5 Pieces Of Assorted And Important Musical Advice (For Early August!)

Hey everyone, here's another set of important considerations for your practice and songwriting. I always try to think of the most critical / important things I can for these, so I really hope they help / stick with you.

1) Don't just do the same thing you always do when you pick up the guitar. Don't gravitate towards fretting the same chord. Try and consistently mix things up, and try to always expand your vocabulary. It's good to have things that you like to practice, but we want to continually add new gestures, chords, harmonies, and rhythms to our palette

2) Did you know that your metronome probably has a timer? Look for that and set it up. It's good to use the metronome to keep track of how long you've been practicing something. I like to set my metronome for 10 minute intervals. 

3) Stuck on a composition / can't figure out the form or the identity? Go listen to some music that relates to what you're writing / what you want to write and see what they do to solve that situation. You can always borrow rhythms and concepts from other sources as a template for your ideas. As someone who writes instrumental music, I always look to classical music to help me figure out what I could potentially do next. 

4) Stretch! Man, I wish I spent more time stretching before actually playing. It really helps. If you think of playing guitar as an athletic activity, you are some kind of athlete. You need to treat your body well and make sure that it's limbered up and ready to go. Even just a few short stretches will help get the blood flowing pretty quickly

5) If you're going to practice technique exercises, make sure they actually relate to techniques / abilities that you ACTUALLY want to use in your practice.