guitarpracticesins answers

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Guitar Practice Sins - Answers

Here are the answers to the guitar practice “sins” committed in this guitar practice

video: http://practiceguitarnow.com/IdentifyGuitarPracticeMistakes.html

Scenario #1 (3:27-3:47)

Guitar Practice Sin #1: Not watching the hands at all while practicing. Instead, you see

me stare mindlessly out into space, as my hands are going through the motions of

playing scales on autopilot.

Why this “sin” is dangerous to your guitar playing: First of all, understand that the

process of practicing guitar effectively consists of: identifying and solving your guitar

playing problems and training yourself to make your technique better (via applying

effective new practice habits). If your eyes are not focused on what the hands are doing,

your brain is not getting feedback it needs to understand if you are practicing/training

yourself correctly, then you are simply reinforcing the same inefficient and ineffective

guitar playing habits that will make it impossible to develop flawless and effortless

technique.

Guitarists who practice in this way often end up extremely frustrated even if they

practice a lot. Practicing without watching your hands is similar to driving blindfolded

and hoping to get to where you are going and not get into a horrible accident in the

process.

What to do instead to make your practicing highly effective:

1. START watching your hands when you practice

2. Learn EXACTLY what you need to pay attention to while practicing so that it becomes

totally obvious and natural for you to focus on what your hands are doing (as opposed

to going through the motions in a mindless way, wasting time and becoming bored).

THIS is what will enable you to start seeing exponentially faster progress in your guitar

playing. To learn how to do this, read this page.

Scenario #2 (3:54 - 4:09)

Guitar Practice Sin #1: Watching the WRONG hand while practicing. In this scenario, you

can see me watching my fretting hand only the entire time. Instead, all my attention

should have been focused on the picking hand instead of the fretting hand. Why? 2

reasons:

http://practiceguitarnow.com/IdentifyGuitarPracticeMistakes.html

http://practiceguitarnow.com/rapidfireguitarpracticetraining.html


1. It can be seen in the video that the fretting hand had no real problems with it,

therefore watching it did nothing to help make the playing better.

2. It’s very easy to see that the picking hand is making very huge motions to play each

note (way more than necessary) and thus is fatiguing much faster than the fretting

hand. So the picking hand needs all the attention in this example, so that its motions

could be refined further and progress can be made. Watching the fretting hand (i.e. the

wrong hand in this specific case) is just as big of a sin as “not” watching your hands at

all.

Guitar Practice Sin #2 (caused by sin #1): Because the eyes were focused on the

fretting hand, the picking hand continues to move on autopilot- making WAY bigger

motions than necessary to play notes. As mentioned in the video, the first sin was

ENSURING the second one would happen also (if you were to practice this way all the

time),

To make sure that you never unintentionally commit this sin in your practicing (or to

become aware whether or not you are committing it now), you must do the following:

Understand the EXACT goal/purpose of each exercise you practice. Never practice an

exercise “just to practice” or with a vague goal of “improving your speed”. You must

understand the exact and specific reasons (micro goals) that each exercise is helping

you accomplish

Train yourself to correctly identify the EXACT causes of your guitar playing

problems/mistakes, so that your practicing can be done with a problem-solving,

results-oriented mindset instead of in a robotic/mindless way. This is what will enable

you to know which hand to pay attention at any given time as you practice.

I train guitar players to do exactly this in my Rapid Fire Guitar Practice Training

program. To learn how to turbo charge your guitar playing and progress, go to:

http://practiceguitarnow.com/RapidFireGuitarPracticeTraining.html

Scenario #3: (4:22-4:37)

Guitar Practice Sin #1: Using phaser effects (or any kind of effects except regular

distortion) while practicing for guitar speed, 2 hand synchronization, cleanliness of

playing or other elements of technique.

Why is this a “sin”? When you practice using effects, it becomes VERY difficult to hear if

you are playing cleanly or if your hands are in sync at faster speeds. The mistakes you

are making are not immediately obvious and thus are harder to correct. Because you are

making it hard for your ears/brain to get the feedback needed to refine your practicing,

your time is being literally wasted - no improvements are taking place in your playing



and no mistakes are being identified and corrected. Yes, you are going through the

motions of practicing, but you are really just playing, not practicing.

To make your practicing highly effective, you must make it as easy as possible for your

ears and mind to identify any and all mistakes you are making (and fix them), so do not

use any effects while practicing (except distortion).

Guitar Practice Sin #2: Not paying attention or playing in time to the metronome

In the video I am (intentionally of course) playing completely out of time with the

metronome. This not only completely defeats the purpose of using a metronome in the

first place, but also creates yet another distraction for your mind brain/mind/ears that

prevents you from paying attention to things that you NEED to focus on to improve your

playing.

When you use a metronome for practicing, it must serve one (or both) of its two primary

roles:

To test or refine your timing

And/or:

To test your guitar speed to identify specific mistakes in your technique that

occur at or near your top speeds (so you can then fix them).

