Why Most Practice Doesn’t Work (And How to Fix It)

Noodling feels like practice until you realize you’re getting the same results month after month. We sit down and get blunt about what actually creates progress on guitar: a plan that matches your real schedule, plus the discipline to practice with intention and focus.

We walk through how we think about a guitar practice routine when time is limited. The big shift is moving from “I should practice scales” to specific targets you can measure, like learning one scale position clearly, improving left and right hand synchronization, or fixing a weak finger with the right strength and stamina drills. We also talk about the difference between maintenance, elevation, and regression, and why doing the same comfortable stuff can keep you stuck even when you’re playing every day.

Then we use guitar soloing and improvisation as the example framework. We start with fretboard visualization so you can actually see the scale shapes, roots, and connections, including ideas many players learn through the CAGED system. From there we build skill and navigation so your fingers can move smoothly instead of getting “boxy” and lost. Finally we make it musical: picking backing tracks in the right key and tempo, using scat singing to invent rhythms, turning grooves into phrasing, controlling dynamics and space, and adding vocal tools like bends, vibrato, slides, hammer-ons, and pull-offs so the notes sound valid to a listener.

If you want a clearer roadmap for guitar practice, better phrasing, and more confident solos, listen now, then share it with a friend who’s stuck and leave a review. What part of your practice feels most scattered right now?

Thanks for being here!! I will continue to do my best to bring you the best, most informative guitar discussions to help you along your guitar journey!

The more you share this podcast with others, the more I can continue to grow this channel and offer the best information and advice I can to you.
Thank you!
Steve

Links:

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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... . 

