Tag Archives: guitar practice schedule

Guitar Practice – Top 5 Super Useful Apps

You want to make the most of your limited practice time, and there are a lot of useful apps out there which can help you make your guitar practice more fun and more efficient. The one that is maybe the most useful and overlooked is in fact free, and you already have it on your phone.

The first part of this video is on the 5 Apps I use and then I also have some really solid recommendations at the end.

#5 Tuner

Guitar Tuner, Bass, Violin, Banjo & more | DaTuner - YouTube

Always good to have a backup tuner if you forget or lose your tuner. Also just passing it to a student in a lesson for them to tune.

The one I use is called DaTuner and it is free, there is a premium version without all the ads but since I use this more as a backup then I didn’t check out what it does and if it does that well beyond removing the ads.

My impression is that there are a lot of different tuner apps and they all do the same thing pretty well, and having a free one is always reassuring.

Later in the video, I am also going to give you the best tip for using your phone while practicing.

#4 iReal

iReal Pro offers an easy-to-use tool to help musicians of all levels master their art. The app simulates a real-sounding band that can accompany you as yo… | Muziek

It is a bit strange to recommend iReal because I find that it often does as much damage as it does good. So let me say up-front that I am really not a fan of the midi backing track sound of iReal and I am pretty sure that is not good for your swing feel.

Another thing I am not happy with is that you have chords for songs, but the melody is not there and the changes are often not fantastic. Of course, this is because of copyrights that make it impossible to include the actual song, so you can’t really blame the app.

And still, this is a great app to have for a session or gig where a song is called that you don’t know, or if a student brings wants to play a song you never played, and you can make your own harmony and share playlists if you are doing a cafe gig like opening a jam session or something else with no rehearsal.

#3 Metronome

How to Install Pro Metronome on PC for Windows and MAC

I don’t use the tuner or iReal all the time but they are on my phone. I do use my metronome app every day. There are a ton of metronome apps and a lot of them are free. For this app, I do have the Premium version but I don’t think I really use it for that. The only thing I did was make a preset so that you enter the tempo and the metronome is on 2&4, but that is hardly making use of all it can do. Always having a metronome is really practical, and this one can also go really slow which I use quite often.

What Apps Do You Recommend?

If there is an App that you really like to use that I did not talk about here, then leave a comment and help us discover it! If you know my videos you probably guessed that the next app would be high on the list.

#2 DrumGenius

APP - Drumgenius: the Jazz Rhythm Encyclopedia Created by Bassist Mauro Battisti

DrumGenius is a fantastic app, it is a lot of fun to play with and the different drum loops are extremely well made. It could use a few more straight-ahead medium and medium up swing loops, but for the rest it is great, and I also used it a lot for examples in my videos.

Another “secret weapon” that I sometimes use is soloing using the clave section of that app so you can solo over a blues in 4/4, but have the metronome in 5/4 or some other pattern for reference for timekeeping. That is a really useful exercise.

#1 Teach Yourself Guitar

Samsung's Camera app updated to version 10.5.03.1 (September 24, 2020) - Sammy Fans

The app on your phone that is really a game-changer for your playing is actually just something that is already in there and that you expect to be there: The Camera.

Having a recording device that is that easy to access and that helps you practice something and then sit back and listen to what you played without having to play at the same time and is incredibly effective for improving your playing. If there is one habit you want to build then it should be to record a short solo whenever you practice, and then sit down without your instrument and listen to what you play and figure out exactly what you want to improve.

That is is a video is really a bonus because it is mostly about the audio, but the way phones work then this is so easy to use that it is a shame not to use it like this.

Incredibly Useful Advice for Using a Phone for Practice

One thing that is pretty important when you are practicing and also using your phone is that you do so in flight mode. It is impossible to concentrate if you get notifications from Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook all the time when I upload a video, and if you don’t get interrupted it is 10 times as effective

Honorable Mentions

My top 5 in this video are based on the apps that I use regularly right now in my practice and that are on my phone, so it may change with time. I do feel that there are some really great apps out there that I recommend to my students and have used myself or use in periods.

