THE BLUEGRASS GUITAR HOME PAGE
Open All | Close All
Toggle Menu
  • Home
  • History
    • A Brief History
    • History Books & Videos
  • Artists
  • Guitars
    • Choosing a Guitar
    • Tonal Qualities
    • Audio Comparisons
    • Buying Tips
    • Guitar Makers
    • Instrument Dealers
  • Other Gear
    • Picks
    • Tuners
    • Capos
    • Metronomes
  • Playing Styles
    • Playing Rhythm
    • Playing Lead
    • Carter Style
    • Crosspicking
    • Flatpick or Fingerpick?
  • Learning to Play
    • Overview
    • Learning Tips
    • How to Practice
    • Beginning Guitar
    • Bluegrass Guitar
    • Flatpicking
    • Rhythm Guitar
    • Solo / Lead
    • The Fingerboard
    • Carter Style
    • Crosspicking
    • Building Repertoire
    • Guitar Method
    • Virtual Jams
    • Learning Links
  • Study Tunes
    • Wildwood Flower
    • Arkansas Traveler
  • Tablature
    • Lead Tabs
    • Rhythm Tabs
    • Sibelius Cloud Viewer
    • Other Tab Resources
  • Top 10 Tunes
    • The Top 10 Tunes
    • Complete Results
  • Links
    • Bluegrass Guitar
    • General Guitar Links
    • Guitar Care & Maintenance
    • Bluegrass Music
    • Record Labels
  • Products We Offer
  • Digital Download Catalog
  • About This Site
  • Contact Us

How To Practice

Playing music is a journey, not a destination. It's a continual process of discovery and learning. Whenever we hear a new song or technique we want to play, we have to practice - because practice is the only path to musical improvement.

There are a number of things that we can do in a practice. These include:

  • Warm-ups
  • Drills to maintain, learn and improve technique
  • Scales and arpeggios
  • Improving speed, tone, accuracy
  • Learning new repertoire

How do we choose what tasks are important? How do we structure our practice? How do we make practicing fun and prevent it from becoming boring or something to be put off?

The resources on this page will help you answer these questions and enable you to make practicing an integral part of your musical journey.

  • Learning How to Practice
  • Warm-Ups & Drills
  • Practice Planners & Logs
  • Product Comparison

The resources listed below will teach you how to practice effectively. All have suggestions on how to organize your practice time and create a supportive learning environment. Most reflect the experience of the authors in their musical paths.

If you want a quick read on how to practice, look at Music Practice: The Musician's Guide to Practicing and Mastering your Instrument like a Professional or First, Learn to Practice. These are concisely written and easy to read.

If you want to explore the subject of practicing in depth, The Musician's Way is an excellent choice. This book is used by some music schools as part of their curriculum. The Practice of Practice is another in-depth book about practicing.

If you prefer video, take a look at products in that medium.

A Guitarist's Guide to Better Practicing  NEW!
Author: Pete Huttlinger
Media: DVD / DIGITAL
Level: All Levels
A guitar player's player, Pete Huttlinger developed his skills over the years through regular practice and exercise regimens. In this video, Pete offers invaluable advice and insider's tips on how you can increase your guitar skills and perfect your playing style through proper practice routines This is a lesson that will benefit all guitarists. Whatever level you are starting from, you'll see the quality of your playing grow by leaps and bounds, and you'll get more pleasure from your music making. This video is equally helpful to flatpickers and fingerstyle players.
Purchase this Item:

Music Practice: The Musician's Guide to Practicing and Mastering your Instrument like a Professional 
Author: David Dumais
Media: Book (56 pages)
Level: All Levels
Written by a musician for musicians. David Dumais hit a wall while an undergraduate pursuing a degree in clarinet performance. Sometimes he would practice five to eight hours a day and not see any noticeable improvement; at other times he found that he improved more when he didn't practice. This prompted him to start a search for the best ways to practice. This book is the result : a compilation of the best practice tips and strategies from the best musicians in the world. The book is written in a concise, easy-to-read format. It accomplishes as much in its 56 pages as other books many times its length. If you're looking for quick reference on learning how to practice, this book is a good choice.
Purchase this Item:

First, Learn to Practice 
Author: Tom Heany
Media: Book (92 pages)
Level: All Levels
This book is about how to practice with any musical instrument. The author views practicing like any other skill: first you need to learn how, and then you have to work at it for a while until you can do it well. Most of the ideas in the book come from the author's own experience. The book is organized into two sections: Big Ideas and Good Habits, each containing seven chapters. There is also a section on tools that discusses metronomes, looping and developing a plan. The book is concise and easy to read.
Purchase this Item:

The Musician's Way - A Guide to Practice, Performance and Wellness 
Author: Gerald Klickstein
Media: Book (360 pages)
Level: All Levels
Performer and educator Gerald Klickstein combines the latest research with 30 years of professional experience to provide aspiring musicians with a roadmap to artistic excellence. Part I, Artful Practice, describes strategies to interpret and memorize compositions, fuel motivation, collaborate, and more. Part II, Fearless Performance, lifts the lid on the hidden causes of nervousness and shows how musicians can become confident performers. Part III, Lifelong Creativity, surveys tactics to prevent music-related injuries and equips musicians to tap their own innate creativity. The Musician's Way presents a detailed, comprehensive system for musicians to advance their skills and succeed as performing artists.
Purchase this Item:

