Steve Stine Guitar Podcast

Guitar Practice Blueprint

• Steve Stine

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Struggling to make real progress on guitar despite hours of practice? You might be approaching your practice routine all wrong. 

The secret to effective guitar practice lies in understanding the three essential tiers of musical development. Most players jump straight to execution without realizing that mastery begins in the mind. Everything we play—every note, chord, and phrase—starts as a thought before it becomes sound. This episode breaks down exactly how to structure your practice for maximum growth by balancing understanding, execution, and creativity.

Level one focuses on visualization and comprehension—the mental work that can often be done away from your instrument. Whether you're memorizing scale patterns, understanding chord theory, or mentally mapping the fretboard, this cognitive foundation creates the blueprint for everything you'll physically play. The beauty of this level? You can practice it during lunch breaks, commutes, or anytime your guitar isn't within reach.

The execution level is where your technical abilities are forged through consistent, dedicated practice. Like physical fitness, these skills require daily maintenance—alternate picking, finger strength, synchronization between hands—all these fundamental abilities deteriorate without regular attention. This is the engine of your playing that needs frequent fine-tuning to perform at its best.

Finally, the creative level is where you apply everything you've learned through improvisation, songwriting, and personal expression. Depending on your goals as a guitarist, this level might be your primary focus or simply an occasional playground for experimentation.

The most powerful insight? Becoming aware of which level needs your attention at any given time. By strategically prioritizing practice elements based on your short-term needs and long-term vision, you'll transform random practice sessions into structured progress toward becoming the guitarist you've always wanted to be.

Ready to revolutionize your practice routine? Listen now, then share which level you'll be focusing on this week!

Links:

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

Steve:

When you're trying to create a practice routine for yourself. What I want you to think about are three different primary elements. Okay, three different levels, if you will. The first level is going to be understanding, visualization that sort of thing. Okay, stuff that doesn't necessarily require physical playing, but it requires visual elements, memorization, that sort of thing, but it requires visual elements, memorization, that sort of thing. What's great about the first level is that oftentimes you can do this when you're not around your guitar.

Steve:

Okay, so maybe you're studying a scale on your fretboard or you know a cage system or some sort of you know a triad concept or whatever it might be. Maybe it's a single position of a scale or multiple positions, or you know you're trying it's a single position of a scale or multiple positions, or you know you're trying to get a bigger picture of how they all connect together, or whatever it might be. Maybe it's some theory, but the point is, is that level one? What it? Everything starts with our thought process. As guitar players, we often forget that we're actually having to analyze what's happening in our brains before we actually start playing the guitar. Now, at some point we develop automation and that's exactly what we're looking for, but it still starts with a thought. So always begin by understanding that part of your daily or weekly practice routine is going to be something that you need to think about, you need to comprehend, you need to memorize, you need to visualize whatever that means to you. So, as you're having experiences throughout your guitar playing world, you know you might come across a song and now you need to study how that song structure goes or how the parts go together or whatever it might be. Or maybe you're going to improvise over something and so now you're thinking about the song and the key and what scale option you have and what you can see in your head. All of that starts on level one. Level two is the execution level, so this is where your skill sets are determined.

Steve:

Okay, so level two we're dealing with our ability to be able to play something mimic, something right. Maybe you're learning a song or a riff, or you know a lick or something like that, so you're trying to replicate something on some level and you're trying to work on the techniques that are needed to be able to do so. Maybe you're working on some fundamental exercises, something for finger strength or dexterity, or you know stamina or speed, or maybe it's a right hand thing, a fretting thing or, excuse me, a picking thing. So you've got your one hand, which is your fretting hand, the strength of those individual fingers, the speed of those fingers, that sort of thing. And then you've got your picking hand, your down picking, your alternate picking, your strumming. You know natural strumming, organic strumming, I call it. All of those kinds of tools come from the strumming hand or the picking hand. And then you've got synchronicity between the two hands, learning how to get them to relate to each other and follow each other around the fretboard Again, be it in one position, multiple positions, whatever it might be.

