Guitar · Chapter 23 of 23

Practice and Next Steps

Short, regular practice beats long, rare practice. Here is a simple plan, a few habits that help, and where to go from here.

Twenty minutes a day will take you further than two hours on Sunday. Your fingers learn while you rest between sessions.

A twenty-minute plan

MinutesWhat
2Tune up.
3Warm up: a slow scale, or the open strings with p-i-m-a.
5One technique: one-minute chord changes, a barre, the Travis thumb.
8A song you are learning: the hard bars first, slowly, then the whole thing.
2A song you already know, just for fun.

Habits that help

Slow is fast

Play a hard passage slowly enough to get it right every time; speed comes from repeating it right. The song players here let you set the tempo and loop a few bars.

Count out loud

Counting keeps your rhythm steady and true. The metronome helps too; the song players have a count-in.

Small pieces

Learn two bars, then the next two, then join them. Practice the joins: that’s where mistakes hide.

Care of hands and guitar

  • Warm up, take breaks, and stop if anything hurts.
  • Keep your nails on the fretting hand short, so the fingertips reach the strings.
  • Wipe the strings after playing. When strings sound dull and won’t stay in tune, it’s time for a new set.
  • Keep the guitar in its case or on a stand, away from heaters and direct sun.

Where next?

The guitar songs page lists every guitar piece by level. The chord finder shows any chord in many shapes, and works backward too: tap frets and it names the chord. If you also play piano, the Reading Music course goes deeper into notation.

What you can do now. Check the ones you’re sure of; come back to the others.

  • Tune my guitar with the tuner and by the 5th-fret method.
  • Read tab and chord charts.
  • Play Em, Am, E, A, G, C, D, D7, G7, E7, A7 and B7 cleanly.
  • Strum the folk strum and change chords in time.
  • Play a bass-strum waltz and a boom-chuck.
  • Play a twelve-bar blues with the shuffle.
  • Fingerpick a p-i-m-a arpeggio and a tune over a bass.
  • Play an F barre chord and name barre chords up the neck.
  • Play a hammer-on, pull-off, slide and bend.
  • Keep a steady alternating thumb for Travis picking.

Remember

  • Twenty minutes a day: tune, warm up, one technique, one song, one for fun.
  • Slow and right, then faster.
  • Warm up, take breaks, stop if it hurts.

Songs to keep going with

You finished Guitar. Keep going with the guitar songs, from beginner to intermediate. Guitar songs →
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