Becoming a better guitar player requires lots and lots of practice, that much is obvious. But figuring out how to practice can be a bit of a challenge.   I believe you will find the following post very helpful.  Below are 10 awesome guitar practice exercises that you can fit into your daily practice routine.

These guitar practice exercises target a variety of different areas including finger strength and dexterity, soloing, barre chords and more.  Some of the videos below are demonstrated on electric guitars, but you can do the same exercises on acoustic guitar.

Practice Exercise 1 -- Justin Sandercoes’s  Finger Gym

The practice routine below is a brilliant one from Justin Sandercoe.  This exercise alone will greatly improve your guitar playing. This routine really works out your hands and fingers, so in the beginning, you may tire quickly. This is normal. The more you do this exercise, the longer you will be able to last.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf7OTbl__aU

Visit Justin’s YouTube Profile Here for more great video lessons

Practice Exercise 2 -- Chord Change Exercise

This exercise will give you practice playing and changing between your basic, but essential open chords.

Learn more about this guitar practice routine here

Practice Exercise 3 -- 7 Strumming Patterns & Techniques for Acoustic Guitar

Learning how to properly strum your acoustic guitar does not come easy to all of us.  The video lessons on the following page will hopefully make you a strumming master.  Add these strumming exercises to your practice routine today.

Follow this link to reach this post on strumming patterns & techniques for acoustic guitar

Practice Exercise 4 -- Pentatonic Scale Pattern Practice For Solos

This is a great practice exercise from Marty Schwartz that will show you how to get more out of your scales. This is great practice if you want to play lead guitar.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf_2eodyR_0

Practice Exercise 5 -- Finger Dexterity Exercise

This practice exercise has multiple benefits.  It builds strength and dexterity and helps familiarize yourself with the guitar fretboard.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkezJz_ibuk

Watch more of Anthony’s videos over at his YouTube Page

Practice Exercise 6 -- Barre Chord Changing Exercise

Here is a great exercise from Next Level Guitar to help you practice those challenging barre chords.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdofq_TQbZY

Practice Exercise 7 -- Strength &  Dexterity Exercise For Solos

Here is another great exercise from Next Level Guitar for building finger strength and dexterity for soloing.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjwsLWBukzg

Practice Exercise 8 -- Right Hand Picking Exercise

This exercise is great for practicing your right hand picking.  Its made especially for Bluegrass Guitar, but it will benefit any guitar player of any genre.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=H598k-8ZtEU

See more of Adam’z guitar videos over at his YouTube Page.

Practice Exercise 9 -- Collection of Great Warmup Exercises

Here is a collection of excellent warm up exercises for guitar. Several of these exercises are done without a guitar, so you can do them anywhere, which is a real plus for those of us who are on the go or don’t always have the time to devote to practice.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6H353MZ6dtI

See more of Rob’s videos over at his YouTube Page

Practice Exercise 10 -- Paul Gilbert Speed Building Exercise

Here is a great exercise for building up speed on the guitar.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZURmRPQPjA

By Robert Renman

An Effective Guitar Practice Schedule
Feel free to practice these things in any order, but always do #1 first, the warm up. You also don’t have to do them all in one sitting either. You can do a few at one practice session, and next time you sit down to practice, you do the other items in the list you didn’t do the first time, etc. Also, feel free to change the number of minutes for each to suit your own needs. Maybe you want to practice for 2 hours; maybe just 30 minutes – it is completely up to you. You can view this schedule as a general blueprint, which you can modify as you like.

