Unlocking Your Potential: Stop Noodling, Start Practicing!

Embrace a transformation from casual noodling to a structured, effective guitar practice regimen. This episode dives into how creating goals can elevate your playing, enhancing both skills and creativity. 

• Discusses the balance between noodling for enjoyment and structured practice 
• Highlights the significance of defining personal goals in practice 
• Introduces practice buckets: fundamentals, theory, and creativity 

If you're looking for any additional help or guidance in all of these sorts of things, we have this thing at Guitar Zoom called the Guitar Zoom Academy, and that's exactly what we do here is craft, you know, custom plans for people and then guidance for an entire year on getting you to the goals that you're looking for. 

Links:

Check out the GuitarZoom Academy:
https://academy.guitarzoom.com/

• Steve’s Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/stinemus...
• GuitarZoom Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/guitarz0...
• Songs Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/GuitarSo... .

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Guitar Practice
• 15:35 Defining Your Goals and Practice Plan
• 30:35 The Importance of Structured Learning

Transcript

Steve: 0:35

Hey, Steve Stine from GuitarZoom here. Thank you so much for joining me. Today we're going to be talking about the difference between noodling on the guitar and actually setting up a practice regimen. Okay, so I want to start off by just telling you that if you do like to just screw around on the guitar, noodle, we call it on the guitar and you're perfectly happy with that, then that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. Again, if you're not questioning what you're doing, you're just enjoying what you're doing, I'm the last person to tell you need to change anything. But if you're finding that, as a result of just kind of playing whatever at whenever, time isn't really getting you the results that you want, then it's time to start trying to change that and start making a plan for yourself of what you're trying to do, be it on a daily basis or on a weekly basis. Okay, so everybody's in a different place when it comes to what we're practicing, what level we're at with the things that we're doing, all of that kind of stuff. So I really just want to focus on on a couple of things I think would be beneficial for you. Number one is is you want to start learning how to define your goals, not just practicing anything and whatever and that sort of thing. And again, I'm going to say it If that's what makes you happy, there's nothing wrong with that, but if that's not getting you the results that you want, then what you need to start doing is you need to start developing a plan. That plan has to consist of some goals, some elements that you think are pertinent to study and elevate to get to the place you want to be. For instance, if you want to learn how to play songs, you need the fundamental components to play songs. You need to learn essential chords to play the kind of music that you want to play open chords or bar chords or power chords or any of these sorts of things. You also need to learn how to strum to make the music sound real right, not just a strumming pattern, not just down, down, down, up down or something like that, which is fine, but really learning how to feel, strum, feel the rhythm connected to the music that you're trying to play on. And the third thing is that you've got to learn how to memorize the components or the compositional elements of that song. There's an intro, and it needs me to do this. There's a verse, and it needs me to do this. Blah, blah, blah. And as you keep going you might start moving into various techniques. I need to develop my alternate picking. I need to develop my palm muting. I need to you know, develop my single note playing.

Steve: 3:02

Whatever it might be okay, but being aware of those things and understanding that some of these things require a daily feeding to either A at the very least maintain and B to elevate okay. If you don't do them on a regular basis and you don't really have control of them, the problem is oftentimes they're going to slip. So guitar playing isn't like at least in my experience, it's not like riding a bike, where you just grab a guitar and everything's still there. That's not true. It's almost like being an athlete. If you're a marathoner and then you don't do a marathon for 10 years, you're not just going to get up one day and go well, today I'm going to run a marathon Like. Your body needs to stay in shape. It might not need to be in even more shape that's entirely up to you but at the very least it needs to maintain to be able to do the marathon.

Steve: 3:56

So what I think about are what I call buckets. When I'm trying to put this together is to get people to think about elements that you need to decide whether you're going to work on all of these things every day, which in my world, is impossible. There's just not enough. There's certain things that I will work on because I find it very, very, very important, and then I will scatter other elements throughout the week to make sure that I'm hitting everything without too much space in between. So, for instance, the first thing I want you to think about is what we'll call the fundamentals bucket or the rudimentary bucket, and what this is is those essential skills that you need to play the things that you want to play, be it chords and chord changes, be it strumming, be it picking single note, picking down, picking alternate, picking palm, muting right Fundamental skills to do the things that you want. Maybe you're focusing on soloing, improvisation, like that's a big thing.

