From Noodling To Noticing: Long-Term Plays And Short Wins For Guitarists

Ever feel like your practice sessions are busy but not better? We dig into a simple, reliable way to turn scattered effort into musical progress by pairing long-term plays with short-term wins—and then slicing through both to make actual songs and solos. No fluff, just a clear path to move from shapes and theory to sound and feel.

We start by reframing what practice is for: long plays like clean picking, fretboard navigation, and music theory build deep capability, but they only pay off when you connect them to short wins such as a tight strum, a memorized riff, or a two-position solo that lands on chord tones. From there, we explore how expression lives beyond scales—timing, dynamics, vibrato, bends, and space—so your lines tell a story instead of tracing a diagram. You’ll hear practical ways to choose what to study now, how to avoid the “forever student” trap, and when to leave topics like the circle of fifths on the bench while you strengthen core skills.

We also share a layered practice structure you can run in under an hour: technical control with a metronome, visual mapping of chords and scales, bite-size theory or ear training on breaks, and focused musical play over a song or backing track. Short on time? Use constraints—two notes, one motif, or triads on top strings—to force phrasing and creativity. Whether your target is strumming songs, jamming with friends, or improvising blues and rock, this approach keeps you advancing today while building the foundation for tomorrow.

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who’s stuck in a rut, and leave a quick review telling us your one long play and two short wins for the week.

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 Long-Term Vs Short-Term Practice
• 2:38 Common Ruts And Reframing Goals
• 4:45 Theory, Fretboard, And Real-World Playing
• 6:47 From Scales To Musical Expression
• 8:43 Choosing What To Study Now
• 10:55 Layered Practice And Daily Routines