1. Warm-up – 5 minutes. First of all – tune your guitar! Then, play anything you like, but don’t do anything that is really hard on the muscles in your hands. Let them get warmed up first.
2. Scales – 10 minutes . Work on scales you don’t yet know well. You probably have scales tabbed out and printed. Take your time and play these slowly with the metronome. Play the notes of the scale in question in any order, random, sequential, etc. As you do this, try to visualize in your head the patterns this scale creates on the fretboard. Over time, you will be able to “see” the scale on the fretboard without thinking much about it.
3. Arpeggios – 10 minutes. Do the same as with the scales mentioned above. An arpeggio is a group of notes which are played one after the other, either going up or going down, where the notes belong to one chord. Again, visualize and try to remember the patterns you play.
4. Chords – 10 minutes. Learn new voicings of chords. Learn new chords. Practice chord progressions with some of the new chords you are learning.
5. Theory – 5 minutes. Get a good book about music theory. There are many out there.
   Alfred Essentials of Music Theory: Complete Self-Study Course (Book/2-CD)
6. Technique – 10 minutes. Work on things that need improvement or that may be new to you, for example – hammer-ons, pull-offs, bends, strumming, alternate picking, sweep technique, tapping, etc.
7. Fretboard training – 10 minutes. Set the metronome at a low BPM. Start with any note you want. Find and play that note for every click of the metronome on every string, but start with 2 strings at a time. Once you have that down, move to 2 more strings, then practice finding that note on those 4 strings. Continue with the last 2 strings and finally do all 6 strings. Play the notes in any order and direction. The purpose here is to find the note in question as quickly as you can. It will become “transparent” with enough training – you will be able to find any note anywhere on the fretboard without having to think
8. Work on a song – 10 minutes. Work on a song which has something challenging in it, something that gives you an opportunity to practice something new.
9. Reading music – 10 minutes. Work on reading TAB and music notation. Practice reading rhythms, notes and sight reading.
10. Transcribe something – ANY minutes. This is the best way to teach yourself, and it’s fantastic ear training. Listen to a few seconds of a song, over and over. Imitate best you can, try to figure out one note at a time. This means replaying the same sequence many times. After a while, you will be able to do this quicker, as well as picking out more than one note at a time.
11. Play anything – ANY minutes. Noodle around and play whatever you want – playing should first and foremost be FUN!

Important things to remember

• Always tap your foot with the metronome and the rhythm you are playing. That way, you will lock your body into the meter, and you will become good at playing tight. Good timing is soooo important! I cannot stress this enough.
• Use that metronome/drum machine! Any time you are working on something with a beat to it, get that metronome/drum machine going. You get two benefits at one time – you may be working on scales, chords, etc, but at the same time, you will also improve your timing when you practice this to the metronome.
• Visualize the notes you are about to play. Practicing enough will get you to the point where, for example, you can see the note “A” on the B string before you actually play it.
• Record yourself regularly, and then listen back to it with critical ears. What problems do you notice? Timing issues? Are notes played cleanly and accurately? Determine what the weaknesses are, and focus on correcting them.
• Sing the notes – as you are playing through, for example, a scale or an arpeggio, sing the notes as you are playing them. This will train your ear and will also help you learn where the notes are on the fretboard.
• Play with others – jam with friends, your teacher, anyone. Play something for your friends and family. Get a little gig somewhere – it will help you stay motivated. Playing with people with improve your ear and you will develop your musicianship further and quicker.

Hope you find these tips useful. Remember, a focused practice routine will lead to improvements faster.

Lastly, don’t forget the most important part – TO HAVE FUN!

——-

Robert Renman is a guitar player and guitar teacher in Canada. His website http://www.dolphinstreet.com has a large selection of free video lessons, as well as articles and videos about guitar equipment, and much more.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Robert_Renman
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By Mike P Hayes

Over practicing for your next performance can be a trap because it can lead to information overload, physical burnout and decreased performance. Practice makes perfect right? We’ve all heard that phrase before from music teachers, parents etc., with so many people telling us it’s got to be correct.

Actually, that popular phrase is only half true. To achieve our performance goals we need to make an important distinction. Instead of that phrase.

Here is what we need to know …

“Perfect practice makes perfect.”

You see, that’s an important distinction, simply practicing for the sake of practicing won’t cut it! You need to make practice time a time where you eliminate errors and fine tune your skills.

