I'm putting together a list of practice categories, and then trying to identify specific exercises for each category. The idea is to eventually have a rotating practice schedule of roughly 10 days in order to keep things fresh while still learning and working on all the different things that need to be worked on.

Some of the ideas will be things stolen from other people (online/books/etc) but unless it's some kind of super unique "system" type thing don't think it's really necessary to attribute where it came from.

Here are the categories I thought of so far:




Feel free to suggest new categories and also activities for categories. The next post will demonstrate how I'm going to go about documenting activities for each category.

Activity: Chord changes
Category: (R) Rhythm
Duration: 10 minutes
Frequency: 5 of 10 days

Description:

Using an automated chord generator and a metronome or drum backing track, select a chord progression and then learn the chords (if necessary) and practice making the chords changes along to the beat. Focus on barre or open chords or mix them up.

Tools:

Chord generator: https://autochords.com/
Some drum tracks: http://www.guitarlessons.com/jam-tracks/
Online Metronome: http://www.metronomeonline.com/

Activity: Minor Pentatonic Scales
Category: (L) Soloing
Duration: 10 minutes
Frequency: 5 of 10 days

Description:

Pick one or two of the 5 positions and run the scales to a metronome. Aim to learn all 5 positions and work on moving smoothly between them. Try different keys not just Am and Em.

Tools:


Online Metronome: http://www.metronomeonline.com/
Some drum tracks: http://www.guitarlessons.com/jam-tracks/
Minor Pentatonic Scale Positions: http://deftdigits.com/2013/08/06/the...nic-positions/
Moving between positions: http://deftdigits.com/2013/08/20/diagonal-pentatonics/

what a great thread. been trying to put together a routine, and this should help a lot. hope we get all the categories down to detailed exercises. thanks mang!!

Feel free to add some ideas. I have a bunch of stuff yet to add and hoping some other people join in also.

Activity: Naming Notes at Random Frets
Category: (F) Fretboard memorization
Duration: 5 minutes
Frequency: 5 of 10 days

Description:

1) Flip a coin once: heads = 1 and tails = 2
2) Roll a six sided die and multiply by the coin result and that is your fret
3) Flip the coin again: heads = start from high E string; tails = start from low E string
4) Name the notes on all six strings starting at the random fret and starting string determined in 1 through 3 and going up or down the same fret.
5) Start back at 1 and do this for about 5 minutes

Tools:

A 6 sided die
A quarter
(Or just use Excel or whatever for your random number)

Good link to the drum tracks thx.

I am a bit haphazard. I will solo mainly bluesy rock stuff, then play some fingerpicking to keep both hands in trim.

Really good idea for a thread, and nice ideas on how to approach it.

How you going about the ear training part? I ask because I nailed the crap out of chords, intervals, progressions and whatnot when they were played on guitar. But not nearly as well when played on piano, or even worse, a MIDI piano.

For warming up, WARM THE **** UP A LOT!!!! My guitar playing career playing basically ended because I didn't take care of my hands. If you feel any pain, STOP! Stretch well, even look up youtube videos on various techniques. Those from John Petrucci are really good.

As for things to add, which can mixed in with the same you stuff already have:

Triads. Just 3 notes of a chord, but significantly more combinations across the neck.
Scale fragments, not just the full scales across all 6 strings.
Steve Vai's 10-hour workout is quite amazing. You don't need to do the 10-hour thing, but what he did there and why is some really great info.

There is a free ear trainer on Justin Guitar that you can set to piano. Here is the web version, but there is also an app available if you Google it.

http://www.justinguitar.com/en/ET-99...EarTrainer.php

I was using that but was struggling with it. This is my first time doing any ear training. It's weird I can pick up some intervals really easy (5ths, 2nds) and also tell major and minor chords apart, but other intervals I struggle with.

Recently bought EarMaster Pro 6.1 and am figuring out how to work with that.

Also plan to get some transcribing software with a pedal controller to do hands free looping of sections and just work out a lot of songs on my own. That seems to help develop the ears.

