Practice routines for guitar

fobster

Thought I'd chuck this up to see if I can learn something from the more experienced members around here. I know there's loads of other sites with this kind of stuff but sure every little helps as they say.

What kind of warm-ups/stretches do you all use? What are good methods of increasing hand span across the fretboard? I've been playing E, A and D major scales up around the nut it's pretty good. Should I be playing these to a metronome, it seems like a wise idea or will foot tapping suffice?

I'm thinking that speed will come with time and that for now I should just be trying to play as accurately as possible no matter how slow that may be, that sound right?

And finally any tips on changing chords or is it just practice, practice, practice?

Cheers

Voodu Child

Breaking away from box patterns is a good way of improving your stretches without 'specific' stretching excercises.

If you're not doing it already, try re-fingering your major and minor scales so that you're playing 3 notes per string instead of staying in one 'position'. As well as being great for fluid legato licks, you'll need to span 5 frets instead of the usual (box pattern) 4 for certain intervals.

Then, have a look at the harmonic minor scale. It's harder to keep this scale in a strict 3-note-per-string pattern (you'll end up going back and forward), so you'll probably come up with note pathways that have 4 notes on one string, spread very widely. Yngwie does a lot of this, and it's great for practicing wide-spans.

-=al=-

sharpen that 7th 8) minro scales are fun, using natural to harmonic to melodic and switchen em around thats a great excercise, i havnt practiced in years

google steve vai 10 hour guitar workout and have a look, i wrote up a big schedule and guitar sutff before i done it once or twice thats kinda handy

fobster

voodoo_child wrote: »

If you're not doing it already, try re-fingering your major and minor scales so that you're playing 3 notes per string instead of staying in one 'position'. As well as being great for fluid legato licks, you'll need to span 5 frets instead of the usual (box pattern) 4 for certain intervals.

As in say for the E major scale going

D -1-2-
A -0-2-4
E -0-2-4

And just googled Steve Vai's 10 hour workout, now he has a 30 hour workout.

Voodu Child

fobster wrote: »

As in say for the E major scale going

D -0-2-4
A -0-2-4
E -0-2-4

And just googled Steve Vai's 10 hour workout, now he has a 30 hour workout.

Well, im think more along the lines of

E 7 8 10
B 6 8 10
G 5 7 9
D 5 7 9
A 5 7 8
E 5 7 8

You can see you're getting a nice stretch on the D, G and B strings, and that's without doing any 'stretching excersises', just as part of normal scale practice.

Then when you move to scales such as the harmonic minor, you'll often find scale shapes that have something like
5 6 8 9
or even
5 6 9 10
on the same string. Again, if you play those shapes using 1 finger per fret (ie without sliding), it's going to give your stretching a real good workout.

stevejazzx

Quote:
Originally Posted by

fobster wrote:

As in say for the E major scale going

D -0-2-4
A -0-2-4
E -0-2-4

And just googled Steve Vai's 10 hour workout, now he has a 30 hour workout.[/I]

vc wrote:

Well, im think more along the lines of

Quote:
E 7 8 10
B 6 8 10
G 5 7 9
D 5 7 9
A 5 7 8
E 5 7 8
You can see you're getting a nice stretch on the D, G and B strings, and that's without doing any 'stretching excersises', just as part of normal scale practice.

Just so it's clear niether of those are E major guys.
The first

d-0-2-4
a-0-2-4
e-0-2-4

are notes from scale of A major

the second one across the six strings is Aminor (from the 5th fret 2cd/3rd position)

Steve

Voodu Child

stevejazzx wrote: »

neither of those are E major guys!

I never said my scale was E major, or any scale. It's just a fingering pattern without getting bogged down in specific keys.

It's simply an example of how to finger a major/minor scale in a way (3 note per string) that excercises stretching a little more than sticking to a box pattern.

It's just the first step in breaking out of fixed positions that guitarists often find themselves in after first learning the pentatonics.

stevejazzx

voodoo_child wrote: »

I never said my scale was E major, or any scale. It's just a fingering pattern without getting bogged down in specific keys.

The one you posted though is Aminor, I think that's good to know for anyone reading becasue then you automatically supply with the info that moving it up one semitone and it becomes Bbminor scale and then Bminor and so on and so on...
and it was in response to the guy who had mentioned fingering an emajor scale, so I had an idea you knew it wasn't Emajor but it might have looked a bit confusing to the other guy...

VC wrote:

It's just the first step in breaking out of fixed positions that guitarists often find themselves in after first learning the pentatonics.