Remember, your fingers are not the thinking part of your body, they are the doing part … and they will keep on “doing it” the way they always have done (even it’s incorrect) until you make a conscious effort to correct the error.

Have you ever practiced relentlessly fifteen hours a day, day after day, driving yourself and your neighbors silly, only to totally botch things up on the day of the performance?

Well, you are not on your own, 85% of guitarists find themselves in the same situation! And, we all know how that feels, our confidence shot to pieces, all you want to do at the end of the night is crawl inside your guitar case and hope nobody notices you.

And so you begin a never ending cycle, poor performance means back to the practice room for more relentless practice, more “over practicing” to compensate for last performance disastrous results, burnout, and the inevitable … another poor performance and further loss of motivation and enthusiasm.

Here’s your escape plan:

Correctly diagnose the problem.

(a) Firstly determine in general terms if it is a motor skill issue or data memory problem?

(b) Then, dig deeper into the problem to find out specifically how we can overcome this glitch.

Let’s say, when you really get down to it, you find that it’s not a case of having fat, dumb, slow or old fingers (physical motor skills), it’s simply that you can’t seem to remember the chords for the songs (data memory issue).

Now, we are starting to get somewhere and you can probably begin to see why it’s essential to continually review the quality of your practice and the results you are achieving.

To give you an analogy, let’s image for a moment you were driving down the highway without a map and suppose you had to turn right to reach your intended destination, simply turning left and going as fast won’t get you there.

You need to focus on your prime objective and constantly design practice sessions that will achieve your goals.

Now, back to our problem of forgetting the chords for our songs, simply practicing writing the chords down on a data memory card.

Write the chords four bars to a line as follows:

C /// | C /// | G /// | C /// |

There’s two reasons for this (a) firstly, it gives you clarity and it allows you to remember small amounts of information, (b) with only four bars per line many repetitious phrases become obvious where you can immediately recognize and associate current material with information you have already learnt.

For example let’s say the following 16 bars where from a new composition by your bass player, your problem is you have to learn the chord sequence for a performance tomorrow.

C /// | C /// | G /// | C /// |F /// | C /// | G /// | C /// |

F /// | C /// | G /// | C /// |C /// | C /// | G /// | C /// ||

At first glance this looks tricky, when you split the project down into four bar units it becomes clear the there are sections that are repeated.

line 1:

C /// | C /// | G /// | C /// |

Line 2:

F /// | C /// | G /// | C /// |

Line 3: (same as line 2)

F /// | C /// | G /// | C /// |

Line 4: (same as line 1)

F /// | C /// | G /// | C /// |

I know this looks simple, and it is, but you would be surprised to know just how many practice hours can be saved by breaking things down to very do-able pieces of information.

Never get caught again …

In a nutshell, it’s the quality of your practice sessions not the sheer quantity of practice time. Remember before you sit down for your next practice session, decide whether the problem is motor

skill problem or data memory problem.

Mike Hayes is a teacher, author, speaker and consultant. Get his tips and tested strategies proven to boost your guitar playing his membership site at http://www.guitarcoaching.com today.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mike_P_Hayes
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By Peter Edvinsson

What is most important as you try to learn to play guitar? Technical guitar exercises or playing music? What areas should you focus on as you try to use your practicing time as effective as possible?

Could it be that both these areas are important and should go hand in hand?

You could practice in various ways and you could practice many various things as you try to learn playing guitar. You are probably already identifying yourself in a niche of guitar players. Even if you are not you will experience sooner or later that different approaches will lead you in different directions.

For example, if you only learn small parts (the coolest parts) of famous songs you will end up with knowing small parts of songs. Obvious, but that is very common among beginning guitar players. If you only practice this way you will of course miss the long term development as a guitarist.

You wanted to become one type of guitarist but ended up becoming another type of guitarist. Why do things like that happen?

Probably because we know that what we saw we will reap but do not realize that this applies to guitarists as well!