Learning Fretboard Visualization with an App

Solo - Fretboard Visualization on the App Store

A great app to get a better overview of the fretboard and practice this in a really practical way is Solo. Solo is an app made by David Beebee and Tom Quayle from the Guitar Hour podcast. This is the only app I am mentioning here that does not have a free version, but if you are looking to improve your fretboard overview then this app is worth checking out.

David and Tom included some videos showing you how to use it, and there are exercises where you can work through songs and the app listens if you play the right notes. This makes it much more fun to practice stuff like this, and certainly worth a try.

Ear-training with a Free App

Lead Vocals - Improve Relative Pitch with Functional Ear Trainer

Another app that is great for training your ears that isn’t just about training intervals but really hearing notes in a key, which I think is so much more useful is Functional Ear Trainer. This app has a premium part as well but you don’t need to get that to learn from it, and the approach taken here is basic and super solid, and very useful.

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Get This Right About Everything You Practice

It is difficult to find time to practice and keep learning, so it is very important to not waste time with the things that you practice. Exactly what you practice is going to be different from person to person, but there are some useful questions that you can ask yourself about what you have in your guitar practice that will help you check that it will make sense to spend time on and is not a waste of time.

Get the PDF on Patreon:

You can get the PDF and GuitarPro files on Patreon here:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/get-this-right-42351915

Content:

00:00 Intro

00:28 Clear Goals

01:29 What Do I Need?

02:16 What Do I Learn?

02:44 The Right Way To Plan Practice

03:18 How Do I Practice Better?

03:30 Raw Material

04:02 Basic Application

04:30 Make Music With It

04:59 Going Through A Song

05:28 Use It Or Lose it!

05:58 Like the video? Check out my Patreon page!

 

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Get the PDF!

The PDF for this lesson is available through Patreon in the Patreon FB group. By joining the Patreon Community you are in the company of 500 others supporting and helping shape the content on my YouTube channel.

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If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for topics then, please let me know. Leave a comment on the video or send me an e-mail. That is the best way for me to improve my lessons and make them fit what you are searching for.

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Avoid Long Practice Plans – This is what you should focus on

You can make a lot of mistakes and waste a lot of time by having inefficient and unrealistic practice plans tie you down. At the same time, a Great Guitar Practice Plan can help you progress and make a huge difference for your motivation.

This video deals with that and helps you make better choices.

Goals and Guitar Practice Plans

If you are learning guitar or learning jazz then a part of what you are doing is setting goals for yourself and trying to reach those goals. That is a natural way of learning, but when you make a practice plan there are some things to be aware of. A Guitar Practice Plan should help you stay motivated and actually reach those goals. It really pays off to be aware of what goals you set for yourself. Especially if you are teaching yourself and don’t have a teacher to guide you.

And that is what I want to talk about in this video: How to set some good goals and work towards them, the 3 things you need to consider when you plan what to work on.

Learn more on Self-teaching

Check out THIS PLAYLIST to see some of my videos on topics related to teaching yourself to play Jazz and Jazz Guitar,

Content:

0:00 Intro – Setting Goals for yourself and learning

0:48 What is a realistic goal and is it realistic

2:02 #1 Long term goals have to have smaller goals along the way

2:35 The Step-wise Plan for Learning to improvise with chord tones

3:25 Be Specific

3:40 #2 Knowing where you are to know wha the next step is

3:55 Am pentatonic! On to Giant Steps!

4:53 Difficult Topics to improve on your own

5:11 #3 The Importance of flexibility

5:39 Stay Flexible don’t force it

5:48 The All scales example

6:36 Making Music Is The Goal

7:24 How do you work on setting goals for yourself?

7:47 Like The Video? Check out my Patreon page

Get a free E-book

If you want to download a Free E-book of 15 II Valt I licks then subscribe to my newsletter:

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for topics then please let me know. Leave a comment on the video or send me an e-mail. That is the best way for me to improve my lessons and make them fit what you are searching for.

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel and feel free to connect with me via Instagram, Twitter Google+ or Facebook to keep up to date with new lessons, concerts, and releases.

Guitar Practice – How To Be Your Own Teacher

Even if you have lessons you know that most of the time you need to teach yourself and make sure you are improving while you practice guitar. You need to make sure that are getting something out of how you practice and spend your time.

