Stop Playing Randomly and Start Practicing With Purpose

Creating an effective practice routine is essential for guitar progress. Daily and weekly practice structures help overcome the feeling of being lost and ensure you're working on the right things.

• Practice fundamentals daily, focusing on chords that match your ability level and finger size
• Work on each chord independently before practicing transitions between them
• Choose songs that align with the chords you're practicing to create reinforcing learning
• Break song learning into components: chord practice, rhythm work, and understanding structure
• Set up a weekly rotation of skills like new songs, scales, theory, and improvisation
• Balance your practice schedule with flexibility to follow genuine musical interest on any given day
• Distinguish between following inspiration versus avoiding practice out of laziness

If you're struggling with guitar or feel lost when practicing, try developing a structured routine that fits your goals. Inside the GuitarZoom Academy, we'll work with you to create a personalized practice plan and provide ongoing support through daily Zoom interactions.

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 The Importance of Practice Routines
• 2:05 Building an Effective Daily Routine
• 5:05 Learning Songs Strategically
• 8:17 Creating Your Weekly Practice Schedule
• 10:07 Guitar Zoom Academy Support

Transcript

Steve Stine: 0:35

Hey, Steve Stine here. Thank you so much for joining me. Today we're going to be talking about the absolute importance of creating an effective practice routine. Okay, if you're just playing things and again, don't get me wrong if you're loving what you're doing and nothing's wrong and you're enjoying what you're doing, I think that's wonderful okay. But if you're struggling at all with your guitar playing and you just kind what you're doing, I think that's wonderful Okay. But if you're struggling at all with your guitar playing and you're just kind of feel lost, like every time you pick up the guitar it's just kind of a random thing and you don't really know whether you're working on the right stuff Okay, this is where developing a proper practice routine really really comes in handy, and what I always try and do with people is get them to understand the benefit of creating both a daily and a weekly practice routine.

Steve Stine: 1:25

So I'd like to talk to you a little bit about that and see kind of how that works in my head and see if it's something that would benefit you as well. So a daily practice routine would consist of fundamental elements that you need to develop or maintain. Whichever one it is. Maybe it's both okay to work toward whatever it is that you're trying to do. So let's break that down a little bit. Let's say you're a beginner and you're trying to learn how to play a song. Now that song is going to consist of whatever chords, and even that is a conversation in itself. Are these the right chords for you to be working on? Are there too many chords? Right? Have you fully developed these? Each chord itself needs to be practiced right. Bouncing all this stuff? You probably know that I talk about all those kind of techniques that you can do to optimize your cords. So you work on practicing this cord and then you work on the next cord, and then you work on what I call lift and shift, which is bouncing between the cords. Like that's part of your daily practice routine. Is the development of these cords? Is the development of these chords? If you're a beginner, you shouldn't have 14 chords. You just shouldn't. Okay, the? The role of the guitar instructor is to see where you are, give you some information, find some resources of songs and things like that that match what it is you're trying to work on. Okay, make sure that the chords that you're actually learning are the best chords that you should be starting with relative to your ability of your fingers and the size of your fingers and the kind of music that you like. All of those things are assessments that are taken into consideration right away that define which chords we should be working on. Therefore, the songs that we're going to work on, along with these chords because if I can get you playing songs right away, you're probably going to have a lot of fun and you're probably going to practice more than just working on chords for a year and a half Okay, so that all needs to be worked out.

Steve Stine: 3:30

Once it's worked out now, your job is to spend time every day. I always tell people practice on the days that you eat. You spend time every day working on this cord and then this cord and this cord Develop them independently and then developing them collectively, and then we have a song that we want to learn how to play, and this song should represent and be in alignment with these chords. If we're working on these chords and we get a song that has nothing to do with these chords, everything's out of alignment and you're just creating more work for yourself. We need to find a song that aligns with what you're working on and once we find that song.

Steve Stine: 4:12

Now what we need to do is we also not only need to practice these chords, but we need to start learning to listen to the song, to start getting a feel of what is the song telling us. What is the tempo or the speed, what is the groove, what does the? And we'll get to the strumming in a second, but what does it feel like a strum would be for this? What are the sections? Like, oh, there's an intro where nobody's singing, and then there's a verse, and then it goes into a chorus and then there's a couple of verses and again, you might write this down, you might be able to kind of.