If you never practice skill exercises in your guitar playing you will not develop your skill very much. If you don’t want to become a proficient guitar player but only want to sing songs you can relax and develop your time to learning songs.

If you really know what you want it is much easier to determine what exercises you will need.

If you have a somewhat vague idea about what type of guitarist you want to become I would suggest that you balance your guitar practice by choosing both melodies and other musical exercises and also skill building guitar exercises.

If you only practice speed by learning scales, arpeggios, licks and other technique building exercises it is an imminent risk that you will sooner or later get fed up with practicing because of the lack of stimulating musical content.

It can actually be a great investment in your musical development to take some time off every now and then by going to a concert or listening to other music that will inspire you.

Yes, you are right, you will not practice your fingers, but music and playing guitar has to be a joyful experience for you if you are to inspire and lift others when you perform. You will gain so much by filling yourself with inspiring music that it will compensate for missed skill building exercises.

Music is the key in this discussion. It has to be the basis for all other guitar playing activities. Otherwise you will as before mentioned lose interest in the activity.

Sometimes I remember my first steps learning to play guitar and I remember that I did not think in terms of becoming a better guitarist than my friends or being the fastest guitarist in the world or a lot of other disturbing unmusical considerations. I was just enjoying the music I created.

I guess that keeping this feeling of why I wanted to learn to play guitar in the first place in vivid memory will help me not to be too carried away with only technical exercises.

Okay, what then is more important as you try to learn to play guitar? Technical guitar exercises or playing music?

As in so many other aspects of life balance is probably the key to reap optimal benefits from your guitar playing.

Peter Edvinsson invites you to download your free guitar sheet music and guitar tabs at http://www.capotastomusic.com

By Peter Edvinsson

What can you do to make it easy for yourself to practice on your guitar? In order to continue to learn to play guitar and not give up you have to create an atmosphere of joy and fun around this activity. Let’s see what you can do to make it as easy as possible to play guitar.

As a you boy I had a lot of interests at the same time. Reading, sporting, playing piano, playing chess, a lot of more things and, of course, playing guitar.

I developed a habit to always have my guitar laying on my bed. Always as I walked into my room my guitar was laying there waiting for me. It was very easy to sit down on my bed starting to play because of two facts:

1. I could see the guitar as I walked into my room which immediately reminded me of how fun it is to play.

2. The guitar was easily accessible. The only thing I had to do in order to play the guitar was to grab it and start playing.

This made it possible for me to play a lot on my guitar in spite of all other activities. All other things I did was interwoven with my guitar playing and my musical experiences connected with it.

This way of working with my guitar was not a conscious plan to maintain energy and motivation to practice. It just happened to be that way. These moments with my guitar became a part of my personal development.

When I sat there playing guitar I also had time to digest life as it proceeded. It way a form of meditation because as I played on my guitar I allowed my mind at times to wander and I remember that some important decisions in life were made as I sat there playing.

Enough talk about myself! What can you learn from my experiences?

Let’s apply my experiences to the art of learning to play guitar and see if we can find principles that are applicable to all guitar players.

Here are some thoughts and suggestions:

1. See to it that you have your guitar as accessible as you dare to. It will be a reminder for you that playing guitar is fun. I have sometimes reminded my guitar students to pull out the guitar from the hard case or gigbag as soon as they come home from the lesson and start to play something connected with their homework. Otherwise there is an imminent risk that they will not open the case until the next lesson is at hand.

This is how humans often react. If it is a little effort involved in starting to do something we want to do there is a risk that we will procrastinate the activity until it is too late.

2. If you have set goals or have homework to do on your guitar I recommend that you also have these sheets or written down goals handy. No use to have goals if you are not reminded of them on a daily basis.

To facilitate all things that can be facilitated is one way to accomplish more of the important things in life including playing guitar.

Peter Edvinsson invites you to download your free sheet music, guitar tabs, ebooks, music lessons and read his music blog at http://www.capotastomusic.com