In a recent Facebook post someone asked, “If you could meet xyz dead rock star, what would you ask them?” My immediate thought was, “how did you practice?” I can remember numerous tips from various guitar heroes and heroines over the years, but they're never enough. In a series of blog posts exploring this eternal question, let’s examine the crux of what my blog is all about – practicing guitar. Please feel free to comment! Share your thoughts on practicing and your practicing routine!
Let’s Start with the Basics
I just got through re-reading a great book about John Coltrane, called Chasin’ the Trane. The reason I bring up Trane is that he was super serious about practicing. He practiced scales obsessively, and he would practice from methods and exercise books for different instruments. This is a time honored, hard-core approach, but you can apply some of Trane's rigor to your routine without an insane, Trane-level commitment.
I learned one of the most simple and popular approaches to practicing scales from my classical guitar teacher at Mannes College, Michael Newman. He introduced me to practicing scales in rhythms. Practice your scales as quarter notes, eighth notes, triplets, and sixteenth notes (below), using alternate picking. Make sure to start the scales both with an upstroke and a down-stroke. This exercise warms up your fingers faster than anything else I’ve found. Michael also suggested that I, “spend more time focusing on two or three scales per day.” The idea is to perfect the scales, not just run through them mindlessly. How musical do they sound? Where are the flaws? Do they flow? Of course, it can be fun and beneficial to run through numerous patterns in five or ten keys over the course of one session and I often do that.
Start slowly and build up to higher tempos. Make sure to play the rhythmic patterns as single and repeated notes (below). Because I’m mainly a blues player, I spend most of my time practicing pentatonic or blues scales. I use fingerings that will work when I’m improvising and using bent notes, vibrato, hammer-ons and pull-offs. As I go up the fretboard, I alter my fingerings to take advantage of the smaller space between the frets. Some patterns become more or less exercises in coordination because I may never really play a lick in that exact way, but I include a little abstract stuff in my routine because it’s fun! I’ve included one, a diminished scale, towards the end of this article.
It’s important to practice scales in different keys. I like to play in G so I’m including my basic routine for that key below. This may seem obvious but being that so much guitar music is in the keys of A and E, we all emphasize these keys. But if you never practice in F and then go to a gig and play a solo on “The Things I Used to Do,” by Guitar Slim, you’re almost certain to make a mistake at some point unless you’re playing it really safe. For this tune, D minor pentatonic (F major pent.) and F minor pentatonic are a must. You can find some useful major pentatonic scale patterns here.
I find that playing scales up the neck from lowest to highest works well. Note the crazy open position variation of the Pentatonic Scale Form V above. Even if I rarely improvise in this position in this key, the use of open notes, the pinky and the uncommon pattern promotes coordination between the hands, which is super important. Should you use a metronome? It certainly can be fun but I wouldn’t do it all the time.
Next time we’ll take a look at the what and when of practicing. In the meantime, please send in your ideas, comments and exercises. Keep on practicing, and have fun! -Christian Botta
Comments