Latest / The Steve Stine Podcast / The 15-Minute Practice Routine That Replaces an Hour of Random Practice

Transcript

The 15-Minute Practice Routine That Replaces an Hour of Random Practice · The Steve Stine Podcast

• 0:35
  Steve: If you only have 15 minutes to practice, the worst thing that you can do is sit down and for the first five minutes try and figure out what you should be working on.
• 0:43
  Steve: And then I think what happens with most guitar players is we sit down, we try and find a lick or watch a YouTube video, we run through a scale, we noodle around a little bit, and all of a sudden the practice time is over.
• 0:54
  Steve: So instead of giving you more stuff to practice, what I want to give you are four simple blocks that you can use.
• 1:00
  Steve: If you've got 15 minutes, you can choose three of these blocks, spend about five minutes on each of them, and actually get something done.
• 1:06
  Steve: Now, the goal here isn't to practice everything.
• 1:09
  Steve: The goal is to stop practicing randomly, build a plan.
• 1:13
  Steve: Now, there's nothing wrong with watching guitar lessons on YouTube.
• 1:16
  Steve: I'm not saying that.
• 1:16
  Steve: Obviously, I have a lot of that stuff too.
• 1:18
  Steve: But what you might want to do is focus on certain things that you really need to do.
• 1:24
  Steve: Okay, I call it focus practice, practicing with intention.
• 1:27
  Steve: So that you're working on the things that you need to be able to get to the next level and not just looking for the next thing to try and keep you motivated.
• 1:34
  Steve: Sometimes that's a good thing.
• 1:35
  Steve: But you need to build a plan where you can focus on the same things every day to try and develop your actual skills.
• 1:41
  Steve: So here's the four blocks I want you to think about.
• 1:43
  Steve: Block number one is what I call the three S's, which is strength, speed, and synchronization.
• 1:49
  Steve: The essential things that we need as guitar players to be able to do the things we want to do on the guitar.
• 1:54
  Steve: Block two is going to be fundamental skill development.
• 1:57
  Steve: Block three is going to be application, and then block four is going to be music.
• 2:01
  Steve: And notice I'm separating application from music because practicing something inside a musical situation and actually playing creatively, they're not the same thing.
• 2:12
  Steve: So let's start with the three S's.
• 2:14
  Steve: Okay.
• 2:14
  Steve: This is really about getting your hands to work better, developing your strength, developing your speed, and obviously your synchronization.
• 2:22
  Steve: So there's three things I want to give you today, and I want you to understand every one of these blocks we could go into an hour conversation about, but I want you to just get started on something that is essential that you could actually start doing on a daily basis.
• 2:34
  Steve: So the 20-second exercise is the first thing we're going to talk about.
• 2:37
  Steve: What you do is you simply go to your guitar, you find a fret and a string.
• 2:41
  Steve: We're going to go to the third string, fifth fret right here.
• 2:43
  Steve: And what we do is a series of hammer ons and pull-offs, which are trills.
• 2:53
  Steve: And what you want to do is hit your finger, that's a hammer on, smack that finger down, and then do a little flick of the finger, which is called a pull-off.
• 3:00
  Steve: And you want to do that as fast and hard as you can for 20 seconds.
• 3:08
  Steve: When you get done, what you're going to do is you're simply going to move up one fret with the third finger.
• 3:13
  Steve: So you're going to stay on this five, you're going to move from your six to your seven, and you're going to do exactly the same thing.
• 3:20
  Steve: And you do that without stopping.
• 3:22
  Steve: So you do this one for 20 seconds, you do this one for 20 seconds.
• 3:25
  Steve: So you do this one, into this one, and then of course the next one's going to be moving to your pinky.
• 3:34
  Steve: Okay?
• 3:35
  Steve: So you do each one of those for 20 seconds.
• 3:37
  Steve: Then what you do without stopping, you set your middle finger down, which means your first finger could come off or stay down.
• 3:43
  Steve: It's entirely up to you.
• 3:44
  Steve: And you do a series of ham rounds and pull-ups to your ring finger.
• 3:48
  Steve: And then you go seamlessly to your pinky.
• 3:51
  Steve: And when you get done with that, you're going to set your third finger down and you're going to go to your pinky.
• 3:55
  Steve: So you do each one of those for 20 seconds each.
• 3:59
  Steve: Okay?
• 3:59
  Steve: Now that doesn't take five minutes, but you might do this a couple of times, okay?
• 4:04
  Steve: You might do this multiple times throughout the day, okay?
• 4:07
  Steve: Whatever works for you.
• 4:08
  Steve: The one thing I will say about this particular exercise is what's really great about it is you can do start with your one, go to your two, go to your three, go to your four, and so on.
• 4:17
  Steve: That's one way to practice this.
• 4:18
  Steve: The other way is start backwards.