Transcript

Welcome And Why Plans Matter

Steve 0:35

Hey Steve here. Thank you so much for joining me. Today we're going to be talking about organizing your practice so you can actually make some progress. And then I'm going to be using soloing as an example of a way to build a plan of attack. So the first thing I want to talk about, and this is for anybody, anybody who's learning how to play guitar, there's two things I always tell people that's very, very important once you've decided that you actually want to make progress. Okay, if you want to make progress, you actually have to spend time playing the guitar. That's number one. Okay. You have to spend time playing the guitar. If you're going to practice 20 minutes a day or 30 minutes a day or 60 minutes a day or whatever it might be, you have to make it worthwhile. You can't just noodle and do the same old things over and over and over because you're going to get the same outcome every single time. So the needs that you have, the interests that you have, the wants that you have, have got to equal the amount of time that you are going to be spending. You can't commit 20 minutes of practice and try and do 38 things. You're not going to get there. Okay? You have to be realistic about the amount of time that you've got to practice and what it is that you need to do. This is why sometimes when people go to build a practice routine, it's actually easier for them to build a weekly practice routine than a daily practice routine because they can't get to everything in one day. So you dedicate overarching ideas to each day. Maybe, you know, like I always tell people, a very general way to approach this is every single day, again, provided you have time, every single day you should practice some element of technique, of skill development. Whether it's um strength, speed, stamina stuff that I always teach, you know, 20-second legato exercise, three-minute drill, down picking drill, alternate picking drill, those sorts of things. I mean, there's a million things that you could do, but don't just do exercises for the sake of exercises. Do them because you know this particular thing is beneficial because you struggle with the strength in your third finger. So you need an exercise that develops your third finger. You have a problem with synchronization between your left hand and your right hand. So you need some exercises to continue developing that. Remind yourself that there's always three options. There's maintenance, there's elevation, and there's regression. If you do the same thing every day, you can maintain. You're not going to elevate. You've got to do more, or you've got to do more of the right things to elevate. Regression, of course, is what we want to avoid, which is getting worse. Okay. So the whole thing is understanding what is it that you need to get you from where you are to where you want to go. Be reasonable about the amount of time that you've got and what it is that you're trying to work on. It's very important to actually make a plan. If you're just noodling and whatever, it's really hard to get anywhere. The guitar is kind of complicating in terms of all of the options that you have of things to actually work on. So, with that out of the way, the first thing I want to tell you is intention, practicing with intention. This is something I tell all my students, everybody at the academy. Okay, when you sit down to practice, know what you're gonna practice and why. Because you know it's something that you need, you need to develop to get to where you want to go. Not because your neighbor said so or you read it in a book, but it's something that you need, okay? Because it's something that you find valuable that fits who you are, where you are, your practice time, all those kinds of things, right? If I talk to a player that comes to me and says, hey, I want to learn how to play blues, I love old school blues, I love, you know, BB King and I love uh Buddy Guy and whatever, I don't set them up with a shred schedule because they need to learn how to shred. That wouldn't make any sense. I don't set them up with a bunch of jazz exercises and high-level jazz theory. That's not what they're looking for. That's not gonna get them to their goals. It's not that it's good or bad. What matters is does it fit you? So practicing with intention says, I'm, you know, today I'm gonna grab the guitar and I'm gonna work on this particular exercise, or I'm gonna work on this particular skill. I've got to work on my ear training, or I'm gonna work on my scales, but not just I'm gonna work on my scales, I'm gonna work on the third position. Or I'm gonna work on my alternate picking through the third position, or I'm gonna work through, I'm gonna work on visualizing how the third position connects to the second position. And then I'm gonna practice moving from the third to the second position. I mean, there's there's a million ways to do this. But if you just generically say, oh, I just want to, I need to practice so I can get better, that almost never works because there's so many things you could be practicing. You've got a lean, you've got to create a lean diet in your practice of the things that you need to get you from where you are to where you want to go. The more you fatten that up with just a ton of different stuff to practice, the harder it is to actually make progress. Okay? So practicing with intention. The next thing that I tell people is to practice, do focused practicing. What focused practicing is your brain isn't somewhere else. Okay, you're not staring at your phone or watching a movie or something like that. If you really want to memorize something, I'm always amazed when people will say to me, Well, you know, I don't know where the notes are in the guitar. And I'll tell them, okay, that's fine. No problem. This is how we could start learning how to do this. So by next week, I want you to be able to do this. Nothing unreasonable, but I want you to know how to do this. Or I can't see my scales very well. Okay, so this is what I want you to practice. For next week, I want you to work on this. And then we'll see where we are and we'll decide what we're gonna do, you know, as we keep moving forward. But kinda sorta doesn't cut it. Kinda sorta means kinda sorta not. Okay. If you sort of know something, you you sort of don't know something. And that's where failure comes in, right? And then that's what makes you feel like you can't do it and you suck and blah, blah, blah. When in reality, the goal is that you've got to focus. If you're gonna grab a piece of paper and you're gonna memorize that scale position or two scale positions, or that cage system, or those notes, or whatever it is, don't be distracted and really burn that idea into your brain. You see, what people forget often when it comes to guitar is that until you develop a sense of automation with things, you're reliant on what your brain is thinking. Your fingers aren't going to figure it out on their own. Now, once you develop