In this video, I am going to talk about how you can easily add something to your practice sessions that will help you evaluate your playing and give you an idea about whether you are progressing. I will also go over 3 things to keep in mind to get the most out of this way of working.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUFfHa09LM0

Content:

0:00 Intro – How Lessons really work

0:36 How To Teach Yourself

0:53 The Only Approach to Know how you sound

1:22 Why Should You Record Yourself

2:00 The main reason this works better

2:48 How To Record Yourself

3:36 Using Video – A Phone and A Coffee Mug

4:05 More Metronome than Backing track?

4:52 I HATE listening to my own playing. (The Confidence problem)

5:16 Just Get Started! – Notice Negative and Positive Things

5:52 Strategies for using recordings

6:39 The Gap Between how it feels and how it actually sounds

7:14 3 things You Need to Do

7:31 #1 – Distraction

8:14 #2 – How Do You Want it to sound

9:12 #3 – Measure over a longer period

10:01 How Do You Use Recordings of your playing in your practice?

10:13 Like The Video? Check out My Patreon Page.

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If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for topics then please let me know. Leave a comment on the video or  send me an e-mail. That is the best way for me to improve my lessons and make them fit what you are searching for.

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Don’t Waste Your Practice Time On These 3 Things

It is important to know how to practice jazz guitar so you don’t waste your time or focus on the wrong things. Here are three topics that I think too many jazz guitarists spend practice time on and think that they need to know which they really don’t. Most of this is related to a myth or misunderstanding and I think this is really worth talking a bit about because it doesn’t help you and it really works against you.

This may also be the first video I ever made telling you to not practice something instead of giving you stuff to practice.

Of course I would love to hear what you think, because maybe it’s different for you or maybe I am completely wrong?

Content:

0:00 Intro – Don’t Wast Your Practice Time

0:58 #1 Sight Reading – What Do You Actually Need?

1:23 The Big Myth about Sight Reading

1:53 How the real process is.

2:20 Learn Music By Ear

2:31 A More Useful Goal and Approach

3:15 #2 Voice-Leading

3:50 A Time and A Place for Everything

4:35 Don’t think just play

5:23 #3 Scales – What You Need and What You Don’t

5:54 New scales ≠ New Melodies

6:32 The Gypsy Mixolydian #4 b9 scale

6:39 What Else Are We Wating Time on?

7:01 Like The Video? Check out my Patreon Page.

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Get the PDF!

The PDF with examples for this video is available through Patreon. You can check out my Patreon Page here: https://www.patreon.com/jenslarsen

Jazz Guitar Insiders Facebook Group

Join 1500+ Other Jazz Guitarists 🎸Join us in the Facebook Jazz Guitar Group Community: http://bit.ly/InsidersFBGroup

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for topics then please let me know. Leave a comment on the video or send me an e-mail. That is the best way for me to improve my lessons and make them fit what you are searching for.

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel and feel free to connect with me via Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook to keep up to date with new lessons, concerts, and releases.

How to Solve the “I Have no Practice Motivation” Problem

It is very difficult to keep motivated and figure out how to practice guitar so that you feel like staying with it. This is especially true if you practice and learn something complicated like Jazz Guitar. But you also know that you have to be consistent and dedicated to book improvements in your playing and develop you skills. If you don’t practice you probably will just end up in a vicious circle that will stop you playing all together.

In this video I am going to go over 5 things that helps me keep motivated and inspired to practice. Things that are coming from my own experience but also from having taught a lot of students and been around a lot of jazz musicians in general.

This video will give you some ideas to keep inspired and working and also some other perspective on what playing an instrument and playing music is about. Not all of these tips are really about the practice situation but about what else you do.

Hope you like it!

Content of the video:

0:00 Intro – Staying Motivated Why it is important

1:17 #1 Is You Practice Session Fun? How To Improve it!

2:24 #2 Check out Live Music – Get Inspired!

3:43 #3 Track You Progress and Keep Track of Your Work

4:56 #4 Play With Other People

6:28 #5 Taking Lessons

7:06 What Keeps You Motivated? Leave a Comment!

7:24 Like the video? Check Out My Patreon Page!

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If you are on Facebook you should Join us in the Facebook Jazz Guitar Group Community: http://bit.ly/InsidersFBGroup

The group is almost at 500 members and we have a lot of great discussions on Jazz, Guitars and everything related to that!