The Practice of Practice 
Author: Jonathan Harnum
Media: Book (274 pages)
Level: All Levels
The author believes that practice is everything when it comes to getting better at music; talent means almost nothing. The book teaches the What, Why, When, Where, Who, and How of great music practice. What: Definitions, and what music practice does to your brain. Why: Motivation is crucial. Who: A lot of people including yourself will impact your practice. When: How much, and what times of the day are best for practice. Where: Where you practice afects how well you practice. How: The longest section of the book includes information about goals, structuring your practice, as well as specific techniques tested by researchers, and specific strategies pros use to get better.
Purchase this Item:

Waste Not Thy Time 
Author: Rolly Brown
Media: DVD (120 minutes)
Level: All Levels
In this two hour DVD, Rolly Brown shares tools and advice drawn from 50 years of practicing to improve your playing and help motivate you. Topics include structuring your time, creativity, chords, arpeggios, right hand technique, using a metronome and practicing with rhythm tracks. Also included are 30 and 60-minute practice routines for both fingerstyle and flatpicking.
Purchase this Item:

A common recommendation is to start a practice or performance with warm-ups. But what warm ups should you do? As it turns out, warm up exercise can be effective in both limbering up your fingers and improving your technical skills. These resources provide a number of warm-ups to consider.

The Guitarist's Personal Practice Trainer and Warm-Up Plan sets the standard in warm-up products. It's a 90-minute video that completely covers this subject. It also includes worksheets that you can use to plan and log your own warm-ups.

The Guitarist's Personal Practice Trainer and Warm Up Plan 
Author: Andrew DuBrock
Media: DVD / DIGITAL (95 minutes)
Level: All Levels
"10 Minutes a Day to Better Technique and Finger Fitness" Andrew DuBrock’s Personal Practice Trainer provides you with exercises and a structure for practicing. Exercises include warm-ups, scales, hammer-ons, pull-offs, bends, vibrato, arpeggios, chords and etudes. You can follow Andrew’s unique Ten Week Practice Planner and Exercise Worksheet or create your own working schedule using the handouts included. By working with his approach for just 10 minutes a day, you’ll gain finger strength and dexterity along with improved timing, tone and over-all guitar versatility.
Purchase this Item:

Daily Guitar Warm-Ups 
Author: Tom Kolb
Media: Book / CD
Level: Mid Beginner to Late Intermediate
This book and CD contains a variety of exercises to help get (and keep) your hands in top playing shape. It addresses the basic elements of guitar warm-ups by category: stretches and pre-playing coordination exercises; picking exercises; right and left-hand synchronization; and, rhythm guitar warm-ups. It also covers hammer-ons and pull-offs, string-bending, scale sequences, and arpeggios. Use this book daily, choosing one or two exercises in each chapter to warm up, and you'll playing will be cleaner, more articulate, and of a higher caliber.
Purchase this Item:

Practice logs let you keep track of what you did during practice and how long you spent. In addition, these forms let you record your goals, keep track of metronome settings, and let you see at a glance how you're doing.

Our favorite product in this category is the Musician's Practice Planner. We like it because it provides ample space for you to plan and log your practices with two pages for each week. It also emphasizes the need to set specific goals for each aspect of your practice. It's also spiral-bound, making is easy to lay flat.

Musician's Practice Planner 
Author: Molto Music Publishing
Media: Book
Level: All Levels
This excellent, spiral-bound planner features two pages for each week. The left-hand page contains a weekly lesson plan that lists tasks such as scales, warmups, etudes, exercises, repertoire and more. For each task, space is provided to list specific goals for the task. The right-hand page is a daily practice log that allows you to record work done, time spent and metronome settings. This planner can be used for students with/or/without teachers and for any musical instrument.
Purchase this Item:

Guitar Practice Planner 
Author: Hal Leonard
Media: Book
Level: All Levels
This book helps you set practice goals and track your daily practice time for chord studies, scales, arpeggios, songs, licks, riffs and more. Includes more than a year's worth of weekly practice charts with blank staves for standard and tablature guitar notation as well as blank chord charts.
Purchase this Item:

Some of the practicing resources listed on this page cover more than one feature. Here is a comparison of the Practicing resources shown on this page showing the features in each.

Product How to Practice Practice Log Warm-Ups Technique
A Guitarist's Guide to Better Practicing Yes No Yes Yes
Music Practice: The Musician's Guide to Practicing and Mastering your Instrument like a Professional Yes No No No
First, Learn to Practice Yes No No No
The Musician's Way - A Guide to Practice, Performance and Wellness Yes No No No
The Practice of Practice Yes No No No
Waste Not Thy Time Yes Yes No Yes
The Guitarist's Personal Practice Trainer and Warm Up Plan No Yes Yes Yes
Daily Guitar Warm-Ups No No Yes Yes
Musician's Practice Planner No Yes No No
Guitar Practice Planner No Yes No No
©1998-2022, BluegrassGuitar.com. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy
Web Design by Etherjazz