Books & Methods

PRACTICE TIPS & GUIDANCE

This section addresses the questions that arise after you begin serious study. Things like:

How should you practice?
How much?
What if you plateau?
What if you feel discouraged?
What about speed?
What about tendon problems?
What about stage fright?
Etc.

Over the decades, I’ve seen these themes repeat themselves. And I’ve lived through most of them personally. What follows is not dogma. It’s perspective — earned the hard way.

1. The Key to Success

The real key to success isn’t discipline.

It’s inspiration.

Years ago someone said to me, “I wish I had your discipline. I just don’t have that kind of willpower.”

That surprised me. I never saw it as discipline. I wasn’t forcing myself to practice. There wasn’t anything else I would have rather been doing at that moment. It was enthusiasm. Curiosity. Obsession, maybe.

Inspiration will beat discipline every time.

That doesn’t mean discipline has no place. It means discipline without inspiration eventually collapses. You can only push yourself with the stick for so long. Eventually you need the carrot. And the carrot will take you much further.

So the real question becomes: What inspires you?

Is it:

The music itself?
The sound of a distorted guitar roaring through an amp?
Seeing your own improvement?
Being on stage?
The identity of being a guitarist?
Writing songs?
Technical precision?
Fame?
Or yes… maybe even how it makes you look?

I will suggest that there are no "wrong" answers.

But if you lose contact with what excites you, your motivation will begin to fade. And as motivation fades, progress stalls.

So once in a while, reassess. Ask yourself why you’re doing this. Then align your actions with that answer.

That theme runs through everything here. It is also the cornerstone found in The Motivated Musician series at TS Music Academy.

Bottom Line: Feed your inspiration. It is the engine of long-term growth.

2. Balance vs. Burnout

There are two major motivators for most guitarists:

The music itself.
Seeing improvement in our own skills.

And in practical terms, that basically means:

Playing songs.
Practicing exercises.

Both are essential. But if these get out of balance it can create problems.

If you only play songs and never isolate your weaknesses, your technical ceiling will remain limited. That may be fine — if your goals are songwriting, vibe, and expression.

But if you are drawn to speed, control, articulation, and precision, you must break things down and practice them deliberately.

Now here’s the danger:

Exercise-based improvement can feel intoxicating at first. You see rapid gains. Your speed climbs. Things clean up. It’s exciting.

But then it levels off.

And if you keep grinding without reconnecting to music, something strange happens. One day you realize you don’t really feel like practicing anymore.

You burned out!

Exercises without music are sterile. And music without skill development stagnates. The solution is not choosing one over the other. It’s balance.

If you feel yourself drifting toward burnout:

Go see a concert.
Learn a song just for fun.
Jam with friends.
Record something.
Or take a short break.

This is way I organized Total Picking Control as a steady progression of musical studies. It's the best of both worlds when you can have systematically progressive technique drills hidden within what feels and sounds like actual music!

Bottom line: Music is always the destination. Keep coming back to it.

3. Guidelines for Effective Practice

There is no universal practice routine.

Anyone who tells you “practice exactly 12 hours a day like this” is describing what worked for them — not what must work for you.

What you practice should reflect:

Your goals
Your temperament
Your current level
Your interests

However, certain principles apply to everyone.

● Keep Variety

Even the coolest thing on earth gets stale if repeated endlessly. Rotate between:

Technique work
Songs
Improvisation
Composition
Review

● Watch Yourself

Pay attention to what’s working.

If something produces results, keep it up.

If it doesn’t, adjust.

● Isolate Problems

If you keep messing up at a given point in a song, don’t start over again from the beginning every time hoping to "get it right this time."

Find the one-second motion causing the problem and repeat that.

This one idea alone can multiply your efficiency dramatically.

● Listen

It’s shockingly easy to “play” without listening. Listening is the mechanism of self-correction. The better you learn to listen while playing, the faster you improve.

Bottom Line: Practice is an Art developed over time. Refer to Roadmap to Mastery for more details.

4. Should You Practice Only When Inspired?

After reading "The Key to Success" above, you could get the idea that you should pick up your instrument only when you're inspired. Is that a good idea?

No.

Inspiration certainly matters. But many people incorrectly assume that inspiration and feeling motivated must come first.

In reality, action often creates our motivation.

● The 10 Minute Trick

So if you’re not in the mood, just tell yourself: “I’ll just practice for 10 minutes.”

That’s manageable. And you don't have to "gear up" your motivation level for a giant practice block.

And here's the thing: Most of the time, after you get started, you’ll get into it. And ten minutes becomes twenty. Twenty becomes an hour. Because getting started is often the hardest part. It requires decision energy. But continuing is usually easy.

Sure, it's sort of tricking yourself... whatever works.

● Objections

Now you might feel an objection rise up, telling you that "10 minutes" won't make any difference. Au contraire! How much practice time do you think you might get out of the next 10 minutes... whether it's part of a long block or just a short bit? Oh, I'd say around 10 minutes worth.

In fact, short practice sessions tend to product more benefit, long term, than sporadic marathon sessions. So get to those short sessions. Every time you reconnect your fingers to the fretboard it's a little win.

