OK, here's my take on practicing. I don't know how anyone can only practice for 30 minutes to an hour a day and not get totally frustrated/bored with the rate of progression that their making. When I actually sat down about a year ago and laid out on paper my practice routine, I finally realized how much time was needed to actually progress, at what I consider, would be a "decent" rate of progression.

 

20-30/min Chromatics moving up in half steps.

20-30/min on MODES: go through all seven modes 2-3 times with a metronome.

15-20/min A Bb Phrygian lick that I like.

15-20/min Just the Lydian mode moving up in half steps frets 1-5 (Good for stretching)

30-60/min Barre chords !! Could really spend 2 hours a day on just these.

20-30/min chord progressions with open chords and barre chords and combining them also.

20-30/min Finger picking.

20-30/min Minor pentatonics in all 5 positions

30-60/min Scales; Major, Minor and Blues all positions

1 hour Practice 1 or 2 songs that I am trying to learn.

 

then spending some time just playing, could be 1-2 hours of just having fun

 

So as you can see, that's about 4-6 hours of practice without even including the "fun time"

 

...all that doesn't even include practicing things like bends, vibrato, hammer-ons, pull-offs, tapping, etc etc. Never mind the time it takes if you actually want to learn a

favorite solo that you like which takes a lot of time as some of you know. And lets not even talk about finding certain tones of favorite songs. Finding good tones takes an enormous amount of time with all the different effects and all the parameters for each one. You could spend hours/week just learning, delay settings, reverb, EQ, Chorus settings, plus your guitar volume/tone/pick-up selector settings and how they effect your tone.....it's just endless........and let's not even get into mixing and recording!!! And then what about all the reading on forums and books, and watching videos etc etc

 

When I first started playing, I was putting in 30 to 50 hours A WEEK. When I first posted my song "Influenced" on JS Forums, people where amazed that I had only been playing for just over a year. They said I showed the experience of someone that has been playing for 3-4 years or more because of my phrasing, the accuracy of my bends, my timing etc ....and the funny thing is I still think I suck as far as skills. If I only played for 30/min a day, I really don't think I would have stayed with it at all.

20-30/min Chromatics moving up in half steps.

20-30/min on MODES: go through all seven modes 2-3 times with a metronome.

15-20/min A Bb Phrygian lick that I like.

15-20/min Just the Lydian mode moving up in half steps frets 1-5 (Good for stretching)

30-60/min Barre chords !! Could really spend 2 hours a day on just these.

20-30/min chord progressions with open chords and barre chords and combining them also.

20-30/min Finger picking.

20-30/min Minor pentatonics in all 5 positions

30-60/min Scales; Major, Minor and Blues all positions

1 hour Practice 1 or 2 songs that I am trying to learn.

 

Your week must have something like 200 hours

 

In generall you are spending too much time on exercises which only on topic. 3 repeats would be OK. Once you can play the exercises properly in a good tempo you can start to select something else to get more input but still working on the technique. As an example :

 

• You are playing 3 years now I guess so you can skip the chromatic exercises to more advanced stuff where you can use all fingers. Maybe you check out the 3 note - per - string scales or scales in generall in different positions.
  
• Barré Chords : You are advanced enough to go a step further. Work on more complex chords maybe the basic jazz chords. Even when you don't want to play jazz you can learn a lot from the stuff and maybe it gives you more inspiration.
  
• Modes : Why not playing a mode a week. You can swith between lydian and Ionian from one week to an other. They are related - learn the theoretical difference between them and the other modes and learn those interval steps which define a mode by heart and on the fretboard.
  

 

The rest looks good so far.

ok let me better explain this. I gues it came across like I have been doing this for ever but I haven't!! When I was first practicing 30+ hours a week, it was basically open chords, strumming, fretboard, etc. I only worked on this schedule for 6-7 weeks "after" a year or so of just noodling and messing around, reading, research, new gear, tone searching...etc, not really "practicing" daily on this or any schedule for that matter. That's when I wrote this schedule out. Then I stopped practicing new stuff for months and months, so I never really progressed any further, with ANY of these techniques

 

I can't play barre chords well enough at all and I definitely cannot switch between open and barre chords fluently. As far as the modes, they ARE ALL 3 note per string, but I am still probably around 80-90 bpm clean, so I really haven't progressed there either. Chord progressions are still tough for me because I lack the theory side of music. So although I can play "fairly" well, I haven't really stuck to this schedule after that 6-7 week period. If I did, I probably would be light years ahead of where I am now I still need to work on timing and left/right hand coordination, that's why I still need to work on chromatics and stuff.

 

Once you can play the exercises properly in a good tempo you can start to select something else

 

That's the thing, I can't because I never stuck to this or any schedule. I lost some motivation along the way! Family, work etc ...... And lately, past 4-5 months, I'm lucky if I played 1-2 hours a week, sometimes going 5-6 days without even picking up the guitar at all......so all-in-all, I have a LOT to work on still.

 

But I do understand what your saying if I get back to practicing regularly, which I hope will be soon

 

On a good note though, I learned an old Emerson Lake & Palmer tune, "Lucky Man" yesterday....didn't realize how easy it was:D Verse: G-D Chorus: Am-Em-D with some Dsus2 and Dsus4's in there.

What I would love is a bunch of songs that use open chords that I can learn so at least I can start to put together a song list....right now its only 3

Yes you made one of the major mistakes a lot of students are doing. You wanted to go through everything too fast - like discribed in my article http://www.hanspeterkruesi.com/guitarschoo...p?showtopic=178 - the marathon part

 

Your goals where not realistic on the long term, but still you did not do wrong since you have reached a lot in the time you already played, but you have to avoid the deadliest thing that can happen that you stop regularity after the first motivation run. Better take a total break of a few weeks and then reconsider your schedules and get that regularity into your daily schedules with work and familly. If you don't have that much time - then it would be better just to play a few songs and add some practice goals like 5 - 10 min daily. This should keep it up.

That's the thing, I can't because I never stuck to this or any schedule. I lost some motivation along the way! Family, work etc ...... And lately, past 4-5 months, I'm lucky if I played 1-2 hours a week, sometimes going 5-6 days without even picking up the guitar at all......so all-in-all, I have a LOT to work on still.

 

Hey Mr. get on the stick and get unstuck...

 

On a good note though, I learned an old Emerson Lake & Palmer tune, "Lucky Man" yesterday....didn't realize how easy it was:D Verse: G-D Chorus: Am-Em-D with some Dsus2 and Dsus4's in there.

What I would love is a bunch of songs that use open chords that I can learn so at least I can start to put together a song list....right now its only 3

 

I dig Lucky Man! I saw ELP At Cal Jam 1 Back in the 70's. they did that and most of Brain Salad Surgery. Nice... It's all good brother... get it when ya can. At least you haven't done what I've seen alot do. Winding up in the closet only to see their way to ebay or something... I've gone back to basics... Next msg...

 

Peace Bro!

 

steve...