• 4:20
  Steve: Sometimes start with the third finger in the pinky and then work your way backwards.
• 4:25
  Steve: So you're starting with your weak fingers instead of your strong fingers.
• 4:28
  Steve: And the third way that you can practice this is just isolate certain ones that you struggle with the most, which is usually going to be the one with the third finger or the middle finger, right?
• 4:37
  Steve: Usually if your first finger is involved, those are gonna be your stronger fingers, although people really struggle sometimes with, you know, third and fourth finger combinations.
• 4:44
  Steve: So that's the first thing that we do.
• 4:46
  Steve: The second part of the three S is a two-minute drill.
• 4:49
  Steve: Okay.
• 4:50
  Steve: And what you're doing here is you're gonna set your metronome.
• 4:52
  Steve: Let's say you're set your metronome to 100 beats per minute or 110 beats per minute.
• 4:57
  Steve: Okay.
• 4:57
  Steve: You can set it to whatever you want.
• 4:59
  Steve: What you're gonna do is once you've got that metronome set, you're going to play two per click.
• 5:04
  Steve: So let's say I go to 120 here, just to show you as an example.
• 5:08
  Steve: So if I set my metronome, okay, what I'm gonna do is go to my guitar, let's say I go to my six string.
• 5:16
  Steve: You can go to any string you want, but what you're gonna do is do two per click.
• 5:30
  Steve: Okay.
• 5:31
  Steve: What's happening there is for two minutes, two straight minutes, we're gonna do that downpicking exercise.
• 5:37
  Steve: Now, if the tempo is too slow, and remember we're doing two per click.
• 5:41
  Steve: So if the tempo or the speed is too slow for you, you'll get done with the two minutes and you won't really feel anything.
• 5:47
  Steve: If the tempo is way too fast, you won't be able to get to the end of the two minutes.
• 5:51
  Steve: What you want to do is try and find a speed in between there where you can make it to the end of the two minutes, but you're kind of struggling.
• 5:58
  Steve: Usually after about 30 seconds, you start feeling it.
• 6:01
  Steve: So let's say I bump this up a little bit.
• 6:02
  Steve: I'm just gonna move my metronome up.
• 6:04
  Steve: Let's say I go to 130, let's say I go to 140.
• 6:19
  Steve: And you do that for two straight minutes.
• 6:22
  Steve: Now, the goal when you're using a metronome, and again, this is another conversation we could have, but the goal when using a metronome is be accurate.
• 6:30
  Steve: Don't pretend like you're playing along with the metronome, but actually play along with it.
• 6:34
  Steve: Okay.
• 6:35
  Steve: So this could add another two minutes.
• 6:37
  Steve: So we had our 20-second exercise for each one of the fingers.
• 6:39
  Steve: Now we've got this two-minute exercise that we could do.
• 6:42
  Steve: All right, and the third one that we could do for a minute or two would be the what I call the chromatic builder, which is just playing one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four across the guitar.
• 6:53
  Steve: Okay.
• 6:54
  Steve: When you get to the top, you can simply move over and you can keep going.
• 6:58
  Steve: You can do this forward, you can do it backward, but again, don't make this complicating.
• 7:02
  Steve: The goal isn't to try and figure out every possible mathematical variation and then confuse yourself and then you don't do anything.
• 7:08
  Steve: The goal is just to find two or three things that really work for you and you practice those.
• 7:13
  Steve: You sit down and you just do it.
• 7:14
  Steve: So, for instance, if I was to do this one, I'll just set it at uh 140 again.
• 7:19
  Steve: So if I was to do this, I'm gonna alternate pick.
• 7:38
  Steve: Now, maybe one day, maybe tomorrow, I'm gonna do the same thing, but I'm gonna go backwards.
• 7:52
  Steve: Again, the key here is when you practice with intention, you might decide for five minutes you're just going to work on the chromatic exercise, or you're just gonna work on that 20-second exercise, or you're just gonna work on the two-minute thing a couple of times.
• 8:06
  Steve: You see, the the goal here isn't to confuse yourself, it's to figure out what you need the most.
• 8:11
  Steve: So when you grab your guitar, you're you're you're gonna practice with intention.
• 8:15
  Steve: You know what you want to work on that day, and you're gonna hit it.
• 8:18
  Steve: So these are three ideas within a block that you could work on.
• 8:22
  Steve: Now, block two is fundamental skill development.
• 8:26
  Steve: Maybe you're working on scales, right?
• 8:27
  Steve: Maybe you're working on picking through a pentatonic scale, or maybe you're focusing on uh connecting positions together, or you're working on bending, or you're working on vibrato, or something like that.
• 8:39
  Steve: Again, there's a thousand things we could do as guitar players, but you want to focus on practicing with intention.
• 8:46
  Steve: What are the things that you need the most to try and work on?
• 8:49
  Steve: If you've got 15 minutes, you can't cover everything.