automation, it's it's so far back in your brain that you're not really thinking about it. It's like walking and talking at the same time. You're not thinking about walking, you're not thinking about talking, but you're doing both of them. Now, somewhere in your brain you're thinking about it, but it isn't on the front side of your thought process. Guitar playing is the same way. But if it's not, if you don't know it that well, you're not ready to move on to the next thing and the next thing and 15 other things stacking on top of that. You have to be careful. So practicing with intention and focus practicing. Do not be distracted. If you've only got 15 minutes, hit it hard. Concentrate or focus that skill that you're working on for 15 minutes, whatever it might be, that theory thing. I mean, there's a lot of different things that you could do. The other thing I like to tell people is a kind of side note. When I think about practice time, 15 minutes a day, 30 minutes a day, 60 minutes a day, whatever that is, I always kind of equate that to the physical aspect of playing, exercises, scales, technique, all of those kinds of things. If you thought about it, unless you're the busiest person on the planet, which I can almost guarantee you are not, even though it feels that way, I get it. You can find time if you want it. So what happens is somewhere throughout the day, maybe you get a lunch break, maybe you get a 10-minute break here or 15-minute break there, or whatever it might be. But you're not home. You're not at home, you don't have your guitar, all that kind of stuff. So during those times throughout the day, you could be doing studying. You could study that fretboard position. You could study that concept, that cage concept, or where the notes are, or that theory thing. Maybe you're doing some studying of some theory idea, or you're applying it to your fretboard visually, whatever it might be. Those things do not require a guitar. And if you think about it, it's really a waste of time to wait until you get your guitar, put it in your hands, and then don't play because you're studying something. And even worse, put the guitar in your hands and you didn't study anything, so you still don't really know what it looks like, how it connects together. You don't have absolution. You have kind of sorta. And then you go to play. You see, you got to be smart about this stuff. So here's the next thing I want you to think about. If we were going to use soloing as an example, okay, here's how I would think about breaking down the concept of soloing. Okay? The first thing is visualization. If you can't see the scale you're trying to play in, or the scale positions that you're trying to play in, or whatever it might be, or every time you go to jam, you keep winding up in places that you're not really familiar with. Is that really benefiting you? Or would it be better to stop improv trying to improvise and go back and figure out why don't I know that? Why do I go there and get stuck when I should just stop and figure out why I'm getting stuck and fix that so I don't get stuck anymore? See, I don't care if you know all the positions across the fretboard. That's a great goal, totally. But you can start learning how to improvise. You can start creating real solos without waiting until you've got your entire fretboard locked down. You could be doing both of those at the same time. So when you're improvising, you're going to the places of comfort, what I like to call the places that are lit up. There, there's light there. You can see what you want. If you keep going to the dark places, you're going to keep getting lost. So throughout the day, you study to get rid of those dark places. So visualization, I can't tell you how important understanding as you look at something on the guitar, what is it? How does it work? All those kinds of things. That's really, really important. And it's not connected to your physical aspect, your skill set, okay, until we put our fingers on the guitar. Now we're dealing with skill development, your ability being able to move through that scale position or connect those two scale positions, right? You've been practicing, you've been studying at work or wherever where those notes are, where those roots are. Now your fingers are on the guitar, you're looking at that scale, you're looking at those roots because you've been studying them. Now you're physically learning how to get there. You're learning to pick and move those fingers, the first finger, the third finger, the pinky, whatever it is. And now you're examining yourself, thinking, okay, so my third finger is having a problem, or my picking is having a problem, or my pinky is having a problem, or whatever it might be. Okay? So that's when you start becoming aware of the physical limitations that you've got relative to the visual skills or limitations that you have. Does that make sense? So number one is visualization. Number two is general skill development to play within the structures that you can visualize on the fretboard. Step three is navigation. How well, how good are you at being able to move through these things that you see on the guitar? In and out, and up and down, and back and forth, or whatever they might be. Do your fingers flow? Does it sound smooth? Does it sound comfortable? Or does it sound kind of boxy and you get stuck and your pick gets stuck, or you don't know what fingers to use? So you have to learn how to create, it's almost like watching somebody um ice skate, you know, very smooth and elegant versus somebody like me who has no idea how to ice skate and I look like I'm, you know, gonna break my tailbone out there. Same thing. It's not enough just to play the scales up and down rudimentarily. You've got to learn how to move back and forth and side to side and all these different kinds of things. Every opportunity, every option, every variety of things that you could do within that position or those two positions or those three positions or whatever it is, you've got to get comfortable with it. So there's no darkness in there. Okay? Now, once you actually start wanting to learn how to do actual improvisation. So we've done setup, visualization, general maintenance, navigation, what can I see, and how well can I play what I see? Now the music starts. We start the backing track. Right now we're going to start this backing track. Number one, is it in the key that we need it in? Is it a good tempo for us to work in? Is it overwhelming? Is it in a key we're not comfortable with? Why are we setting ourselves up with for failure by using something that's way too fast in a key that we're not comfortable with and we're not visually ready to be able to see it in this particular key, but we do it all the time. So be smart about the backing tracks that you choose. Find something that's comfortable for you. Now, what I always tell people is your fingers aren't just going to start figuring out how to make the music. You've got to start figuring it out in your mind. So