If you are not doing either of the things above, then you are actually HURTING your

progress by practicing with a metronome (since it ends up being nothing but a

distraction for yourself).

If you are NOT able to hear how/why my playing is out of time in the video, this is

another problem in and of itself that you must overcome to learn to practice guitar

effectively. Get started with overcoming ALL of your guitar practice and playing

problems here.

Guitar Practice Sin #3: Using way too much excessive tension in the picking hand

shoulder (this is very obvious from seeing my shoulder raised up very high in the video).

The negative effects of too much tension are well known and obvious - when your body

is more tense than necessary, it becomes impossible to play fast and make your guitar

playing feel easy. Too much tension in guitar playing is the equivalent of “running with

your shoelaces tied together”… What is NOT so obvious is how the tension came to be

there in the first place.

And this leads me to the next sin of this video clip:



Guitar Practice Sin #4: Using a very bad sitting position (with the guitar on the right

leg). Why is this sitting position a guitar practice sin? Here are a few obvious reasons:

You are forced to play with your picking hand’s shoulder raised in an awkward

position (leading to excessive tension identified in Sin #3 of this scenario).

The guitar feels unstable against your body and moves around too much while

playing (making it more difficult to play).

The fretting hand fingers cannot be stretched as easily to play

chords/scales/licks that require wider stretches (without greater risk of injury).

Your fretting hand wrist has to bend a lot more while playing, putting greater

strain on your muscles and tendons.

This position is totally different from how your guitar is positioned when you

play standing up. This makes it much more difficult to transition from playing

guitar sitting down to playing standing up.

Solution: Position your guitar on your LEFT leg (if you are right handed) and elevate

your left foot with a footstool or some books. This position fixes ALL of the above

problems and makes your guitar playing feel much easier.

Note: Yes, of course there are some truly great/virtuoso players who sit with the guitar

on their right leg and play amazingly well. However, these exceptions do not change the

facts that the sitting position itself is simply inferior. Those great players who use the

inferior position are able to play well “in spite” of its limitations, not because of them. If

you are not yet a great guitar player yourself (and REALLY want to become one as

quickly as possible), you should maximize every element you can to your advantage to

make your practicing as efficient and effective as possible.

Scenario #4: (4:45-5:14)

Guitar Practice Sin #1: Inconsistent way of forming the second chord of the chord

change (a BIG problem!) Sometimes you can see me forming the second chord while

transitioning from the first chord, and other times I was moving my hand to the position

where the new chord was to be played and only THEN started forming the shape of the

new chord at the last minute.

Why this “sin” is dangerous for your guitar playing: This inconsistency confuses the

hands (and mind) and prevents you from training your hands effectively to overcome

challenges in your guitar playing. When practicing to master something, you must know

exactly what specific motions you need to be training and then drill just THOSE motions

into your technique to make them automatic. Any inconsistency in this process makes

improving your technique MUCH more difficult and infinitely more frustrating. Any

inconsistency in practicing also means that you are either: not paying full attention to


what you are doing or you are not fully conscious of the correct technical motions to use

while practicing (usually both).

Solution: Identify EXACTLY how you need to practice any challenging element of your

technique and pay attention to being perfectly consistent in the technical motions you

use while practicing. This applies to ALL techniques of course, not only to chord changes

(the chord change in this video example is merely a single context that demonstrates

the issue). If you don’t know how to do this, you need to get training on how to practice

guitar rand how to train yourself to overcome your guitar playing challenges/problems.

Guitar Practice Sin #2: Wrapping thumb over the top of the neck for playing chords (you

can see the first knuckle of my thumb sticking up over the fretboard when playing the

chord change).

Why this is a “sin” in THIS scenario (of playing chords): Having the thumb over the top

of the fretboard creates 2 general problems:

1. It makes it much harder to stretch the fingers of the fretting hand while playing.

2. It forces the inside of your palm to touch the high E string, muting it (which is what

you DON’T want when playing chords that require the high E string to ring).

To be clear, having the thumb over the top of the neck is NOT bad in every case. For

bends and vibrato and certain guitar licks, you actually WANT to have the thumb

wrapped around like this, to make playing easier.

The goal is to identify when having the thumb over the top of the neck IS a problem and

practice in the correct way (with the thumb behind the neck) consistently to make sure

the correct technical habits are being trained.

Guitar Practice Sin #3: Making small, last-minute adjustments in the hands when

playing.

You can see me sometimes adjusting the positions of the fingers on the frets after the

new chord is already being played. This is a mistake for a few reasons:

1. It indicates that the motions for playing the chord change perfectly and consistently

have not been mastered.

2. It requires more concentration to perform the chord change in real life guitar playing

(such as while performing) making your guitar playing less reliable and making mistakes

more likely to happen.

3. It causes sloppy noises in your playing that make the notes/chords sound sloppy.


Solution: You need to learn how to practice chord changes effectively (and what to pay

attention o while doing so), so that they become super easy to play, clean and reliable

every single time.