• 8:52
  Steve: And you don't want to practice something for 30 seconds, it really doesn't do you any good.
• 8:56
  Steve: You want to do something like if if you decide that this thing, this bar chord, for instance, is what you need to focus on, that's fine.
• 9:03
  Steve: Then that's what you need to work on.
• 9:05
  Steve: But you know, another thing you can do is just keep like a ledger or a practice log of what it is that you're working on and what kind of things that you're struggling with.
• 9:12
  Steve: So when you wake up every day, you know exactly what it is that you need to be focusing on.
• 9:17
  Steve: Now, if you're like most people, you're gonna find out in a hurry that 15 minutes doesn't really give you all the time that you need to get everything done.
• 9:24
  Steve: But there are days when you just can't do that.
• 9:26
  Steve: So that's why we're talking about this.
• 9:27
  Steve: Core elements that you need to focus on.
• 9:30
  Steve: So we just did the three S's.
• 9:33
  Steve: So maybe we don't need to work on those pentatonics with a metronome right now.
• 9:37
  Steve: Maybe we do, but maybe right now what we're gonna do is we're gonna work on a particular pattern or a lick that we're focused on or a particular technique of bending or vibrato or something like that.
• 9:47
  Steve: It could be all kinds of different things.
• 9:49
  Steve: Think about that, but fundamental skill development, things that you're actually physically doing on the guitar.
• 9:56
  Steve: You're not just doing them for strength, for speed, and for synchronization.
• 10:00
  Steve: You're doing them because they're musical elements that you could use in your playing.
• 10:04
  Steve: So now we get to block three, and this is application.
• 10:07
  Steve: I think this is what a lot of people are missing.
• 10:09
  Steve: Knowing something and knowing how to use it are two completely different things.
• 10:13
  Steve: So you can practice the bend all day by itself, but at some point, what you need to do is start actually trying to implement that into actual music.
• 10:21
  Steve: So you put on a backing track, okay, and you start trying to practice, you're moving things from the fundamental space into the application space.
• 10:30
  Steve: Okay, you're still practicing, you're just not freely soloing yet.
• 10:35
  Steve: You're trying to implement these things.
• 10:37
  Steve: You're working on groove, right?
• 10:39
  Steve: You're working on uh a lick, you're trying to implement that lick in, whatever it might be.
• 10:43
  Steve: But application is a really important part of this, is moving.
• 10:47
  Steve: If you think about these four blocks, they work in in tandem with each other.
• 10:51
  Steve: You're developing the skills, the essential, crucial skills as a guitar player: strength, speed, right?
• 10:58
  Steve: Synchronization.
• 10:59
  Steve: And then you're moving into developing the certain specific skills that you need as a guitar player.
• 11:04
  Steve: Whether you're more of a strummer that needs to work on chords or you're learning how to solo, but you still struggle with X, Y, and Z.
• 11:11
  Steve: And I will say this: so often I meet people that will go, I can do this and I can do this and I can do this.
• 11:16
  Steve: But when they actually execute it, it isn't as good as they'd like it to be.
• 11:20
  Steve: Yeah, they've done a bend before, but they haven't really explored the world of bends and what you can actually do with them.
• 11:26
  Steve: Or they know a lick, but in this case, with application, they have no idea how to actually implement that lick into their playing.
• 11:33
  Steve: Okay, so application is the section between um fundamental skill development and music, where we're trying to take these pieces and we're trying to practice them with a particular backing track.
• 11:45
  Steve: Last thing I'll say about this is find the right backing track.
• 11:49
  Steve: Find a backing track that fits the key that you've been working on, right?
• 11:53
  Steve: If you're working in A minor, find something in A minor.
• 11:56
  Steve: Find something that fits the speed or the tempo that you've been working at, right?
• 12:01
  Steve: If you're working on scales or maybe it's that four finger exercise and you're doing all this stuff and it's kind of around the 120 area and you're going and finding a backing track at 160, there might be a disconnect there and you're having a hard time trying to, you know, uh implement the things that you're working on, applying them because the tempo is wrong.
• 12:20
  Steve: So be aware, be cognizant.
• 12:22
  Steve: And if you find a couple three backing tracks that you like, you know, bookmark them so you've got those things.
• 12:28
  Steve: Don't feel like every single day you need to try and find a new backing track and then you're just all over the place.
• 12:34
  Steve: The goal is finding your comfort zone.
• 12:36
  Steve: And sometimes in order to do that, you got to use the same track or the same groove or the same vibe and the same key over and over and over to figure out what that is.
• 12:44
  Steve: Again, I'm not saying you can't do other things.
• 12:46
  Steve: What I'm saying is if you've got 15 minutes, work in an area that you know you need work on and build out these four pieces, these four blocks that can work in tandem with each other.
