Guitar Practice Schedule

Your guitar practice schedule should be fun, flexible and
  focused.

  I have set out a typical guitar practice schedule layout below
  split into three main areas: (1) technique (2) repertoire (3)
  listening.

  (1) technique - in this section it's important to select whatever
  is relevant to you guitar playing goals. When you are considering
  what to work on in this area of your playing ask yourself the
  follow questions.

  Do you want to (a) learn a new blues lick? (b) a new scale (c)
  strengthen your fourth (d) improve your sight reading etc.

  Let's say you decide to learn a new scale, the important thing to
  do next is ask yourself. "Why do I want to learn this scale?"

  Keep working on a laser beam focus with your weekly guitar
  practice schedule, refine your scale question by digging deeper,
  do you need to know this scale (a) Help you improvise better? (b)
  Are you certain this is the best scale to learn? (c) Who advised
  you to study this scale? etc

  By asking these questions before you invest hours of practice
  time, you will save countless hours of wasted practice time and
  frustration.

  If you can't answer these questions above which scales to
  practice satisfactorily, I would strongly recommend not
  practicing scale, move on to something else you can zero in on
  and answer the most important question "why"!


  Use the "why?" question on all sections of technique, you will be
  amazed at the results.

  How do we use these weekly guitar practice schedules? Simply
  select one technical subject for each day. You will achieve the
  best results if you plan the week in advance.

  Let's say you want to work on three areas of guitar technique
  this coming week:

  1. Sight reading

  2. Scales

  3. Improvisation

  Your weekly guitar practice schedule would look something like
  this:

  Monday - Sight reading

  Tuesday - Scales

  Wednesday - Improvisation

  Thursday - Sight reading

  Friday - Scales

  Saturday - Improvisation


  The weekly guitar practice schedule is based on a six day week
  with one day off, you may still want to play on the seventh day,
  however take a break from the structured routine.

  Important: remember, if you had planned your technical practice
  you would know ... "what" sight reading specifically you were
  going to work on - 5th position sight reading studies in the key
  of G major...

  and "why" you needed to practice these studies - because you
  where having difficulty with your stage band reading at school.

  Similarly you would not just be practicing any old scale, instead
  you would know that you needed to work on the "A" Harmonic minor
  scale...

  and "why" you needed to learn this scale was to help you play a
  solo by Carlos Santana in the key of "A".



  Weekly Practice Schedule


  Technique practice:

   Subject                  Time Frame        M   T   W  Th  F  S


  Sight Reading          ____ minutes


  Break                    ____ minutes


  Ear Training           ____ minutes


  Break                    ____ minutes


  Scales                  ____ minutes


  Break                   ____ minutes


  Arpeggios              ____ minutes


  Break                   ____ minutes


  Chords                 ____ minutes


  Break                   ____ minutes


  Harmony & Theory  ____ minutes


  Break                    ____ minutes


  Improvisation         ____ minutes


  Break                    ____ minutes


  Interval Skips         ____ minutes


  Break                    ____ minutes


  Right Hand Picking   ____ minutes
  Techniques


  Break                   ____ minutes



   Note 1: During the "break" put the guitar down. Stand up,
   stretch, go outside. etc


   Note 2: Use a clock to time your time frames exactly.


  Next section of your weekly guitar practice schedule would
  include your repertoire practice.

  In this section you would select the song(s) you wanted to work
  on. Again asking yourself "why" do I need to know this song.


*****************************************************

  Repertoire practice:


  Subject                    Time Frame        M   T   W  Th  F  S


  Song 1                    ____ minutes


  Break                      ____ minutes


  Song 2                    ____ minutes


  Break                      ____ minutes


  Song 3                    ____ minutes


  Break                      ____ minutes


  Song 4                    ____ minutes


  Break                      ____ minutes



*****************************************************
  Listening practice:


  You might ask, why do we need to "practice" listening to music,
  after all we hear music all the time.

  That's exactly why we need to practice "listening" to music on
  differently level. Because we hear music almost everyday, there
  is a tendency to not pay attention to the sounds.

  It's a bit like fish being surrounded by water would discover the
  water last. Similarly because we are surrounded by music we do
  not generally take the time to allow the individual sound to make
  a focused impression on our memory.


  If your interest is rock music, select a recognized top rock
  album and take particular note of:

  (a) the form of the song

  (b) the key / mode etc.

  (c) the instrumentation

  (d) the members of the band on the recording, who played bass?,
  who was the guitar player? does he/she appear on other important
  rock albums?

  In this listening section of your weekly practice schedule you
  are building a reference library, you are setting standards for
  your own playing.

  It's amazing how many guitar players will spend hours working on
  the technical aspect of guitar playing and totally ignore the
  listening part of their musical development.

  A well balanced weekly guitar practice schedule includes all
  three areas, technical, repertoire and listening.