With 2021 looking like the majority of it will be spent indoors, I figured it was high time I got serious about my guitar practicing routine. To help me organize my plan of attack, I put together this customized guitar practice menu!
The Gear Gods 2021 Guitar Practice Menu™ consists of five main areas of focus:
- Warmup/Strength: Exercises to help maintain my current level of guitar ability. Things like finger stretches and trills to keep my fingers warmed-up and ready to take on anything I throw their way.
- Improv/Phrasing: These are exercises to help up my improvisational and phrasing skills. Singing along and matching the notes I play on guitar is a great way to internalize my phrasing and help break out of familiar patterns and shapes I may find myself going to by default.
- Vibrato/Muting/Finger Tone: Concepts to help clean up my playing! Vibrato almost always sounds good and is a highly useful technique to make my playing sound more expressive and intentional. Improving my muting (i.e. stopping other strings from ringing out) might be one of the most obvious ways to help clean up any slop, and focusing on good finger tone by playing on the tips of my fingers will just improve my sound overall!
- Transcriptions: Probably the best way to improve my guitar chops. If I can practice figuring out other people’s music by ear on guitar, there’s no telling what new levels my playing abilities will ascend to!
- Time/Rhythm: This is a big one for a lot of metal players. While a daily diet of shredding can be good for the soul, sometimes we forget the importance of playing with good time and really locking into the groove. Playing to a metronome or backing track is a great way to really hone in on this aspect of my playing.
Now, will this practice menu actually help maintain, improve, or excel my current my guitar abilities? Only time will tell, but it’s worth a shot! And if you are so bold, give The Gear Gods 2021 Guitar Practice Menu™ a try for yourself and see if the results speak for themselves!