I agree.. it's an extremely useful excercise to musicians used to playing in boxes...

slipss

I always play the lead intro of Sweet Child O Mine to warm up. I'm not playing that long so it took a long while to get up to Slashes speed on it but even playing it dead slow was great practice. The way you have to keep jumping over the B string from the G to the e and back with the pick did a world of good for my picking accuracy and speed, and fret-pick co-ordination. Also the way its a broken repetitive pattern (if that makes sense) worked a treat on my sense of rythm and timing. Plus its so much more fun than just running through scales and really rewarding when you can (eventually) nail it without any mistakes at proper speed. It's worth a shot.

Malice

At the moment for warm ups I like to rip through Arch Enemy's Dead Bury Their Dead and Heart of Darkness. Other songs like Fear Factory's Self-Bias Resistor and Pisschrist are also very useful for loosening up your right wrist. I usually play them after I have run through some arpeggios or scales or whatever. This is an excellent lesson for arpeggios. It's for seven string guitars but I'm the ideas can be translated easily.

Jay P

My friend told me about these exercises he gives to the people he teaches to build up speed and to work on alternate picking. You play 0-1-2-3-4 on eachstring, each fret coresponding to your finger, and play each note in alternate directions, ie for the top string 0(down)-1(up)-2(down) etc.

fobster

Jay P wrote: »

My friend told me about these exercises he gives to the people he teaches to build up speed and to work on alternate picking. You play 0-1-2-3-4 on eachstring, each fret coresponding to your finger, and play each note in alternate directions, ie for the top string 0(down)-1(up)-2(down) etc.

Yeah I know that one tis useful especially descending imo, I have an exercise, don't know if I saw it somewhere or what, its for the 2 weak fingers. All it is the following:

e

---

8-9
B

---

7-8----9-10
G

---

6-7

---

10-11
D

---

5-6

---

11-12
A

---

4-5

---

12-13
E-3-4

---

13-14

Then it's the same going back along with the pinky finger note played first.

While I'm here does anyone have anything they could add to the following little bit I got going, sounds like the fields of gold melody, but can't find where it goes from there, edit: I've found it goes, it's A major descending more or less. Had it up the 8th note before I added the finishing 6 notes.

B--10-9-7\-5-10-9-7\-5-5-3-2-3-0-
G

---

2

I slide my index from the 7th to the 5th but still pick the 5th fret and add a bit of emphasis to it, the 5th fret notes directly after the 7th that is.


One more question I am thinking is it better to focus on single-note playing and get your fingers super flexible before doing chords? Good/Bad idea? I like single-note playing more than chords anyways and plus I tried doing barre chords and think a bit of extra flexibility in the pinky, to arch over the G-string, would help.

Killaqueen!!!

I have quite large hands and long fingers (for a girl!) and I can stretch quite a few frets when I'm playing scales or licks or whatever, but what gets me is chords. For quick strumming it's not too bad, but I'm a bit of a perfectionist and I want to get all the strings ringing clearly. I'm practicing 6th chords and I suck at them! Any tips? I suppose there's no exercises to improve this except practicing the chords over and over..

Malice

Killaqueen!!! wrote: »

I have quite large hands and long fingers (for a girl!) and I can stretch quite a few frets when I'm playing scales or licks or whatever, but what gets me is chords. For quick strumming it's not too bad, but I'm a bit of a perfectionist and I want to get all the strings ringing clearly. I'm practicing 6th chords and I suck at them! Any tips? I suppose there's no exercises to improve this except practicing the chords over and over..

Are you saying you're having trouble holding the chords or are you muffling some of the strings by accident? If you're having trouble holding the chords then as you said, I find just practicing holding and switching between them will build up hand and finger strength. You may want to take a look at one of those hand grip exercise things such as these. If you're muffling the strings then try moving your wrist and hand around in the chord position until everything is ringing clearly and then work on training yourself to hit that position every time. Easier said than done .

Beanstalk

If you're warming up using scales it's always a good idea to run up and down the scales in triples or quadruples, really helps build up speed and fast alternating fingering.....

Killaqueen!!!

malice_ wrote: »

Are you saying you're having trouble holding the chords or are you muffling some of the strings by accident? If you're having trouble holding the chords then as you said, I find just practicing holding and switching between them will build up hand and finger strength. You may want to take a look at one of those hand grip exercise things such as these. If you're muffling the strings then try moving your wrist and hand around in the chord position until everything is ringing clearly and then work on training yourself to hit that position every time. Easier said than done .

Hey thanks. Dunno why I wrote 6th chords there. I meant ones like Esus4 with the root on A string. The stretch isn't far but I can never hold it, I always get fret buzz after a few seconds.