What type of guitar player do you want to be? Is this important to know? Well, you decide! But a clear vision of what you want to become helps you to know what guitar practice food you have to digest.
Guitar players like you and me are also human beings and have various inclinations as to what to play and practice and for how long. Some players can stick to an exercise for a long time until they master it. Others are more restless and work with a lot of exercises at the same time.
If you have a wide variety of guitar exercises that you practice daily you might benefit from trying to prioritize just some of the areas of development for a while in order to really commit the material to your long-term memory so it can be of use for you in the future and also be a foundation for further more advanced guitar exercises.
On the other hand, if you only play a few things on your guitar you will be strong in these areas and weak in other important areas of you development.
What can you do to become a versatile guitarist that can be of use in various settings and that has the ability to create your own music?
I would suggest that you try to have a daily guitar practice routine that you can stick to and get used to and feel comfortable with that include guitar technique ingredients that you really need. This way you will not always have to worry about what to practice.
What type of things should be included in this daily practice routine?
As I mentioned before, the type of ingredients you put into your guitar practicing soup will determine the type of soup you will get. To put it the opposite way, it would be nice if you knew what soup you want. Then you only have to put in the right ingredients.
For example, if you want to become the fastest guitar shredder in the world and this only I guess you have a good chance of knowing what exercises to use.
Chances are that you will change your goals as you go along with your practice routine. This is of course comforting as you don't need to know completely and perfectly what you want to accomplish before you start to make up you daily practice routine.
What type of exercises could you include in your practice routine?
You will benefit from deciding this for yourself depending on what type of guitarist you want to become right now. This can change as you get new experiences.
One thing I would suggest is that you devote some of your initial practice time to warm up exercises. Actually you don't need to create specific exercises for doing this. It is more the way you practice as you start a practice session.
Here you have an opportunity to play slowly and with complete accuracy. This is a time to warm up, learn maximal relaxation in playing and to rinse out all types of sloppiness in your playing.
It is a nice feeling to see that you are on the road that leads you towards your guitar playing goal and that you are actually walking on it too!
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