Steve: 5:06

Multiple parts to this. You've got the visualization of your fretboard. You've got the understanding of elements and how they work and interact on the fretboard. You've got skill sets, the execution of things with your fingers, with said scales right, whatever scale you're working on, pentatonic, whatever it might be that you're doing your ability to be able to see those things on an absolute level, not kind of sort of because, again, kind of sort of means, not kind of sort of If you kind of know something, you kind of don't know something. That's where the problem lies. So you need to be able to develop that fretboard whether it's a little bit or a lot is entirely up to you. But you need to develop that to an absolute level to be able to manipulate it and control it and make music with it.

Steve: 5:52

So the second level then is the skill set. I can see this absolutely, but I cannot play it very well. Right, I'm using a metronome, I'm trying to dial in my skill set of being able to do this, but I can see that I still need more work with that. Okay, well, that's fine. And then there's oftentimes a third level to this, which is the creative level. If you're learning how to improvise, for instance, just because you can see something on your fretboard and just because you can move your fingers at a certain's, what you might appreciate about them, you might appreciate the technical prowess of that person, you might appreciate the musicality of David Gilmour or something like that. Again, it's entirely up to you. I'm just saying do right the clarity, the cleanliness, the accuracy and then, ultimately, the speed at which I can do these things.

Steve: 7:04

And speed is is kind of a misunderstood word in guitar player world because we just uh, you know, we, we think of speed as being shred, and it could be that for sure if that's what's interesting to you, but it may not be. Speed is also relative. We're talking about music and there's fundamentals about music, right, speed can also mean here's a song that I'm going to be improvising over, and the song is at 130 beats per minute. So when I go to start improvising over the top, I have to acknowledge the tempo at which this song is going to do things that I'm going to do, be it things that I'm doing at a quarter note speed, an eighth note speed, a sixteenth note speed, right, people forget that, like, they just think, oh, it's in the key of G. So as long as I know something about G on the fretboard, I'm good to go. Well, that's part of it. But if you haven't figured out the speed at which you can do something, that's where the whole thing starts breaking down is you're not able to play along with whatever this is. We don't have to play along with 128th notes the whole time. That's not what I'm saying, but there's.

Steve: 8:10

I always tell people that when it comes to improvisation, one of the most important functional elements is the eighth note, because if you're going, you're here, think about this, let's do something with a straight groove. So if I was doing right there, so here's my, my song's going at this speed, here's my quarter note. So my eighth note is going. My 16th note is going. 16th note's going to be a challenge to try and improvise. Oftentimes, with 16th notes, we try and develop licks or patterns or things like that that will play at that speed. It's something that we've been working on. Again, rudimentally right. The eighth note is what I'm going to improvise with, maybe go into the little 16th note. So my skills aren't just based on what I can see, but it's what I can execute skillfully. And speed, tempo is always something that we have to keep in mind, so you don't have to just think well, I don't want to be a shredder. The other part of this is it's not about shredding, it's about connecting to the music. So that's the fundamentals rudimentary bucket you making choices on what needs to be done on a daily basis so you can run a marathon.

Steve: 9:25

Okay, the second bucket we're going to talk about is going to be the theory and fretboard visualization bucket. I think this is really important Learning how to visualize something and understand what it is. How does it work? What can I understand about this situation of this bucket is that you don't necessarily have to be around your guitar to work on this bucket. You might be traveling, you might be at the office or be at work or whatever it might be, and you've got some free time to simply think, to look at a piece of paper, visualize and think about what it is that you want to do. Okay, so for me, that was always something I would do, like in school, when I'd have a study hall, or something I would. I would study my scale fret boards, you know, I would draw them out in study hall and then I would, you know, study things on this, on this piece of paper. So by the time I got home, I could start working on the fundamental, the rudimentary, the execution of the things I was thinking of when I was sitting in study hall. So that's the beauty of that bucket is that it can be done. Sure, it can be done with your guitar in your hands, but it very much can be done when the guitar is not in your hands. Okay, so we've got our fundamentals bucket, we've got our theory bucket.

