5 Ways Exercises can be more fun!

Technical exercises. We all know they’re pretty much essential if you want to build up finger strength, independence, and overall dexterity! I’m sure, if you read this blog regularly, I’ve already convinced you about their merits…

…but they can be…well…boring sometimes, don’t you think?

So here’s my top ten ways to make those boring exercises more interesting and fun!

1. How Fast?

   The good old “how fast can you play?”. Probably doesn’t need a big explanation, you just see how fast you can play which ever exercise you’re doing. It’s a bit like the old speed drills idea. I will say a few things though: First, always, always ALWAYS start slowly and work your way up in speed- if you don’t do this you wont give your body a chance to warm up (also, by working up slowly you’ll probably achieve a higher top speed- honestly!); secondly, your “top speed” is not the speed you can just about struggle to, it’s the fastest one you can play cleanly and without tensing up!

2. Musicality

   This should be the first thing on your mind whenever you pick up the guitar! Seriously, why are you picking up the guitar if you don’t want to play music? Technical exercises will help your technique, but what about your musicality (a.k.a. “musicalness”)?

   Something that might make things more interesting is taking an exercise and applying to to a chord progression, or a scale. For example, lets start with this example.

   

   The basic exercise uses notes from the G major scale (the ones in brackets).

   
e --------------------------------------5-7-8-
B --------------------------------5-7-8-------
G ------------------------(4)-5-7-------------
D -------------(4)-(5)-(7)--------------------
A -------3-5-7--------------------------------
E -3-5-7--------------------------------------

   So, if you take this shape, and change the strings, but keep within the same scale, you can change things around a bit. Obviously this is great fun to do if you’re bored of the original exercise but still need practise.

   For example:

   
e ---------------
B ---------------
G ---------------
D -------4-------
A -3-5-7---7-5-3-
E ---------------

   You’re still using notes from the G major scale, but you’re varying it a bit. See what other variations you can come up with (you never know, some might even be great, undiscovered licks for your soloing…).

3. Don’t Spend too Long on Exercises

   Being bored is kinda like your brain’s way of telling you that you’re not interested anymore. If you’re not interested anymore, it usually means that you’re either: you haven’t been paying attention, OR you’ve just been doing the same thing for too long at a time!

   Let me ask you something. Why are you playing guitar in the first place? Is it to play repetitive exercises constantly? Unless the answer is yes (and I doubt it really is!), you really don’t want to spend all day on technical exercises. If you’re bored, maybe it’s time to move on to something else?

4. Switch Exercises for a Song

   Again, your aim is to be able to play songs, right? Exercises are really there to enable you to focus in on the bad points of your technique. So what’s wrong with just searching out a song that uses a certain technique, and practising that instead?

   The worst that’ll happen is that you’ll learn a new song! Hopefully, you’ll also be practising your guitar technique too…

5. Write a Song focusing on a Technique

   If you can’t find a song that uses the technique you want to get good at, why not make one? Pieces of music have been written like this for centuries, and they’re generally called “Studies” (because you’re “studying” a certain thing when you write and/or play it, I guess…).

   So you can perfect your compositional (i.e. songwriting…but without the words part…) technique AND practise a guitar technique all in one! If you’re not sure how to do this, start with point number 2 from earlier, and then go from there. I might create and write up a few of these in future posts, so look out for that too!

Next time, we’ll be looking at five more interesting ways to improve your technique and skill.

Until then, I’ll see you next time.

Rob.

December 7, 2011 at 5:32 pm | Guitar Technique and Exercises | No comments