Tag Archives: guitar practice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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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The Wrong Way To Practice Something New

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When you practice Jazz Guitar, then the most fun part of practicing is to work on new things you can add to your playing and enjoy using it while playing music. But often the way you start working on new material actually also stops you from getting it into your playing, and that is what I want to discuss in this video, and of course, give you a few easy ways to fix it.

Content

0:00 Intro

0:30 Setting Yourself up to Fail?

1:20 Using it in a Solo

1:51 The Solo

2:42 Analyzing the solo

5:55 Using it on a Single Chord

6:25 Cmaj7

7:00 Am7

7:50 Bb7(#11) (or E7 altered?)

9:04 Like the Videos? 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

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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.

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.

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

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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

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Guitar Practice – How To Be Your Own Teacher

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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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5 Ways You Need To Know And Practice Your Arpeggios

Arpeggios are huge part of improvising over changes in jazz guitar and especially in the more bop oriented styles. When we improvise we use arpeggios to connect to the harmony and spell out interesting extensions or alterations.

Practicing Arpeggios

This video is going to discuss 5 ways to practice arpeggios so that you get as much as possible out of practicing arpeggios and that you also make sure to make music with them.

I also included a few extra examples for working on creating more intervallic or modern sounding licks or solos. There are a few ways to achieve this, one of the ones that I like to use is experimenting with turning chords into solo lines and in that way access some larger intervals.

Hope you like it!

Content of the video:

0:00 Intro

0:56 It’s not only how you practice, it is also why you practice and what you learn.

1:18 Knowing Arpeggios in Positions – What you need and how you work on it.

2:04 Arpeggio positions and Scale fingerings + Downloads

2:29 Putting Arpeggios in a Context: Diatonic arpeggios

3:31 Across the Fretboard – Getting freedom with the arpeggios

4:00 Example Dm7

4:11 What to focus on and learn from this

5:06 Melodic Patterns

5:29 Two examples of Arpeggios patterns

6:04 Making Music – Using The Arpeggios

6:19 Improvisation example

6:33 Adding large intervals to your solo via Arpeggios

7:04 Examples of useful voicings

7:15 Example 1

7:22 Example 2

7:29 How do you work with arpeggios? Do you have ideas or suggestions?

8:09 Like the video? Check out my Patreon Page

Are You Wasting Valuable Time Practicing Jazz Licks Like This?

We all study jazz licks to add new ideas and techniques to our improvisations and our vocabulary. But I often get told by students how they choose a very in effective way of studying licks and are in fact really just wasting their time. In this video I will outline what is not useful when studying licks and also what is a better approach if you want to add material to your repertoire.

I will also use a part of a Grant Green solo as an example of how he gets it right and uses it in his solo.

Practicing Jazz Licks – Contents

0:00 Intro – Learn licks and increase our vocabulary

0:53 The bad way to practice licks even though they are good examples

1:25 Playing some licks (from paper with a metronome?)

1:51 Play the licks over a song

2:22 What is wrong with this approach

2:27 Too Much Information

2:49 A more focused approach to learn from licks

3:10 A II V I lick is about the same as learning a Jazz Standard by heart.

3:35 Why Complete Licks don’t work well in solos

4:03 Converting licks to useful and flexible building blocks

4:33 A lick from the Grant Green Solo on I’ll Remember April and how he uses it

5:21 Finding a better Chunk size

5:39 Making lines with the Grant Green Phrase

6:01 Using the same idea on other chords

6:27 Other examples of how great players use licks.

7:18 How do you work with licks? Do you avoid them? Leave a comment!

7:35 Barry Harris story on learning from Charlie Parker

8:11 Like the video? Check out my Patreon Page!

Best Exercise for Difficult Chord Progressions – Never ending Scale Exercise

We want to be free when we improvise over difficult chord progressions. This Flexible Scale exercise is a great way to start working on having an overview of the fretboard and the scales you need for difficult chord progresssions like Giant Steps, Moments Notice and Very Early.

The exercise helps you learn to think ahead, know where you are in the bar and play towards target notes. The goal is that your melodic idea is stronger than the movement of the chord progression.

List of content:

0:00 Intro — The Exercise for difficult progressions

0:39 The Chord Progression for this lesson and where this works well

1:05 The Turnaround: Cmaj7 A7alt Dm7 G7alt

1:21 The Goals of doing this exercise

1:42 The Scale exercise

2:05 Demonstration: 1 chord per bar — scales in position

2:20 Keep it open: Positions and different starting notes

2:49 Demonstration: 1 chord per bar starting on the 5th — scales in position

3:10 Positions vs Entire fretboard

3:20 Demonstration: 1 chord per bar — Scales Entire Fretboard

3:34 Don’t play too fast — stay ahead of what you are playing.

