for the fun on playing music.

TECHNIQUE- scales, learning chords, right hand picking excercises.

THEORY- learning how chords, and notes, and reading music and all of that stuff is put together.

Of course, I’ve known people that didn’t have good technique, and didn’t know a damn thing about theory, but when they played, you couldn’t help but listen because it was so beautiful.

So, I guess there’s that.