Practice Schedule Advice

[Isaac Moss]

Hey guys I was wondering if I could get some advice from you guys on what I should practice and if you have any tips to better organize my schedule. I play every chance and I get I’d practice more if I could but on school nights I’m only able to get like 4 and a half hours and I have the goal of becoming a lead guitar player in a metal band so here’s what I do. First I get about twenty minutes of ear training in the morning so there’s that. Anyways when I get home I spend about 50 minutes on TECHNICAL lead guitar skills such as:
Alternate picking,Sweeping,Trills,Fretboard notes, bending and vibrato= 52 minutes
Then I work on rhythm guitar skills such as downpicking gallops and strumming for 20 mintues.
So basically one hour and ten minutes on technical stuff. Is that too much, or too little or is there anything that I should be working on?
Then for normally about an hour to and hour and a half, I’ll work on A song I want to learn rn it is Hail To The King.
Then after that I Improvise for 30 minutes and then for 30 more I song write. After that I’ll repeat till my parents make me go to bed.
So yeah I know it’s not very descriptive but that’s what I do, if any one has ANY suggestions that might help me progress to getting to the likes of players like Dime and Syn(I’m so far away) I’d appreciate it greatly! Also I don’t practice scales but I do learn them and use them for jamming but if anyone knows why they are good to practice I’d appreciate that too! Should I practice scales instead of exercises? Anyways thank you and KEEP SHREDDIN’ !!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Isaac Moss]

Also what are you guys schedules? How much do you practice I’m curious?

 

[Jak Angelescu]

Omg Isaac you and I are on the same page! I’ll answer your question in further detail when I’m around a computer. Swipe typing all this out is gonna suck. I was actually going to do a video later this week about how to organize your practice schedule based on your lifestyle and type of guitarist you want to be

 

[Isaac Moss]

Dude you’re saving my ass again! Can’t wait for the video! I need to go subscribe to your channel haha

 

[Calvin Phillips]

My practice routine changes depending on what the daily plan is. Sometimes km just jamming. Sometimes I’m working on a solo.. some are not perfect yet all the time. Some are different scales. I try to do some arpeggios since that’s my focus right now school wise. I have a couple warm up songs but unless I’m focusing on theory study stuff I tend to stay away from the exercises. But then again in most of my songs I have certain exercises I do inside the solos. Pull offs hammer ons etc.
I usually do smaller stuff during the week. My exercises are mainly used when doing the homework as well most of the homework we do are newer stuff I havent done yet. Like the arpeggios. And the pentatonic scales. Sometimes I’ll do little stuff between songs. But sometimes i just wanna have fun.
The fact you can play 4 hours a day is great. I’m amazed you can keep your focus that long doing exercises. After a half hour I’d be jamming lol.

 

[idssdi]

I don’t have a practice schedule. Most of my time is just noodling because I have a severe lack of time to actually proper practice and I hope to find new exciting stuff when I noodle the ‘how does it sound when I do this’ kinda thing.
Your practice schedule seems pretty good. Just remember to have a little bit of fun in there as well not just practice practice practice. As for why you should practice scales, that is mostly just to make sure you remember them and the positions you can find them in. Personally I’m not super fond of things called ‘exercises’ I’d rather learn how to do stuff by learning and analyzing songs ‘aah this works over that that’s nice’

 

[Isaac Moss]

Yeah I argee with you guys on exercises and I have been tempeted to just learn song parts and stuff(so I can show em off) but honestly the reason why I do certain ones is literally just the fact that a player I look up to did it XD.They’re kinda fun too! I do the three notes on one string and one on the other Paul Gilbert one because Andy James and Jeff Loomis did it and Pg lol. I got one from the youtuber Robert Baker and also an alternate picking/ two way pick slanting apreggio one in hopes of getting better at string switching! I like your schedules too sometimes it seems setting like daily goals can be great and you’ll never get bored as well!

 

[Calvin Phillips]

Guitar is never boring period lol. If you get bored you either arent playing the right instrument or you arent exploring enough options. Theres too many to get bored over.