Stage 6 Practice Schedule

Now we have added another exercise and split up the five minutes of technical work. Make sure you are using your timer, and make full use of the two minutes that you are working on on the finger workout. The timer will help keep you focused!

Stage 6 Practice Schedule

Description	Time
Finger Workout	2 mins
Basic Picking Exercise	3 mins
Chord Practice (Strum / Pick / Strum)	5 mins
1 minute Changes
--- F to C	1 min
--- F to E	1 min
--- F to D	1 min
--- F to Am	1 min
--- F to G	1 min
Rhythm Guitar Practice (RUST #9 tap foot and ties)	5 mins
Songs / Chord Sequences	5 mins
JUSTIN Training	5 mins

 

Things To Remember

F is going to be hard. It's going to take some work. But don't be discouraged; pretty much everyone struggles with it, which is why it has such a bad reputation! But it's nice really! Just get stuck in and nail that sucker!

Being able to play F cleanly is partly to do with muscle strength, which will take time and practice to develop. Yes, having a good technique will help a whole lot, but it's also just going to take some time to get used to, and changing chords to and from it will also take time to get right.

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

Basic Picking Exercise
Just be working on this slowly and get used to the idea that sometimes you want to play just one string at a time. We will be learning some easy scales soon, so we want to get your picking used to the idea. Don't try and be too fast, keep it easy and slow and as accurate as you can.

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 to 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
Just 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!