At this stage we're up to a 30-minute workout.

If you find this too much, then try breaking it into two 15-minute practice sessions on alternate days.

Stage 3 Practice Schedule

Description	Time
Finger Workout	5 mins
Chord Practice (Strum / Pick / Strum)	5 mins
1 minute Changes
--- C to Am	1 min
--- C to A	1 min
--- C to G	1 min
--- G to E	1 min
--- G to D	1 min
Rhythm Guitar Practice (repetition)	5 mins
Songs / Chord Sequences	5 mins
JUSTIN Training	5 mins

Things To Remember

Finger Workout
Please remember that this exercise is about developing your finger strength, independence and stretch, so please don't try and play this exercise fast, as there's no point!

Chord Practice
Remember that the point of this exercise is to get your chords sounding clear and train your fingers to go to exactly the right spot to get the chord sounding great. Start with a strum and then pick each note individually, except any strings that have the X next to them that you don't play. Try to play the notes with the tips of your fingers. Remember that dead sounding notes need to be fixed and the usual causes are either:
a) The finger is too far from the fret.
b) One of your fingers is touching a string that it shouldn't.

Move your fingers around as you pick out the strings until they all sound good and then strum them again, and as you give them the last strums, tell your fingers that this is how you want them to go next time. It will look a little strange to anyone that is watching you, but it really helps! ;)

One Minute Changes
The object of the exercise is to get your fingers moving quickly. Although you should be trying to get the fingers in the perfect positions that you have been working on in your chord practice, if they are a little sloppy it is ok, we are working the speed here!

The important thing here is to practice the chord changes that you struggle the most with. In your practice schedule you should write in the amount of changes that you made in that practice session. Make sure you use your timer, and push yourself to go as fast as possible.

Rhythm Guitar Practice
Spend your time playing the pattern over and over again; don't try and add the strumming patterns to songs yet. That will be coming soon, and you will do it LOADS better if you follow my advice here and work on the patterns first before you try to apply them.

Songs / Chord Sequences
Just have fun and have a go at playing any songs you like, from my suggested list, or just something else that you fancy playing (preferably ones that just use the chords covered so far). Try to keep strumming basic "4's", one down strum on each beat, and try and keep strumming along and get your changes fast enough to not have to pause between chord changes!

JUSTIN Training
This is important, getting your ears working. Just go through the exercises and give your ears the workout they deserve!

When should I move on to Stage 4?

Part of the learning process here is for you develop as a student and learn to judge when it's time to move on. If you have an ‘in the flesh' teacher then you have to rely on their judgement to know when it's time to move forward, but be aware that teachers naturally feel guilty if they are not giving out new material and so will sometimes rush a student onto new things even if they would probably be better off staying and perfecting the previous week's work!

So, when to move on? When you feel like you have the material under your fingers and it's going O.K. Don't be looking for perfection, just that you feel you are making progress and you are ready for new material. It's a really good idea to develop this as a feeling (rather than making it too academic), and so from now on you will have to call it yourself!