Steve Stine: 4:45

You know, I always call it driving. You can drive through the song if you know the song well enough in your head, even if you've never heard the song before. If you listen to it over and over and over, you start learning. That's how I learn, and so I drive through the song. So I'm listening to the song and I can see, oh, we're in a verse. Okay, here comes the chorus. Now there's that weird little break. Now it's going to go into a verse. Like, that's what I'm doing when I'm listening to the song, is I'm becoming aware of the song. Okay, I'm ingesting the concepts of the song. I don't know how all the chords go and everything like that, yet I just know these are the chords of the song, but I'm I'm acclimating myself to the song itself and I'm working on the chords. The other part is I'm going to start working on strumming, or what I call scratching to the song. So I'm not playing the chords along with the song, I'm just scratching to the song, trying to get used to what the rhythm is going to be. Okay, I call this organic strumming.

Steve Stine: 5:41

And again, inside the Guitar Zoom Academy, which we'll get to in a second, this is what you would learn how to do all of this kind of stuff. So not only are you learning the components or the tools needed to play the song, but you're learning how to learn songs. So you're learning how to think about structure, how to memorize, how to ingest, how to listen, how to analyze. In a very simple sense, that song that we choose is very important because if the song has a lot of sections and a lot of stuff, it's going to be a lot harder for you to play. Our job is to find the right song that aligns with where you are and what you're trying to do, even if it's G, c and D, but it's got a lot of chord changes and a lot of stuff, it's going to be harder for you to play. We need to find something that the structure is very simple.

Steve Stine: 6:30

Okay, so now you're really doing three different things independently You're working on the chords over here, you're working on the strumming and you're working on the song structure. Then we start implementing them together. We work on this the strumming, along with the song. We start trying to work on the chords without the strumming, we just start trying to bounce our fingers along with the song. Once we learn how the chord changes go, we start to put those in if our fingers don with the song. Once we learn how the chord changes go, we start trying to put those in If our fingers don't move fast enough. We need to go back and start working on this a little bit more. And again, the process really isn't that difficult, but it just takes time Once you learn how to put and there's more to it, but once you learn how to do that, now you've got a game plan of how to approach the songs that you want to play and if a song has some element that isn't in alignment. That's okay If it's three plus one, but this one is the part that's out of alignment. Well, that's the one part that we need to start working on now. That fuels our practice.

Steve Stine: 7:27

You see, that's how we set up a daily practice routine. Maybe yours is technique, maybe yours is scales, maybe it's a combination of all of these things, which is great. You might spend 15 minutes doing this and 20 minutes doing this. That's your core practice for each day. Then the next thing is setting up a weekly. Okay, so your weekly might look like I'm going to work on songs. Again, depending on your goals, depending on your interests, I'm going to work on songs on Mondays and Wednesdays and maybe Saturdays, and then I'm going to work on, you know, because this core is still going on every day, right? So I'm going to work on a new song on these days, or I'm going to work on scales on Mondays and Wednesdays and theory on Tuesday, and then I'm going to work on creatives like improvisation on Thursdays and Saturdays or something like that.

Steve Stine: 8:16

The beauty of that is is that you've got your core element, that you're doing every single day, that you don't want to lose, because that's really who you are. And then what you can do is you can swap out these other things depending on two things. Number one, what your interest is that day. And I always tell people there's a significant difference between interest and lazy. You're not choosing because you're lazy. You're choosing because that day you feel more technically ready to go and you're on fire, and even though the thing written on your wall says today is a theory day, you're feeling it and you want to do this. I always tell people do this, don't deny what you're feeling that day, don't deny how things are going. Just because something's written on a piece of paper, go with it.

Steve Stine: 9:00

If you find, for some reason, that you're never getting to that no, no, no, we need to schedule that then we can't deny that this needs to be developed for you to be able to achieve your goals. We got to implement that. So those are the two reasons. Number one is because you're feeling it Okay, or number two, because you need it. Those are the two reasons. So that's what's great about setting up a daily and a weekly practice routine.

Steve Stine: 9:23

Now, inside the academy, that's one of the things that we do is we sit down with you, figure out what your game plan is what your goals are, what your struggles are.

Steve Stine: 9:31

We talk about all that kind of stuff. We develop a daily, weekly practice routine for you so you know what you're supposed to be working on. But then what you do is you lean on us and we have conversations literally on a daily basis, like on Zoom, just talking to each other, getting assessments of your playing, giving you direction, giving you encouragement, motivation, filling in the gaps of things that don't make sense for you. We do that interactively on a daily basis, not, you know, once a week or something like that. We talk all the time to make sure that your ship is upright, you're doing the things that you need to be doing, you're getting assessments of your playing, you're feeling good. If there's any confusion that you've got, we fix that, okay. So, anyway, take care, stay positive, keep practicing, and you know if you're doing this on your own, I think that's wonderful. Give it a try, see how it goes for you, but really think about developing a daily and a weekly practice routine that best fits where you're trying to go. All right.