Transcript

Steve: 1:11

Hey, this is Steve Stine from Guitar Zoom Academy here. And today I want to talk to you about two different kinds of practice strategies: a long-term play and a short-term focus. And then we're actually going to talk about some real world things at the end of this as well. But let's just start off by talking about the importance of understanding the difference between long-term plays and short-term focuses. So, what happens a lot of times is people lose sight when they're practicing of what they're actually doing, and they just start kind of randomly practicing things, kind of noodling around, and it doesn't feel like they're making any progress. Here's the other problem is sometimes people will start focusing on certain things, which is great, like learning all the notes in your fretboard or connecting the scale positions across the guitar, whatever it might be, these long-term plays, so to speak. But what happens is they get stuck in these ruts where all they're thinking about is that current practice. And what you need to do is you need to span out and start thinking about different approaches to get the most out of your practice time. For instance, develop some long-term practice plays. I'm going to, you know, learn how to pick faster or pick cleaner or, you know, whatever that thing might be. And we know that those things are going to take time. It's not something that just every week you're necessarily going to see progress on. You know, you're working with your metronome, you're trying different tactics to get uh faster and cleaner, all those kind of things. And yeah, you might see some small progress, but it's going to take time to get to where you want to uh, you know, where you want to get to with your playing. The next thing might be developing your fretboard so you can see navigation on the fretboard. Maybe you're seeing, you know, scale shapes connecting together, you're seeing the cage system connecting together. Uh, maybe you're learning where your triads are and you're learning the names of your notes, that sort of thing. Again, great long-term play to be able to do. But you'll notice there's multiple plays within that idea that I just said. It's not just one thing, there's lots of things going on there. Another long-term play might be I want to learn about music theory. I want to learn, you know, how music theory works and what scales are and scale chord relationships and all that kind of stuff. What notes are in my chords, whatever that stuff is. Okay. So many of these things that we're talking about, though, have smaller focuses within them that we can try and work on. So many people that I talk to about the academy and seeing whether or not the Guitar Zoom Academy is a fit for them, what happens is they get stuck in these sort of streams of practice or these ruts, if you will, and they forget that there's multiple things that they should be working on at the same time. Um, and the reason for this is because between your long-term and your short-term stuff, what I want you to think about is the fact that what you're really trying to do is kind of take a slice out of all of these things and learn how to play in the real world. Maybe it's playing songs. Maybe you're you're more of a beginner and you're trying to learn how to play songs. You need to memorize songs better, or your strumming needs work, or your bar chords need work, something like that. These are all various plays. But the bigger picture is you want to learn how to play music. You want to learn how to play songs to make you feel better, have some fun, you know, connect to your younger self, you know, that used to love all these different songs, whatever it might be. Or maybe you want to eventually jam with some friends or play in front of your family or whatever it might be. See, that's the that's the pillar, that's the slice between all of these long and short-term plays, if that makes sense. That's where we're trying to go. We don't necessarily want to wait until all of these things are fully developed out before we start actually making the music because it takes too long. You're gonna get bored and it seems like you're never getting anywhere, you don't really feel real progress. We've got to learn how to balance these long-term plays with these short-term focuses to actually get you experiencing real music, playing stuff. Now, let's say you've been playing for a while, and what your goals are are more, I want to learn how to improvise. You know, I want to play blues or rock or whatever it is that I'm interested in, or play over major and minor situations, but I want to be able to improvise in a creative and musical way. I want to be able to express myself musically. Well, that's a whole nother conversation to have. The music doesn't necessarily exist within the scale or the theory or the visualization. The music exists in your ability of being able to squeeze music out of these various things that you're studying, right? Just because you're learning scales doesn't mean you're making music. It means you're learning scales. And you're learning how to play them up and down or back and forth or whatever it is you're doing. But the scale itself and the study of that scale inherently isn't where the music is. You've got to get some sort of control over this visualization, this memorization, this execution to get to a place where you can start manipulating it in a musical context. So you can see where that becomes a problem if you're waiting until you learn all your notes on your fretboard and you're waiting till you learn all the scale positions in various keys and all these things before you actually start getting to making the music. That's the problem. Yeah, we want to develop these long-term plays for sure. Okay, but we need short-term wins as well. And we also need to figure out how we can slice through all of these various things that you're working on to get to a practice where you're actually developing musicality, creativity. For me, that's the difference between the guitar player and the musician, right? The guitar player, the guitar player brain, I always call it, is the one that's we're we're studying this and we're learning this and we're practicing this, and we need to do those things. Don't get me wrong, that's important. But if all we do is those things, we're not focusing on the musicianship, the dynamics, the phrasing, the musicality of things that we can do to execute. You know, we're learning how to connect scales and chords together. And then we need to be able to do this in an expressive and creative and musical way, you see. So it's very important that you use your time wisely and you're practicing the right things. Oftentimes, when I'm having conversations with students, we recognize that there are certain things that they're working on that while they might be good, you know, tools inherently are there's nothing wrong with with study tools, scales, and all these different things. The question comes, becomes when is the right time to do this? Right? Circle of fifths. I'm not saying circle of fifths is good or bad. What I'm saying is, does it pertain to you? Is it something that could benefit you? And if so, is it something we should be looking at now, or is it something that we should hold off until we develop these other things? And we have to make real choices between between all of these different things because otherwise you get lost. Like there's just a billion things on the guitar you could be studying. And again, if you're happy and what you're doing is working for you, God bless you, I think that's great. But if it's not, and you feel like you're lost because of all of this stuff, and you just never seem to get to where you want to go, that's when you know you need some help, you need some assistance, be it a friend or you know, a guitar lesson from wherever, or if you're interested, you can always check out the Guitar Zoom Academy, see if that's something that fits you. Okay, we can have a conversation and just you know, explain how it works, all that stuff, and and see if it's something that fits both you and us. Um, but the most important thing today is I really want you to be just thinking about what am I doing, why am I doing it, and how am I doing it. Developing a couple of long-term plays that you're gonna work on, and then developing some short-term things, you know, things that you can feel that success, this particular song or this riff or whatever it might be. Okay, everybody's different, but understanding the difference between the two. And then also developing layers of practice like technical practice, visual practice, conceptual practice, uh, theoretical practice, musical practice, all of these different kinds of things that you should be uh, you know, tapping into, maybe at different times of the day. Maybe you don't have three hours to sit down and practice, you know, like most of us. Maybe you've got a half an hour a day or an hour a day at most. Well, but maybe you could do 15 or 20 minutes in the morning and then 15 or 20 minutes at work or at school or something when you have a break, and then 20 or 30 minutes at in the evening or something like that. And you could focus on different things at different times. Hey, I'm at work or I'm at school, I don't have my guitar. That's fine. There's other things we could be focusing on that we could be memorizing, we could be comprehending, right? Theory, fretboard, study, oral things, ear training. There's there's different kinds of things we could do when the guitar's not around. And then when we get home, that's when we're gonna do that physical practice. So, you know, you can we can help you, but you can organize to a place where you're actually using your time wisely throughout the day. So you're not always feeling overwhelmed. So, anyway, these are things I want you to think about a little bit because it's very, very important to organize yourself. What are you trying to do and what is necessary to get you from point A to point B and then from point B to point C? If you're just overwhelming yourself with a ton of different stuff, that's half the problem. Okay. Understanding what are my long-term plays, what are my short-term focuses, right? And what is it that I need to do to get to a place where I can actually start creating some things that sound and feel musical, not just concepts. All right. So, anyway, hopefully that helps you a little bit. Take care, stay positive. Uh, if you're interested in checking out the academy, you can always click on the link and learn more and get on a call with myself or one of my other instructors, and we can talk about it. All right. So, talk to you soon.