one thing you can practice doing is scat singing. Now you don't have to do it out loud, so you know, your spouse makes fun of you or something like that, but you start listening to the music. And you start thinking ba-dum bum ba-do-dum ba-da dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun bum bum. You're not going to think of those rhythms with your fingers. Your fingers don't just magically think of rhythms. Your brain has got to come up with this stuff. Now, this takes time. You know, you can study and you can listen to other musicians and all kinds of different things. If you, for whatever reason in my brain, Steven Tyler always comes to mind. Like if you listen to Steeler, Steven Tyler sing, he's doing all kinds of great scat singing. But he's got words, and sometimes he does. He's got words and and pitch, right? But his phrasing, the rhythms that he's singing are always very, very cool to me. And there's a billion other things I could I could reference, but you get the idea. So before you even start trying to play, can you think of things that you want your fingers to do inside this landscape that you've been practicing and visualizing? You see? So the next thing that we do, once we've got that scat singing, we start trying to actually utilize it. We go to the guitar with our pick in our fingers and we start trying to play grooves that we're thinking. Ba dump bump bump bump da da and da da da dun. The better we get with this, these grooves, and grooves for me, guys. I always think like if you've got a tempo that's going this fast, you as a guitar player are gonna be playing, yes, you have whole notes and quarter notes and eighth notes and blah blah blah and all these things. Yes, you do. And you're gonna use all that, okay? But if your tempo was here, you're primarily gonna be playing a lot of dot dot dot dot dot and a lot of dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot. Those two things, eighth notes and sixteenth notes. You're not just gonna go dun, dun, dun, dun. This isn't three blind mice, right? You obviously you're gonna slow down, you're gonna stop, like you're gonna have breaks, all that kind of stuff. But if this was your tempo, you're gonna be thinking dun dun dun dun bum ba dun ba dun bum, da da da da da da da da da dun dun dun dun dun da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da. There's lots of different things that you can do. You're not just going bum, bum, bum, bum. So quarter notes and eighth notes, excuse me, eighth notes and sixteenth notes are really important to being able to develop a groove. From that groove becomes phrasing. Phrasing are the sentences. How long are you playing? How short are you playing? Are you doing repetition? Like there's a million things you could do with this. It's not just moving around. Moving around is the first part we talked about, navigating, learning how to move around. When you actually start trying to learn how to solo, you have to start start, you have to start putting logic and a purpose to what you're doing. So the great thing about groove and phrasing is you start giving this thing life. It's like reading a book. Somebody's listening to you talk or listening to you sing. They're not just listening to you, you know, meander aimlessly around the guitar. You're actually starting to create something, which means you have to learn how to tap into what I like to call your musical brain, your creative brain, not just your guitar brain. How many scales do I know? And what is an eighth dote, and what's the cage system, and what's the circle of fifths? That's all great. It's all important. But that's not where music lies. Music is when you you you advance over the top of all that stuff. And you start thinking, what does the music want from me? How do I respond to this thing in a way that elevates this situation? It's not just noise, but it's something real. So groove, phrasing, the next one, dynamics. You start thinking, should I play a little? Should I play a lot? Should I play quiet? Should I play soft? Should I do the same note over and over? Like there's a lot of different things that you can do. High, low, fast, slow, loud, soft. Play, don't play. Stop playing. Please. Don't just play all the time. Put a break in. And then when you start playing again, it sounds more, you know, like you did a phrase. When you play a lot or you play higher on the guitar, it starts creating more energy. When you play lower or you play less, it pulls back a little bit of that energy. You need to learn how to play with that energy, not just play the guitar, not just play notes. Okay? Another thing that I love to teach is vocal tools. How do we convert these scales and notes and all these things into something that sounds like a voice? Well, we start adding vibrato and bending and hammer ons and pull-offs and slides. And again, not just, oh, I learned a slide. Okay, great. Are you using it musically creatively within your playing? How do your bends sound? Do they sound sultry and sexy or aggressive? Or do they sound like you're talking to a space alien because it's just completely weird not attuned? Like you have to think about these things. And if you're if your vibrato is lacking, it becomes a technical practice element. If you're not very good at slides, you study sliding, right? Moving back and forth between frets, that sort of thing, with your fingers. And then you you learn, and again, it's not just learning it, it's implementing it, it's absorbing it. It's having these things become you. And I know anybody that's listening to this podcast knows what I'm talking about. When you hear what we'll call a pro guitar player, I don't know what else to call it, somebody that you really like, the reason you really like them is because whatever it is they have to offer as a guitar player sounds real to you. You've convinced yourself that whatever they're doing sounds real. It sounds valid. You see? And that's that's what we're looking for. That's what music's supposed to do. So when you play, it can't be just a bunch of thoughts of scales and triads and this and this and this and circle of fifths. It's gotta be valid. It's gotta sound valid to you, but it's also gotta sound valid to a listener. You can't just sit and argue with a listener going, it doesn't sound valid to you, it doesn't sound musical because you don't know the circle of fifths. That's not what a that's not what music's about. You listen to it and you start vibing to it and you start feeling it because the people that you're listening to are vibing and feeling it. You know? So that's what I want you to think about a little bit today. How to advance your ability, organize yourself, and start thinking differently. Now, this doesn't just have to be about soloing, this could be chords and strings. strumming and all kinds of different things. You can use dynamics and all these different kinds of things in your playing that makes things sound more authentic. And that's what I want you to think about, okay?