Steve: 10:44

I always think, you know songs is another good bucket, because learning other people's songs can be very helpful for you in deciding what am I supposed to be doing here. Like you know, I need some new experiences. I need to learn how things you know connect together. That might be a really good thing for me to learn. Or how can I use this in the real world? How does somebody approach this? You know so people always say things like well, I get stuck and I don't. You know, I don't feel very creative and I can't come up with new ideas. Well, that's what songs do, is? They oftentimes will feed these creative ideas. You'll be like oh, I never thought about doing that before, I've never seen that before. That's brand new, very motivational for me to learn that thing. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. So song study is another thing that I think is really, really important.

Steve: 11:37

Now, song study might not have to happen every day Now if you're joining a band or something and you're learning how to play a set list, and that set list can consist of 40 or 50 songs that you have to learn in a week and a half from today. Well, that becomes your primary focus for your practice, obviously, and some of these other things are going to have to take a sidestep while you focus on these. So your practice routine, your practice regimen, is sometimes kind of organic because it depends on what's going on in your life at the time. It's not always what do I want to develop. Yes, I want that and I wish I could have that every day. But then there's obligations that happen in my life where I might have to play with this band and I have to learn their songs, and so that becomes precedence, because I don't want to not do a good job. If I don't do a good job, they probably won't ask me to do it ever again. So you know, that becomes priority for me. While I'm getting ready to do this show with this band or whatever it might be, then I'm focusing on that. This show with this band or whatever it might be, then I'm focusing on that.

Steve: 12:33

So the last thing I want to give you is what I refer to as the creative bucket or the real world bucket, and oftentimes, again, this is a bucket that may or may not be necessary for you, depending on what your goals are. If what you do is play other people's songs and this is not meant to be offensive at all I'm just being honest. If you play in a band or something like that, and you play the same stuff all the time, and you do exactly the same thing all the time, and you play a lot and you're making money or you're enjoying yourself, I think that's amazing. Okay, but the truth is is you're really not having to worry about the creative aspect of playing in this particular band, because it's not really necessary for you. You've already Right now you might be, you know, making up your own solos or something like that, and that's the creative aspect of what you're doing in this band. And again, there you go. There's your creative outlet, and that's that's awesome.

Steve: 13:40

Not just the guitar player practice hat, but the performance hat. It's learning how to control yourself to where, when you hear a musical situation that you are going to interact with creatively, you're not making decisions based on. Well, I remember learning that lick and so I should play that, and then my brother showed me this thing about modes and mixolydian, so I got to use that too, and then yesterday I was trying to do this thing, so I'm going to put that in there. That isn't what it is. It's learning how to make proper choices that sound musical to the music situation that you find yourself in. Now that definition can change for everybody.

Steve: 14:13

My definition of blues might be way different than your definition of blues. That's okay, but I have to work within the parameters of what my definition of blues is. So if I'm going to jam blues with somebody, I understand what. As soon as I start hearing the music, I understand what it's asking of me, and then I need to respond accordingly, whether it's on a BB King kind of level or a Joe Bonamassa kind of level or a Steve Ray Vaughan kind of that's whatever I mean. That's what my guitar journey is about, and what yours is about as well is making those choices.

Steve: 14:46

I'm just saying just because we can see things on the fretboard and just because we practice doesn't mean we're creative. Think about it that way. You've got to learn to be musical. You've got to practice learning how to be musical, how to connect with the music on a music level, if that makes sense. So that's a great bucket for you to practice too. So, anyway, hopefully that helps you a little bit, gives you some insight If you're looking for any additional help or guidance in all of these sorts of things. You know we have this thing at Guitar Zoom called the Guitar Zoom Academy, and that's exactly what we do here is craft, you know, custom plans for people and then guidance for an entire year on getting you to the goals that you're looking for. So if you're interested, make sure you check out the Guitar Zoom Academy. So, take care, stay positive and I'll talk to you soon, okay,