Steve:

And then you've got specific techniques. Maybe it's down picking, or alternate picking, or hammer-ons or bending, or you know again, God knows what it would be. There's a million other things. But that's the execution level. And so your daily or weekly and for me this kind of thing is that there are many elements of the execution level that need to be done on a daily basis, Because this is like your strength, right, If you go out and you run three miles a day every day to maintain the health that you're at currently, If you run less than that, your health is going to be altered relative to the decrease in the amount of exercise that you're getting. If you did more, your health would increase in theory, because you're doing more, You're exercising more.

Steve:

So what you have to understand about the execution level, the skills, the fundamental stuff, the rudimentary stuff is these things need to be nurtured on a daily basis. If you're developing your down picking or your alternate picking or you're, you know you're doing legato exercises to maintain strength in your, in your fingers and that sort of thing. You can't just do those once a week. Those things need to be done every day, where maybe the study of the cage system, level one, is something that could be done two or three times a week. Okay, this is, I mean, there. There's no perfect plan to this. You just have to think about this what stuff does your engine need to run optimally every single day? And then, what other things do you have going on in your life that could be done two or three times a week, or four times a week, or whatever you see as value, right?

Steve:

So the third level is what I like to always refer to as the creative level, and this is where you start putting things into play in a creative way, like you're strumming when you play a song, right? So in this creative space you might be looking at new songs to learn how to play, not just from a fundamental perspective, but a creative level, Like maybe you're improvising to the song or maybe you're making up your own strum or whatever it might be, and obviously improvisation is a big part of this creative level, songwriting, all of these kinds of things. So for some players, the creative level, the third level, is not the be-all, end-all. It's actually less important than the first two. Maybe you play in a cover band where what you do primarily and this isn't good or bad or plus or minus, it's just being honest Maybe you play in a cover band where 90% of what you do is play songs and those songs have elements that we're learning, that are already pre-constructed, and sure, you might do a little bit of your own thing with the way you strum or a solo here and there or something like that, but primarily your job is to learn these songs as accurately as possible.

Steve:

So your band sounds good, right? So it's again, it's not that you'll never do creative stuff or you're not good because you don't do creative. That is not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is what's your role? What is it that you're doing? That's what you need to be thinking about.

Steve:

So the creative level is something that for some players, is a very, very, very important element of their playing, and for some players, it just isn't when the visualization of the fretboard in some capacity has to be. Maybe it's bar chords on your fretboard you know what I mean Learning to play those all over the guitar, or maybe it's visualizing a particular song. I mean, there's all kinds of different reasons why we would do that. Level two that's where the real work is, and this is what every guitar player has to deal with is you know what do I struggle with? And you want to become more aware of that with your practice. When you think about it, you know, not just somebody else telling you what you're struggling with, but you need to become hyper aware. Look, I try to play this thing and obviously this is very hard for me. The question is why, and once I get the why, then that becomes an element that I have to decide. Well, maybe that needs to become part of my practice routine to develop this thing so I can play this other thing right, If you want to play in a band and you're playing a particular song and you're struggling with a particular part of that song, you're either going to have to find a way to band-aid around it or you're going to have to learn it, and either way you're going to have to practice this thing.

Steve:

So it's that stuff that feeds your daily, slash, weekly practice routine. So you want to become aware. Sure, ask for help. For sure, you know I need structure, I need some accountability, I need to figure out what my plan needs to be here with a practice routine. But you also need to become aware of yourself and what is needed to be able to set up this three-tier practice mechanism for yourself. When you come across something that you see as valuable and you struggle with the execution of it, that should become part of either a daily or, in some capacity, a weekly practice element.

Steve:

This doesn't mean every single thing that you ever come across. You have to be smart about it. What do I need short term? What are the things I need to develop to be able to become the player I want to become, and what is either a short term or absolutely crucial? That's the second part absolutely crucial to the development of my playing, and if it's absolutely crucial, you've deemed it as that important, then of course that needs to become part of your practice routine. You can't just say every single thing you ever, you know, try and play and you can't do. It has to become part of your practice routine. You'd be practicing for 10 hours a day on a lot of stuff that you may or may not need. You have to become aware of priority. What are the things that I need short-term, what are the things that I've deemed important, very important long-term? And these are the things that feed your practice. You see,

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