Some people never practice guitar and seem to be super stars. I’m not that guy. If I don’t practice consistently, I don’t improve. If I don’t focus when I practice, I get nowhere.
On Focus.
The second component of a practice routine designed for results is focus. Once you warm up, you need an area of focus to concentrate your efforts.
Click here to kick start your warm up routine.
There are hundreds of things to learn on the guitar and that can be overwhelming, not to mention distracting.
Facing all these choices, it’s very easy to just fall into the natural state of noodling around on the guitar for an hour without doing anything to stretch your ability. The other side of this coin is that if you try to tackle more than one thing at a time, you’ll likely learn nothing.
We’re going for lasting knowledge here, a skill that lasts a lifetime. So, focus a large portion of your practice routine on key areas to get results that stick with you.
Focus Your Guitar Practice on Key Areas
Just after you spend a few minutes warming up, you should dive right into an area of focus. Spend a large portion of your practice routine in this area. This is where learning begins. You’ll discover new concepts here. You’ll put together old ideas in new ways here. What you focus on will bring you results.
Pick your area of focus from one of the six major areas below:
- Chords
- Scales
- Arpeggios
- Technique
- Rhythm
- Repertoire
An Example Focus Area
In this lesson, I’ll take you through an example chord lesson. We’ll start with a basic C chord but then begin to really expand our knowledge of the chord by playing it in as many different positions as possible on the neck.
This is a very real example of how to focus on one thing, one simple thing and really get some mileage from it.
Shifting Your Focus
Stay with your singular area of focus for at least one-third of your entire practice session. You can shift to a different focus area when you begin practicing tomorrow, but for now, hold your focus to one thing.
Grab the TAB for this lesson for an example of this phase of a practice routine for the C Major Chord.
Next Steps?
Once you dig in and really learn something from your focus area, you’ll want to put what you just learned into practice. That’s what we’ll do in the very next lesson. But for now, warm up and select your focus area.
Perhaps, the C Major Chords in the CAGED system?
Give it a shot and let me here from you in the comments below.
Are you seeing results?