Scenario #5: (5:23-5:38)

Guitar Practice Sin #1: Inconsistent picking articulation. You can hear that I start picking

the notes very loudly, with great articulation, but the power becomes weaker and

weaker as I play on the higher strings and descend the scale sequence.

Why this “sin” is dangerous to your guitar playing: Having your picking articulation

become weaker as you play is a sign of excessive tension in your picking hand. It is

usually caused by starting to play in a relaxed way, but not releasing the tension from

playing notes and letting it accumulate in your arm and shoulder. As you keep playing,

the excessive tension builds up, making it harder and harder to articulate the notes. As

a result, your articulation becomes progressively weaker and weaker and the arm

becomes more and more fatigued. This continues until the pick no longer makes contact

with the string and you are forced to stop playing to relax.

Solution: You must learn the most effective (and simple) ways to release all excessive

tension from your guitar playing. This will not only make your guitar playing feel much

easier and help you to increase your top speed, but will also make your guitar playing

sound MUCH better at every speed.

To learn how to make your guitar playing feel very effortless and easy, read this page.

Scenario #6: (5:47-5:58)

Guitar Practice Sin #1: Using inefficient fingering in the fretting hand. In the scale you

can see me play on the video, I am using fingers 1 3 and 4 to play finger shapes that

span two whole steps.

Why this “sin” is dangerous to your guitar playing: It’s much more difficult to stretch

between fingers 3 and 4 (compared to stretching with other fingers when playing

guitar), so using this inefficient fingering will make it much harder to play guitar fast and

clean.

Solution: Fortunately, the solution for this specific sin is very easy: start using fingers 1

2 4 for finger patterns that span 2 whole steps no the guitar - problem solved



Scenario #7: (6:07-6:17)

Guitar Practice Sin # 1: Making huge (swooping) motions with the picking hand for

every note (instead of picking the strings with a much more efficient straight up and

down motion). Note: I'm NOT saying to “make the smallest motions possible” - I'm

simply saying to :”eliminate WASTED motion”.

Why this “sin” is dangerous to your guitar playing: This problem is a symptom of not

being able to correctly identify and diagnose your guitar playing problems on a larger

scale. And even if you don’t have THIS problem in your guitar technique, if you couldn’t

identify it instantly by watching me play on video means that there are likely other

guitar technique issues present in your playing that are holding you back every time you

practice, staring you in the face and begging you to solve them

This specific problem (and its solution) is similar to the guitar practice sin #2 in Scenario

2 of this video.

Scenario #8: (6:28 - 6:44)

Guitar Practice Sin #1: Using alternate picking instead of directional picking.

Why this “sin” is dangerous to your guitar playing: The answer to this is thoroughly

described in this video: http://practiceguitarnow.com/guitarpickingexercises.html (watch

that video before sending me angry messages “defending” alternate picking )

Solution: Learn how to adopt directional picking into your guitar playing quickly and

easily, so that your guitar playing feels and sounds WAY easier, faster and cleaner than

ever before. I will walk you through the exact process of doing so in my Rapid Fire

Guitar Practice Training course:


Scenario #9: (6:55-7:19)

Guitar Practice Sin #1: Using incorrect picking motions for sweep picking arpeggios. In

the video, you can see me picking each note with a separate pick stroke instead of using

ONE very smooth and continuous downstroke to ascend the arpeggio and one smooth

upstroke to descend the arpeggio.

http://practiceguitarnow.com/guitarpickingexercises.html



Why this “sin” is dangerous to your guitar playing:

Reason #1: By not using the most efficient motions for sweep picking (and not realizing

that the motions you are using ARE inefficient), you will NEVER sweep pick fast and

clean. Instead, you will end up doing what most guitarists do: browse the web for more

sweep picking exercises, try to practice to a metronome by starting slow and gradually

speeding up the tempo, etc… not realizing that the solution to your problem is a whole

lot easier and it is staring you right in the face every time you practice.

Reason #2: (Similar to other problems/sins explained earlier) If you are not able to

identify this flaw instantly when you saw me doing it in the video, it is a symptom of a

much more serious problem: “your general inability to diagnose your guitar practice

problems and solve them”.

Solution: To improve this area of your sweep picking technique, focus on pushing the

hand through the strings when ascending an arpeggio with sweep picking (so that all

notes are hit with one pick stroke) and pull your hand back when descending the

arpeggio to ensure that all the notes are hit with one continuous upstroke motion.

So how many from the 15 sins did you identify correctly? If you found less than 5, don’t

worry - you are NOT alone! The vast majority of guitar players are stumped by this test

and years ago I would have scored the same (or even worse) than most. It was exactly

this frustration with my lack of results from practicing that lead me to invest thousands

of hours into learning the most effective guitar practice methods and applying, testing,

refining and perfecting them. After many years of trying to master my guitar technique

and learning to get superior results from practicing I now train other guitarists how to

practice guitar effectively to get HUGE results in their playing quickly.

I want to help you stop being frustrated with your guitar practicing, learn how to identify

and overcome every single one of your guitar playing problems and make your guitar

playing feel effortless and sound awesome. To get started, go to this page right now:



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