Chad Crawford, PMI Guitar Instructor<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Practicing guitar and playing guitar are not the same thing,\nand it is important to understand the difference if we want to maximize our\nprogress. While playing guitar is the\nend game of practicing, and we need to spend plenty of time playing, practicing\nis the means to the end of playing. It is essential to practice well and not\nallow playing to take over during what should be practice time. Although this\nmay seem obvious on the surface, it is very easy to drift over into playing\nwhile trying to practice. Here we will look at the differences and consider how\nto avoid this pitfall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So let us consider the differences between the two and how\nto avoid mixing them up. Playing guitar is the broad application of all our\nknowledge and technique skills into making music. Practicing guitar is\ndeliberate focus on a narrow range of knowledge and technique skills with the\nspecific goal of cultivating improvement in those specific areas. While playing,\nwe focus on all that we can<\/em> do. While\npracticing we focus on what we can not<\/em>\nyet do, or do as well as we would prefer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are some measures to avoid getting stuck in a rut by\nplaying through practice time:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. Consider where you\nare, where you need to be, and how to get there<\/strong> \u2013 if you have no master\nplan for reaching your musical goals then you can be sure that your practice\ntime will consist of merely playing what you already know rather than making\nspecific improvements in those things that will allow you access to the next\nmusical level. To devise a master plan you should look to the music you wish to\nplay and find out what kinds of chords, rhythms, scales\/arpeggios, and\ntechniques arise in that music. Focus on those things in order to play that\nkind of music. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. Define<\/strong> goals for every practice session<\/strong> \u2013 if\nyou practice with no particular goal in mind then you will get exactly where\nyou planned to get \u2013 nowhere. In every practice session have a plan to work on\nimproving specific aspects of knowledge and technique according to your overall\nmaster plan. Committing your plan to paper will aid greatly in keeping it in\nview during practice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. Focus<\/strong> on specific aspects of knowledge and\ntechnique during practice<\/strong> \u2013 when you are for instance practicing the scales\nyou need for your preferred musical style, focus specifically on timing, note\narticulation, resolving notes, technique (relaxed fingers!), two hand\nsynchronization, and eventually speed. You may have to break these goals down\nacross several practice sessions per week so that you can devote adequate time\nand attention to each. Playing licks that you already know, or mindlessly\nwandering up and down through scales, is not practice. That is playing and it\nwill not help you improve nearly as much as practicing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 4. Push<\/strong> yourself to do better than yesterday<\/strong> \u2013\nprofitable practice does not come from merely repeating what you did yesterday.\nIt comes from making it a point to do better than you did yesterday. Doing\nbetter than you did yesterday does not come from merely accepting the vague\nproposition that you will try do better today then you did yesterday. It comes\nfrom focused attention to the minute details of your playing, such as striving\nfor better note articulation of scales, faster chord changes, or deliberately\nplaying with less overall muscular tension than yesterday. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 5. Maintain<\/strong> your attention on the details<\/strong> \u2013 it is\nvery easy to allow the attention to wander off during doing repetitive aspects\nof a practice routine. Focus yields much greater results, and focus is an\nongoing choice because the mind tends strongly toward wandering off from one\nthing to another. Choose to keep your mind focused on the details of what you\nare working on! <\/p>\n\n\n\n 6. Include<\/strong> some playing time in your musical endeavors<\/strong> \u2013 it is pointless to pursue music if it is going to mean nothing but practice. Allow yourself some time within each practice session, or a few times a week if that works better for you, to just play without being overly concerned about the perfection of the details. Perfect the details during practice, and then relax and let your hands do their thing when you play. During playing time, do whatever is the best you can do and don\u2019t allow mistakes to rob your enjoyment of it. Just play and enjoy what comes out well. As you progress through diligent practice, you will find that your playing includes increasingly fewer mistakes and more enjoyment. It is a process. Give it time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2005 Palmetto Music Institute. All\nRights Reserved.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Practicing guitar and playing guitar are not the same thing, and it is important to understand the difference if we want to maximize our progress. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[48,20,2,59,22,63],"class_list":["post-333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-yeahthatgreenville","tag-chad-crawford","tag-guitar-lessons-greenville-sc","tag-guitar-lessons-near-me","tag-palmetto-music-institue","tag-progress-pitfalls"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":334,"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions\/334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}