In August of 2019 I published “Practicing with no time part 3”,
in it I laid out the most common complaint I heard from my
adult students (younger ones too), having no time to practice.
It seems everyone but me is overworked nowadays! In that post
I laid out my experience with thousands of students over the
years that showed you can make real progress in a year’s time
with only 10 to 20 minutes a day, as long as you practice 4 to 6
days a week! The rest of the post gave some ideas on how to find
that time as well as hints on setting up a practice space, but the
main idea was to start small and build a habit. A habit is a
wonderful self improvement tool; once your action becomes a
habit, 80% of the willpower you need is removed, you just do
it. I used the example of brushing your teeth, you probably
spend about 10 minutes a day in total doing this but it’s not a
huge struggle, because it’s a habit. In the same way I started
small, with 10 minutes a day. Over the next 8 posts I laid out
a sample year of practice, starting with 10 minutes a day and
gradually increasing to 20-30 minutes a day. But in the
beginning, I started with only 10 minutes a day, because the
most important thing was to build a habit.
Amazingly enough, immediately after starting this series of
posts I had a house built, followed by the Covid thing and
topped off by hurricane Ida, which was still a category 2+
storm when it blew through our area a couple of months
ago. To make a long story slightly longer, it took me almost
2 years to finish my 1 year course! Oh well… at this point, I
would like to sum up what I’ve covered over the last 4 quarters
and see how we did.
FIRST QUARTER (1 TO 3 MONTHS): I showed you type 1 and
type 2 bar chords, both major and minor forms. Just as important
I listed the root notes for these chord types, type 1 chords are
based on the 6th string note and type 2 chords are based on the
5th string note. Learning the root notes all the way to the 12th
fret for both strings enables you to play a total of 48 chords; (all
12 major and minor chords in 2 positions), and is the foundation
of everything I teach. All that follows is based off of these 2 roots.
The total amount of time allotted for this was 10 minutes a day;
5 minutes of chord practice and root notes and 5 minutes of just
playing. We’re not in a rush, just building a habit!
SECOND QUARTER (4 TO 6 MONTHS): I gave my 3 main
technique exercises. These tackle the 3 main physical challenges
most guitar players encounter; gaining speed, stretching
enough with the chording hand, and picking accuracy (picking
the correct strings). Since I only added 5 minutes to the daily
routine, from 10 to 15 minutes a day, I suggested you either
choose one exercise (your worst problem), or skip around all 3
for gradual improvement. A serious technique program, to gain
massive speed and range, would take an hour a day just by
itself. So an extra 5 minutes a day of technique practice will
not make you an expert, just a better guitar player! Along
with the 5 minutes of technique we still needed to keep
reviewing the type 1 and type 2 bar chords, and especially
the root notes. The better you know the root notes the better
everything else will work.
THIRD QUARTER (7 -9 MONTHS): I showed you the penta-
tonic scale, an easy framework scale that works over most
popular music. Position 1 which is named from the type 1
root (6th string), and position 4 which is named from the
type 2 root (5th string). This means if you can locate your
chords you can locate your scales! They share the same root
notes/frets. Both positions can be played either from the
major root (4th finger) or the minor root (1st finger),
because a scale can be both major and minor, it just depends
on the root. Finally although I listed the notes for type 1 and
type 2 only up to the 12th fret, you can start over at the 12th
fret and repeat the same notes again until you reach the 24th
fret (eg. fret1 F= fret13 F.. etc.). Although you wouldn’t want
to play chords above the 12th fret you can definitely play
scales up there and this means you can cover half the neck
with just these 2 positions. For example, G minor; play pos.1
on the 3rd fret, pos. 4 on the 10th fret and pos 1 again on the
15th fret. That’s 3 positions at 4 frets per position equals 12
frets covered, half of a 24 fret neck! This works for all keys,
so with these 2 positions and your knowledge of type 1 and 2
roots, you can play half the neck in all 12 major and minor
keys! That’s a good return on 20 minutes a day total (since I
added an extra 5 minutes to practice scales).
4TH QUARTER (10-12 MONTHS): We learned key shapes,
an easy way to learn the chords for any key without tons of
memorization. I also upped the practice time to 20-30 min.
a day (gasp), depending on your schedule. Keys are the
“families” of scales and chords that go together. There is a
different key for every note in the chromatic scale, and there
are 7 chords and a scale in a major key and 6 chords and a
scale in a blues key. So 12 roots X 7 major key chords and 6
blues key chords is a lot of chords! (156). It was a happy day
when I realized all the chords in a key lined up in a physical
pattern that I could move up and down the neck to any root
and find the chords for that key! This also explains how bands
who don’t know any theory can play in key, they play the
shape! Since you already know how to play major and minor
pentatonic scales, (minor works well for blues) and you can
find all 12 keys off your type 1 root, you are set!
To sum up; in 12 months of practicing 10 to 20+ minutes a
day you can…
-locate the chords for any key
-play all of those chords in 2 positions.
-play the scales for any of those keys over half the neck.
-be a faster, more accurate guitar player.
An excellent return on your investment of time and will-
power! So what can you do with this information? I will
target 3 areas:
FIGURE OUT SONGS-Although you can find the music
for a lot of songs on the web, not everything is available.
This is a skill that takes work to develop and it’s beyond
the scope of this little blog post to explain completely, but
I can give a few tips. You have to figure out the first 2 or 3
chords by ear (they never tell you the key!). Once you have
those chords you can look for them in one of the 12 major
or blues keys. Once you know the key your song is in you
have a list of all the chords it can contain (6 or 7 depending
on the key). Now it’s much easier to figure out the rest of
the song, since you only have a group of 6-7 chords to
choose from, not much trial and error! Also, any lead solos
will be in the scale that goes with the key, so at least you
have a starting point. While this seems (and is) difficult,
it’s much easier than figuring out the entire song by ear,
one note and chord at a time. I’ve done it, I know.
SONGWRITING: Nothing beats a flash of inspiration
when you’re writing a song. Out of nowhere a cool riff
pops into your mind and in a few minutes, you’re playing
it. Nothing beats creativity but theory can help! If you
know the key your riff or chord progression is in, you
have a list of other chords and notes you can use to com-
plete your song. You can also recycle ideas from other
songs; change the key and alter the melody and rhythm a
bit (and change the lyrics please!). Bands recycle hit music
all the time, if it was good enough to sell hit records 20
years ago, it’s still good enough with a little “updating”.
SOLOS AND JAMMING: Once you know what key you’re
in, you have the scale to use. My book, “Take Control: for
guitar”, contains 6 easy, generic riffs that work over most
popular music styles (rock, blues, and country). The book
also has a lot more information about figuring songs by ear,
soloing, making chords etc. Check it out on Amazon!
SUMMARY: Bill Gates said, ” Most people vastly over-
estimate what they can do in a year, and vastly underestimate
what they can do in 10 years”. I’ve shown you how to do
quite a lot in a year, with only 10 to 20-30 minutes of daily
practice. 5 times a week. I wish you all the best on your
guitar journey!