Why don't you add some of your warm up exercises here?

a silly way for me to learn intervals when i was in college theory class was to associate it with known songs. the list was:
minor second - Jaws
major second- start to a major scale (no song afaik)
minor third- ironman
major third- doorbell (backwards) or first two notes of a major triad
perfect 4th- here comes the bride
tri tone- maria from west side story
perfect 5th- theme from top gun, superman, or twinkle twinkle little star
minor 6th- theme from love story
major 6th- nbc theme (first two notes)
minor 7th- there's a place for us from west side story
major 7th- bahli hi from south pacific (after the octave). so it would be bah(C) li (C) hi (b) to get you the major 7th.
hope that helps

I was going to say the same things. Best tool.

Thanks. I can't recall all of those tunes but I'll search them.

Activity: Spider
Category: (W) Warm-up
Duration: 5 minutes
Frequency: 10 of 10 days

Description:

A warm up and alternate picking exercise. See attached pdf and lesson from Justin Guitar.

Tools:

TAB: http://www.justinguitar.com/images/T...Spider-tab.pdf

Video Lesson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s32hmkdrDw

Online Metronome: http://www.metronomeonline.com/

Activity: Alternate picking exercise
Category: (W) Warm-up
Duration: 2 or 3 minutes
Frequency: 10 of 10 days

Description:

A warm up and alternate picking exercise.

Tools:

Video Lesson:



Online Metronome: http://www.metronomeonline.com/

Activity: Jamming with backing tracks
Category: (J) Jamming
Duration: 20 to 30 minutes
Frequency: 5 of 10 days

Description:

Jam out to backing tracks. Rhythm, lead -- whatever you want to work on.

Found the coolest searchable repository of backing tracks. You can filter by genre, types of instruments to be included, types of instruments to exclude, tempo, meter, etc. Often the chords or at least the key is noted.

Apparently the tracks are all downloadable too once you sign up (free). Absolutely awesome. Link is below.

Tools:


Backing tracks: http://www.wikiloops.com/tracks/track-finder.php

Wow. When I was in GIT, students would be fighting over the QY70 sequencers first thing in the morning every single day. And now that site does it all. That's pretty damn awesome.

Don't make it too hard. Learn to play every song in every key in every style.

Make at list of songs, a list of styles. Rotate through them and the keys in order.

I think listening to music is a very underappreciated part of getting better at any kind of musical instrument. I have a huge personal collection of just guitar music or bands with guitar players that are very good. Of course I listen to other stuff too, but I think what made me really progress on guitar was listening to a lot of guitar music that was diverse and way out of my league when I was practicing a lot. Like if you stop at Eric Clapton or Jimmy Page and never make it to Eric Johnson or Michael Hedges, you probably aren't going far enough.

damnnn, wikiloops is the nuts

Posting for the checkmark. Glad this popped up on mobile

Sent from my A0001 using 2+2 Forums

Just a random topic but this video on learning modal shapes was the biggest single lift in my improvisation skills, I had a handful of irl lessons from this guy, he is really good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9wm...ature=youtu.be

When I'm practicing soloing I have an interface i plug my guitar into then play the jam track in LogicX in one channel, my guitar on another and jam in headphones.

It's fun too as there are loads of different amps and pedals on the software so you can get some cool tones

Wow, WikiLoops is awesome. I'm a total noob, was probably playing in the rock key compared to the backing track, but had a lot of fun "soloing."

wrong* key

o.p all those things listed arent mutually exclusive. i dont even know if you can learn them separately. i think the best thing to do is find a song your interested in and start learning to play it through tabs or a teacher or by ear eventually. if you learn a song and play it over and over all the things listed you will learn. and playing with other people as a band or whatever will help you in leaps and bounds especially if there good musicians.i also dont think you can approach music like poker i think thats why i like poker so much is that they are almost completely opposite skill sets. but would gladly trade musician ship for poker any day of the week lol.