Share Your Practice Routine

Welcome to the forum. Since I'm retired and have a lot of time I spend way too much of it on the Internet. The #1 question everywhere I go is on how to practice. And there's never a clear answer. Well, here's my answer.

You don't have to get a headache trying to figure out a practice routine if you're working on BYCU.

1. Put More Blues You Can Use back on your bookshelf.

2. Focus on BYCU. Don't move to the next lesson until you're fairly comfortable playing the study in the lesson you're working on. It doesn't have to be perfect, but you do have to be able to play it in time with a backing track. Don't skip the exercises. They are important.

3. Dig out the BYCU Chord book. Go directly to the exercise section. The 1st section can (and should) be read and studied. You can do that without a guitar in your hand. The 2nd section is just a reference guide. Skip it. Don't waste time learning chords out of context. The chord shapes you need are given again in the exercises.

That's it. Your practice routine is set up for you by these books. You don't have to work on both books every practice session if you don't have time. Alternate them throughout the week. The most important thing is to be consistent and practice on as many days as possible even if it's only for 15 minutes.

Allow yourself some time to just noodle around, explore, figure stuff out on your own, start seeing relationships and patterns, and play stuff you already know. Just don't let the noodling consume all your time. Spend 1 day a week with no books, for example. 

This is the way I'd do it if I could start all over again.

Welcome to the forum!

Since you're asking for practice advice for the first book, it sounds like you are at a beginner or intermediate level? You should consider taking lesson, e.g., Skype lesson with John Ganapes, at least for a couple of months to get an idea of how an experienced player practices. I guess everyone at this forum (who all mostly practice without a teacher) were extremely complacement with their recordings at first, and later cringed over them. Having a teacher early on will probably change to way you practice these studies.

But one thing is for certain, though. If you practice, you get better - so stick at it. And have fun every time you play!

Welcome.

Any sort of routine should be predicated on where you are starting.

When I first got started w/the first book, I had a lot of trouble maintaining rhythmic accuracy, so I put a lot of emphasis on using a metronome and supplemented the book with a lot of metronome-supported rhythmic exercise. Now my emphasis is shifting more towards articulation so I've started playing along with the demo tracks (rather than the backing tracks I focused on in the past).

On days you have only a short time I'd suggest focusing exclusively on one very short section of whatever you are currently working on that is giving you the most trouble and try to improve it a little.