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Year End Summary

December 28, 2021 By Jim Beckwith

 

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!

 

 

 

 

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