Part III - Practice Techniques

This section contains a bunch of practice techniques and variations for you to try during your practice sessions and experimentation.

There’s a fair amount of information here, so take it bit by bit. Pick one or two and try them out! They’re all useful, but they also have limitations depending on the person and situation, so investigate and adapt. Find the ones that you like and that are effective for you.

But be sure to give each technique a good effort, as sometimes things take a while to click. Give it all you’ve got, with full concentration, and spend some time with it. If, after an honest effort, it’s still not working, discard it. And maybe later that discarded material will be useful, as you understand something different about it and your playing. No rush, no fuss.

I’ve assigned arbitrary ratings to each technique, based on how useful I think they might be to a newcomer; see the Technique Rating Index. All of them are useful in some respect, though.

Lastly, particularly for repertoire (songs and licks), don’t get hung up on these techniques! All of these practice tricks are done to thoroughly learn and ingrain movements. Once you’ve learned it, just play and enjoy the music.

  • Chaining - Play the two notes at either end of a passage at speed. Then add notes before it (back chaining) of after it (forward chaining), until you've chained them all together to make the full passage.

  • Chunking - Take one long phrase or idea, and break it up into chunks, with clearly identified "target notes" at the start of each chunk. When practicing and playing, aim for these target notes.

  • Dropping Notes - For polyphonic music or fingerstyle/Travis picking, play one voice steadily, and build the line in the other voice incrementally.

  • Dynamics - Vary the volume of your playing using only your hands and fingers.

  • Ghosting - For polyphonic music or fingerstyle, play the melody with proper fingering and full expression, and only pretend to play any other voices.

  • Hammer Groups - Work on fretting hand issues by reducing consecutive notes to a single chord (effectively playing those chunks at infinite speed), and then play them as a lightning-fast arpeggio by offsetting each note extremely slightly.

  • Hands Separate - Work on fretting and picking separately, up to and past target tempo, and then join them.

  • Mental Practice - Practice and play away from the instrument.

  • Rhythmic Variations - Play a section with varying rhythms. For straight 8ths or 16ths, play with dotted rhythms (slow-fast and fast-slow), and vice-versa.

  • Simplify - Don't try to do too much at once -- break it down to small components and master those first.

  • Slow Practice - Practice at a slow tempo -- but not in slow motion -- to complement your fast practice.

  • Speed Bursts - Play parts of a passage at half speed, and parts at full speed.

  • Tempo Variations - If aiming for a goal tempo, try going much faster and much slower, to learn how you need to do it.