Get a free E-book

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Get the PDF!

You can also download the PDF of my examples here:

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for topics then please let me know. Leave a comment on the video or  send me an e-mail. That is the best way for me to improve my lessons and make them fit what you are searching for.

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel and feel free to connect with me via Instagram,Twitter Google+ or Facebook to keep up to date with new lessons, concerts and releases.

3 Mistakes Wasting Your Guitar Practice Time – Road to Effective Study

It is difficult to find a guitar practice routine that is efficient and it is important to think about whether your practice time is spend in the most effective way.

In this video I go over 3 problems that are very common in a guitar practice schedule and I talk about how you evaluate and how to practice guitar effectively. Each segment is turned into a question that you can ask yourself to evaluate your practice and I include a real example of a topic you might work on and demonstrate and discuss how you can approach this.

The examples include a George Benson Phrase and an Imaginary Michael Brecker Lick.

List of content:

0:27 Intro – and the three questions to test your own practice

0:57 Do you know what you want to Learn

1:32 The Advantages of being Specific

2:04 The George Benson Licks

3:53 Practicing using a George Benson Lick

4:09 Are you Practicing What want to Learn?

5:24 Practicing Comping as if you are in a band

6:12 Comping All The Things You Are with Metronome on 2&4

6:45 The Voicings, voice-leading and Extensions are not enough!

7:32 How Do You Work Towards Your Goals.

7:56 The Dreyfus model (or my take on that on Guitar..)

8:21 Learning to use Arppegios in my Dreyfus Model stages

8:51 The (Huge) Benefits of this way of looking at your own learning process

9:03 The Imaginary Michael Brecker Pentatonic Idea in my Dreyfus model

10:25 I DON’T BELIEVE IN MAGIC (here’s why..)

10:55 Practicing the Imaginary Michael Brecker Pentatonic Idea

11:11 It takes Practice to be good at practicing!

11:45 Do you have advice or suggestions?

12:43 Want to help me? Check out my Patreon Page.

My Guitar Practice Routine 2017 – Technique: Open Triads, Quartal Arpeggios

We need to work on guitar technique, but at the same time, it is important not to get stuck with the same guitar technique exercises day after day. Having an ever-varying technique routine is a better way to help you prepare for jazz improvisation and practice guitar effectively.

Since my video on things you should include in your guitar practice routine. This video is discussing the Guitar Technique part of a practice schedule and is just an overview of what I work on. It is my version of the best way to practice guitar, but it is of course not the only way.

Some of the topics I cover are:
0:00 Intro (26-2)
0:22 What is a good Technique Schedule?
1:17 Do you have a good idea for an exercise?
1:45 Basic Coordination and warm up

3:49 Arpeggios across the neck
5:36 Triads Across the neck
7:28 Improvisation with Open voiced or Spread Triads
8:48 Steve Morse Exercise with open triads

9:39 Scale Practice
11:01 C melodic minor across the neck
11:25 Scales in position
12:06 Triads
14:14 Diatonic 7th chords

14:57 Basic intervals
16:15 Focus on different Right Hand Techniques

17:50 Other Structures
18:35 Quartal Arpeggios
18:59 Shell Voicings
20:05 Drop2 voicings
20:51 Triad Inversions

21:28 A few closing thoughts on my routine
23:49 What’s your opinion? & Kreutzer Etudes

Vlog: The Perfect Guitar Practice Routine -5 tips for Jazz Guitar Practice

Jazz Guitar Practice Routines

Getting the Perfect Practice Routine is a challenge! It is important to think about how you can set up a practice routine so you learn as much as possible with as little practice as possible.

In this video I will try to cover 5 tips or topics to keep in mind when setting up a practice routine.

I have also added an extra suggestion on very valuable tool for your practice that you should be working with! (well two, actually, but one of them is just a metronome 😃)

 

My Lessons on Scale Practice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdNzYzLTCp4&list=PLWYuNvZPqqcGhA7WjDTjYJ5EfTJ_rdwHY&index=1

Adam Neeley video on rhythm:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIfD7ZN5FYI&t=299s

Some Lessons on Composition tools:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy9FybnvPvg&list=PLWYuNvZPqqcHMMXjLqWK81w20Kpdm5_RC&index=2