What Is My Recommended Practice Regimen?

foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] a question i get asked quite often as a very important question is hey eric do you have any recommendations what should i be working on how should i practice to you know get the most out of my limited time uh to move forward so i have some thoughts on this and that's what we're going to talk about today the first thing is play every day find a way even if it's just five minutes you know five ten minutes every day gonna be so much better than the old i know how we live procrastinate procrastinate procrastinate procrastinate cram you know that's how we got through school but it doesn't really work with with something like this that's processed based that it's all about like how can i incorporate this into my life and i understand yo not everybody's a guitar teacher who has the luxury of playing guitar all day long so the best thing the first thing i can say is find a way to fit it in every day even just a little bit even just a little bit and then the second thing before we get into nuts and bolts of what to play is and this is an interesting one it doesn't necessarily matter exactly what you're working on as long as you are working on it slow clean and musical that to me is is a big deal that like yeah rather than just kind of run things run mechanical things not really paying attention like really pay attention [Music] hey by the way you can check the description box below for my website patreon true fire course rig rundown and uh also by the way my new record eric haugen bundle up is streaming and downloadable wherever you stream and download music now assuming that we fit playing somewhere into our daily routine you know now let's talk about what to play and here's some interesting thoughts i have rather than warming up with scales which yes we do need to know a major scale always do both ways if you're gonna minor scale [Music] and blues [Music] i think what's more useful than just warming up with scales and like just kind of checking out and running scales is you take your existing repertoire and you go back over things again and again again you try to get them slow musical and clean like you know say the opening from tom petty's breakdown let's see how clean i am today [Music] i messed something up there let's go back a little bit slower [Music] by the way i'm going to tab all this stuff out put it up on my patreon page for free you could head over there and get it consider supporting me on patreon it helps me out a lot when people do that thank you to those of you who do that so that's the first thing is existing repertoire little intros little riffs little solos you've learned don't just learn it and then go on to the next thing because i know how it is we're just you know we're just stuff i'm contributing to it right now screaming information at you telling you what you should do and look at this look at this look at this look at this but i think it's really cool to have like a core repertoire of simple small things that you come back to and you get them cleaner and you get them better and then when you got them better you get them even better and even better and even better like you know i play the the little solo from something you know i learned that when i was i don't know 17 years old but i keep revisiting it and keep checking in how's my vibrato how's my bends how's my phrasing you know so that's like a decision we make rather than absorb more and more and more and more we're like hold on i have like a core repertoire here that i always come back to and check in on so that's like my my recommendation for warm up that might be different than what other people say about practicing scales here's my little practicing too much scales analogy again yeah you should know scales but you know don't don't waste too much time on them because it's like this at least here's what i think say you want to write a good little short story and you know that's about characters and plots and description and all that stuff but but but you were like but you know what i better be really good at typing first so i'm gonna make sure i spend you know 20 minutes every day practicing my typing speed no so i feel like practicing scales is kind of like that that yeah you need to know them and you need to know how to move them around but then start start writing your short story start working on a story there anyway that's my thought on that now that's existing repertoire that's not really getting to know the instrument so much so then the other side of practice you know and so what that's only what five minutes maybe of just running existing repertoire getting it cleaner and cleaner is the kind of practice or let's call it play of moving the football down the field i guess that's an american analogy let's just say yeah well i'm going to stick with the american football analogy moving it down the field so that means fretboard knowledge getting to know things better and better getting a little more a little more understanding of your instrument i think would be very enriching for your life and i don't know a better way than the cage system than grooves and fills chord shapes and pentatonic shapes out of cage that's why i preach it so much because it's what i teach it's how i work it's how i see things and again just to review the ideas like say we got a c chord here there's a chord shape that's quote unquote and e shape because if we had a capo there that would be an e chord [Music] there's a major pentatonic scale it's right there where my hand is with that chord classic a minor chord you know bar chord here's the pentatonic minor that's right there with that chord this is what i do with my students they if you've taken lessons with me you're like yep this is what he does so you'd apply a groove to it and then one two three four one and then one two three four [Music] and so just to review the caged system you know which is i guess what i'm zealot about the idea is yo every chord has five shapes c c c c and every shape has a pentatonic scale [Music] and so on and so forth and that everything that i've ever played or transcribed or observed somehow goes into those categories so that's why always i'm like hey you want a better understanding of the instrument you want to feel like you know what's going on you want to know like chords triads arpeggios everything else it's a sorting system some one way or another every lick every riff i've ever played is in there is one of those structures that's why i preach it so much anyway the last thing so let's see we basically yeah just to review what we got so far play every day a little bit go slow and musical we got warm up with existing repertoire and then we got moving the football down the field by using grooves and fills the other thing that i think us guitar players tend to just skip right over is progressions chord progressions chord forms and things like that so you know you can either and same thing you could do that two ways you could do existing repertoire let's see about playing some police tricky part [Music] that is such a cool chord ain't easy though what a great cord though so that's a police wrapped around your finger so that's existing repertoire which you can see that's hard for me still hard for me or the last little point i'll make or or a little practice thing i'll recommend is you got you know i have a whole series of music theory for guitar players it's you know not it's not that much major scales minor scales how the chords work in those keys and then how that generates chord progression so then the final assignment and you know write stuff down you know write stuff down have a little notebook to come up with stuff and write down ideas that you're working on and things like that uh would be like it would be like what's a one five six four and b flat what kind of strum pattern am i gonna give it oh i'll give it the pattern i call the piano pattern so that's groove and uh that's keys groove and chord progression type stuff so here's a one five six four in b flat with what a pattern i call the piano pattern [Music] put an inversion there you know doing stuff like that let's see i could do it over here [Music] is that four chord so i hope that helps the main thing i think is is obviously doesn't always matter but you should go really slow and musical don't check out don't let yourself off the hook with sloppy and clumsy practice all that leaves it just makes you into a sloppy and clumsy player um go slow go musical come back to simple existing repertoire and just really just perfect it you know get the minutiae down and then there's the moving the football down the field stuff thanks so much to everybody who supports me in all the ways that you do even if it's just clicking like and subscribe it keeps me in business with the algorithm relevancy because i don't put ads on my channel because i think they're annoying ad might play on this one because i played so much copywritten material know that i did not make money from that that goes right to the publisher as bill and ted would say be excellent to each other that includes yourself happy friday eat pizza [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Eric Haugen Guitar

Views: 53,620

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Id: bCz-vhEkq5A

Length: 12min 56sec (776 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 17 2022