• 12:57
  Steve: Okay, so then we get to block four.
• 12:58
  Steve: So block four is really important.
• 13:00
  Steve: Block four is music, creativity, okay?
• 13:04
  Steve: The top of the heap, so to speak.
• 13:06
  Steve: This is where you put on that backing track and you're not practicing, you're playing.
• 13:12
  Steve: Okay.
• 13:13
  Steve: So your guitar brain is moving to the side and your creative brain is coming in.
• 13:18
  Steve: And this is something, again, most guitar players don't spend near enough time working on.
• 13:22
  Steve: They don't understand what a creative brain is.
• 13:24
  Steve: It's not the application that we just did or the fundamental practice that we just did.
• 13:29
  Steve: Okay.
• 13:30
  Steve: It's allowing yourself to go free and see what comes out when the music starts.
• 13:34
  Steve: What kinds of things can you can you create, right?
• 13:37
  Steve: What kind of connection to you make, can you make to the music, right?
• 13:40
  Steve: You ask yourself, what is the music asking of me?
• 13:43
  Steve: And then you try and respond in a musical context.
• 13:47
  Steve: Okay.
• 13:47
  Steve: This is a block that I think most guitar players do not spend near enough time in.
• 13:53
  Steve: Now, if you're if you're failing at one of the other blocks, obviously this becomes a little more difficult, this creative space, because there's parts that are missing.
• 14:03
  Steve: So you see how they all kind of feed into each other.
• 14:05
  Steve: That's the whole point, is trying to create a practice routine where all of these pieces are built in a column, if you will, where they're all part of the same thing.
• 14:15
  Steve: They're all feeding each other.
• 14:16
  Steve: It's not just, you know, I'm learning all the notes on my guitar, and then I'm learning the cage system, then I'm learning whatever.
• 14:21
  Steve: And all of these pieces, although they're great, they're not connected to each other.
• 14:25
  Steve: And that's the goal is to try and connect these parts together.
• 14:28
  Steve: So hopefully that helps you a little bit.
• 14:30
  Steve: So if you think about what just happened, you didn't learn anything new necessarily, but what you did is you started learning how to develop an actual plan of attack.
• 14:39
  Steve: So every day when you wake up and you practice, you know what you're working on, you know why you're working on it, and the pieces are fitting together.
• 14:45
  Steve: Now to wrap this up, if you only have 15 minutes, I'm not telling you to squeeze all four of these into 15 minutes.
• 14:50
  Steve: You might choose three of them.
• 14:52
  Steve: You might choose two of them.
• 14:53
  Steve: Okay.
• 14:54
  Steve: The more you practice this way, the more you're going to figure out exactly how to approach this because they're again, they're all working together to help each other.
• 15:02
  Steve: So here's what I want you to do today.
• 15:03
  Steve: I want you to write down these four blocks, the three S's, okay?
• 15:09
  Steve: Fundamental skill development, application, and music.
• 15:12
  Steve: And if you've got 15 minutes, I want you to choose three of those.
• 15:16
  Steve: Give each one your attention for five minutes.
• 15:18
  Steve: Okay.
• 15:18
  Steve: Don't worry about everything else that you could be doing.
• 15:21
  Steve: Focus on what you need to work on.
• 15:23
  Steve: Okay.
• 15:24
  Steve: And as you get better at this, again, you can refine.
• 15:26
  Steve: Maybe you do uh uh the skill block, but you're you're gonna focus on these two things.
• 15:31
  Steve: Or you're working on the three S's, but today you're just gonna work on the 20-second exercise.
• 15:35
  Steve: It's gonna take you a little while to get used to this, but it's way better than just randomly playing.
• 15:41
  Steve: Okay.
• 15:42
  Steve: And if you don't know, if you're not sure which ones of these things that you need the most, that's where you might need some outside help.
• 15:47
  Steve: But I'm just letting you know that we have what we call the Guitar Zoom Academy.
• 15:51
  Steve: It's an amazing place where we're actually focusing on the skills that you need to get from where you are to where you want to go.
• 15:58
  Steve: Okay.
• 15:59
  Steve: And then we just keep optimizing those things that you're working on to get you where you're going.
• 16:03
  Steve: And we do it through assessments of your playing, through you being able to ask questions, all those kind of things.
• 16:08
  Steve: You're not just watching a bunch of videos.
• 16:10
  Steve: Okay, that's not how it works.
• 16:12
  Steve: You're not seeing somebody once a week for 30 minutes.
• 16:14
  Steve: It's not how it works.
• 16:15
  Steve: You live in this academy, you live in this environment with us.
• 16:18
  Steve: We're working together every day of the week if we want to.
• 16:21
  Steve: Again, depending on your availability.
• 16:23
  Steve: So you can head over to guitarzoom.com and you can learn more about that and see if that's something that you might be interested in.
• 16:28
  Steve: All right.