Tips On How To Practice Guitar?
As guitar students, during guitar lessons, our teacher will always tell us to practice practice practice. To make practice more interesting and fun, here are some ideas you can try at home:
1) LOOPER
Have you heard of a tool called guitar looper? Basically this looper pedal allows you to record guitar chord progressions and it will keep on repeating the chord progressions that you have recorded. Once you have done the recording, you can then practice your scales, or run your guitar licks and guitar riffs on top of that looped guitar progression.
This method of practicing helps you to be creative and you can create many different kinds of guitar solos on top of the same chord progression. This then trains your listening skill as you will realise certain notes in the scale will sit better with certain chords. Do check out our guitar lesson video on Guitar Solo Fundamentals for a better idea of creating nice solos.
Here are some looper pedals you can consider:
Generally most of the newer guitar multi effects pedals from Neural DSP, Line6, Boss, Mooer, Fractal etc will have in built looper functions. Some of these guitar pedals like Mooer GE200 will come with a drum machine as well. Not only can you loop your guitar chord progressions, you can loop your playing on top of a drum beat as well. By looping with a drum beat, it trains your tempo and timing.
2) BACKING JAM TRACKS
Here's another fun way of practicing your guitar. Go to youtube and search for a backing jam track. These tracks are pre recorded with full band instrument, and you can then practice your guitar solo on top of it. Some of theses channels will also show you what guitar chord progression they are using, and what scales you can use to solo over.
Here's a youtube channel which produces very good backing tracks:
Here's a site which you can purchase backing tracks as well:
Backing tracks can also be tracks of popular songs in which the guitar parts were removed. This allows you to play the guitar parts as if you were part of the band.
3) ACTUAL SONGS IN YOUTUBE
Instead of just practicing the guitar chords / strumming patterns etc on your own, why not go to youtube, key in the song you are working on and strum along with the actual song. Youtube also have this "secret" feature :P When you click on settings, you can actually slow the playback speed of the song to 75% / 50% / 25% or any custom speed. If ever you find the song is too fast for what you are capable of, you can then set the speed to 50% and strum along with the slowed down song. Being able to strum with the song (slowed down) actually encourages and motivates you to keep working on the song till you reach 100% speed. This applies for strumming, plucking, solos, melodies etc.
4) VIDEO YOUR PRACTICE
Another good way of evaluating if you are practicing correctly is to take a video of your practice. Sometimes it's only when you listen back to your playing that you will realise certain mistakes like irregular tempo, unclear notes & chords, lack of expression and feel etc. You can then also send this video to your guitar teacher to do a quick evaluation. Sometimes by recording yourself, there is a certain pressure to get it right. I consider this pressure good pressure, as it helps with training you be calm and composed.
Summary
We hope these 4 simple tips will help make your guitar practice sessions more interesting, fun and meaningful. Do drop in the comments if you have more tips and ideas on practicing! God Bless!
Guitar Emerge is a specialised guitar school which provides guitar lessons in Singapore. We solely focus on Electric Guitar Lessons, Acoustic Guitar Lessons and Ukulele lessons.
Our guitar classes are conducted in Jubilee Square #03-08 (5 mins from Ang Mo Kio MRT) and 147 Potong Pasir Ave 1 #02-89 (1 min from Potong Pasir MRT). Our 2 studios are nicely renovated, with high end guitars and equipment for students to use. Learning guitar in a conducive environment is important as it will accelerate your learning.
