A Good Way to Practice the Electric Guitar

One way to practice your guitar is to split up the day into various time slots devoted to singular topics, such as rhythm playing, chords, scales, finger exercises, etc. While that method can be extremely effective, there is also another method that I would use for months at a time that I think is equally worthwhile for learning the electric guitar. Before I explain the actual method involved, I would like to give you a little background information.

During the course of my guitar playing "career" I encountered a few wayward individuals who were not familiar with the best way(s) to practice. Instead, they would announce they were going to embark on a practice session and go into another room and play a few riffs, then run through a couple of old licks that had been part of their repertoire for years, jam their way through a couple of tired and weary chord progressions, then put their guitar in its rack and head out the door to a party.

You will not progress much as a guitar player if you do this.

One highly effective and entertaining way that I have found to practice is to learn songs you like with the aid of tablature from a magazine or from the internet (there is a lot of free tab on the net, although most of it isn't as accurate as magazine versions done by professionals with good sound equipment, which is used to slow down difficult guitar parts). Here is what I recommend:

1. Go to a store with a few guitar magazines and leaf through them until you chance upon a song that seems interesting enough to learn (one with a good guitar solo is better than one without, of course) - many quality guitar magazines have good transcriptions of new and classic songs.

2. Hopefully you already have the CD containing the song you want to learn so you won't have to go out and buy it.

3. Put your CD player in a room with your guitar, music stand, and amp; place the guitar tablature in front of you on the music stand.