3:55 The next level: Structures like arpeggios and triads through the scale

4:21 Why it is still just a scale exercise and not a solo

5:01 Demonstration: Diatonic Arpeggios in position

5:29 Also on the entire fretboad

5:38 Demonstration: Diatonic Spread Triads — Entire Fretboard

5:57 The weird Loop in this example

6:28 Why this turnaround is a good place to start

6:44 Increase the tempo of the harmony: Two chords per bar

6:59 Demonstration: 2 chords per bar — scales in position

7:18 Avoiding the loop

8:27 Exercises should be close to the songs/music we work on

8:57 Do you have great exercises like this geared towards playing over a progression

9:23 Like the video? Check out my Patreon Page

Practice your Licks in ALL 7 keys!

Scale Practice actually goes way beyond having to work on exercises. Taking phrases or licks and moving them around is a great way to expand your abilities on your instrument.

On the guitar moving to another key is maybe not as difficult as staying in the same key and moving around the neck, and you need to be able to do this if you want to be able to freely transpose songs.

In this video I will go over this exercise and demonstrate what the thinking is and what gain from working on it.

The PDF is available in the Patreon Facebook Group.

From SCALE practice to JAZZ LICKS – Work towards Music!

If you don’t want to waste your time you want to make sure to turn everything you practice into material that you can use when you improvise.

We all practice scales and work on our technique by doing Scale Exercises, arpeggios, diatonic triads and patterns. In this video I want to show you how you can take your exercises and start turning them into jazz licks.

The Diatonic Triads in a Scale Position

Let’s just start with an exercise that I am sure you already practice: Diatonic Triads. Here below I have written it out in the key of C major:

Turning this exercise into a II V I is shown here below where it is used on a II V I in C: Dm7, G7, Cmaj7:

I am using the descending version of the exercise above on the Dm7. It is then used with the triads of Dm, C and finally B dim. From here it continues with a G7 altered lick before resolving to C.

Diatonic Triads in Patterns

A great way to practice diatonic triads is to play them in a pattern so that you break up the order of the notes. In the example below I have written out the diatonic triads in a 3 1 5 pattern:

Using this type of exercise in a jazz lick is a great way to add some larger intervals to your lines.

The lick here below is using the F,G and Am triads over the Dm7. It then continues with a G7 altered line that is based on a Bmaj7(#5) arpeggio before it resolves to Cmaj7.

Triads along the neck

Another way to practice the triads is to play them on a string set along the neck. This is shown in a 2-1 fingering here below.

Turning this into a lick is easy. I am using the F,Em and Dm triads descending and then continue the triad idea on the G altered with Eb and F dim triads to resolve to the 3rd(E) of Cmaj7.

A good variation on this is to use Db and Eb triads on the G7. This idea is shown here below:

Changing the way we practice scales

In the previous examples I had to rely on scale exercises that are stepwise in nature, so the triads are played in stepwise order: C, Dm, Em etc.

The problem with this is that If you use triads on a Dm7 chord then Dm, F and Am are fine, but Em and G are less strong and therefore difficult to use in a lick.

One way of getting around that is to look at how the Dm, F and Am are a 3rd apart in the scale. This means that we have can start working on practicing the triads in 3rds in the scale to get them together in the sets that work together. An example of how you can do this is shown here:

The lick below is using the triads like this, and they are played in a 5 1 3 patttern. The triads used then are Dm, F and Am which are all closely related to a Dm7.

Beyond the triads: Shell voicings

Of course you can apply this to any type of structure. In the example here below I am doing hte same type of exercise as example 7, but now using Shell Voicings.

Turning this into a lick is shown in example 10 where I use Fmaj7 and Am7 shell voicings on the Dm7. On the G7 I am also using a Db7 shell voicing and combining that with an AbmMaj7 arpeggio before resolving to C.

Putting it all together

As you can see in these example it is not only important to try to use the exercises you do, but it can also be a great idea to try to shape your exercises so that they are immediately easier to use when improvising or composing lines.

It makes a lot of sense to try to work a lot with 3rds because it reflects how we build chords and keep the triads closely related to the chord you want to use them on.

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Get the PDF!

You can also download the PDF of my examples here:

From Scale exercises to Jazz Licks – Practice Music

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for topics or how I can make the lessons better 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.

#5 Tuner

#4 iReal

#3 Metronome

What Apps Do You Recommend?

#2 DrumGenius

#1 Teach Yourself Guitar

Incredibly Useful Advice for Using a Phone for Practice

Honorable Mentions

Learning Fretboard Visualization with an App

Ear-training with a Free App

Get a free E-book

Jazz Guitar Insiders Facebook Group

Get the PDF on Patreon:

Content:

Get a free E-book

Get the PDF!

Jazz Guitar Insiders Facebook Group

Other useful articles on Practicing and Learning

Content

Get a free E-book

Get the PDF!

Jazz Guitar Insiders Facebook Group

Goals and Guitar Practice Plans

Learn more on Self-teaching

Get a free E-book

Content:

Get a free E-book

Jazz Guitar Insiders Facebook Group

Practicing Arpeggios

Content of the video:

Practicing Jazz Licks – Contents

List of content:

Contents:

The Diatonic Triads in a Scale Position

Diatonic Triads in Patterns

Triads along the neck

Changing the way we practice scales

Beyond the triads: Shell voicings

Putting it all together

Get a Free Ebook

Get the PDF!