● Make It Easy

Don’t bury your guitar in a case under the bed. Keep it outon a stand, where you can see it there, beckoning to you. Keep all of your tools within reach. Remove any friction that makes it hard to get started.

● Watch Your Language!

The language we use is powerful when it comes to our behaviors and creating habits. Pay attention to your language. Instead of “I have to practice,” say: "I choose to practice.”

Words matter. They shape our inner relationship to the instrument.

Bottom line: Use inspiration when it hits, but creating habits is a far more reliable way to keep motivation high.

5. Speed, Muscle Memory & Efficiency

Practice essentially boils down to repetition.

Repetition is what builds the neural pathways. It literally rewires your brain.

But that repetition must be correct.

● Garbage In = Garbage Out

If you repeat mistakes, you are engraving those mistakes into your neuro-muscular pathways. Play slowly enough to execute correctly. Then gradually increase speed while maintaining control.

It's important to understand that speed is not the result of thinking faster, or pushing harder. It’s the result of relying on deeply ingrained patterns.

So if in your push for speed you sacrifice accuracy, say four out of five times, you are training inconsistency into your nervous system.

Speed and control grow together.

● Staying Engaged

Eventually, exercises can feel automatic. Then, your conscious mind begins to disengage and improvement slows.

At that point there are several things you can do to mix it up:

Vary the pattern.
Improvise within the structure.
Move to different areas on the neck.
Shift positions or keys.

Bottom line: Keep your attention on quality and keep your brain engaged in the process. Roadmap to Mastery goes into great detail on the practical options as well as implications of this.

6. Synchronization

Synchronization refers to the timing alignment between your fretting and picking hands.

As speed rises, synchronization deteriorates.

So here’s the counterintuitive advice:

● Practice slowly.

At slower tempos, your synchronization is more accurate. That accuracy gets encoded into your nervous system. When you later increase speed, some of that precision sticks.

So you have to play slow to play fast. I call practice in the slow and moderate speed zones "building the base."

My own synchronization efficiency was created largely while learning classical pieces far below performance tempo. The long stretches at slow speeds produced cleaner synchronization than frantic speed drills ever did.

Practice across a range of tempos — not just fast.

● Other Practice Approaches

In Roadmap to Mastery I go into detail on a variety of practice approaches to increase synchronization further, for high speed playing specifically.

These include the "Practicing in Bursts" methodology created in the original Speed Mechanics for Lead Guitar book, along with "Transition Time," "Breakdown/Reassembly," and "Top Out Practice" as developed in Total Picking Control.

But these advanced strategies must be welded to a strong base, which comes back to playing slowly and deliberately. This cannot be overstated.

Bottom line: Play correctly to ingrain the proper muscle memory.

7. Performance & Stage Fright

Practice and performance are opposites, in a way.

Practice is about fixing mistakes.
Performance is about delivering what you already do well.

Now we tend to play what we practice. That is, what we practice a lot tends to be what we think of to play. And how we practice tends to be how we play.

So if you habitually stop when you make a mistake during practice — and you fail to practice performing — you are likely to stop during performance also. But when it comes to performing, we need to learn the opposite: We want to recover gracefully from errors, without their affecting our mindset or our presentation.

So occasionally we need to practice performing:

No stopping allowed.
Play through mistakes.
Recover gracefully.

● Performance Anxiety

Stage fright is a matter of creating an excess of physical tension. If you become aware of rigid posture, shallow breathing, frozen stance — that’s your fear manifesting physically. And it's a Catch 22. You're nervous you won't do well. But the more worried you become, the worse you will perform.

Here are the basics:

Move
Breathe
Fall into the groove

Feeling your body in a fluid motion reduces fear and creates ease and momentum which carries you through.

And what is the ultimate cure for stage fright?

Just keep at it. Over time you habituate to the experience and it no longer intimidates and overwhelms.

Bottom line: Move, breath, perform. (And if this is a problem you'd like more help with, Roadmap to Mastery and Total Picking Control dive deep into this issue.)

8. Plateaus

Plateaus happen.

They don’t mean you lack talent.

They mean your current approach has yielded what it can for now.

If you’ve been exercise-heavy, shift toward music.

If you’ve been music-only, isolate technical weaknesses.

If you’re deeply discouraged, take a short break and reconnect with inspiration.

Skill improvement is a bit like watching the hour hand on a clock. You won’t see it move in real time. But step back to it later, and you’ll see the difference.

Bottom line: Roadmap to Mastery: Breaking Through Intermediate Guitar Plateaus goes into great detail on this topic. If you're stuck, and the general guidelines here aren't enough, check it out.

9. Pushing Limits & Avoiding Injury

Muscle fatigue is normal.

Sharp pain, numbness, or tendon discomfort is not.

The basic rule is: it hurts — stop.

● An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure

Always start slow and warm up before any demanding stretches or speed work.

Avoid sudden marathon sessions after long breaks.

Fast playing should feel relaxed, not strained. Remember that speed is a matter of coordination, not force.

● After Injury

If you have been injured already, keep these points in mind

Heal first. If you keep re-injuring yourself, you are only prolonging the problem.
Resume slowly.
Reduce tension dramatically.
Increase practice time gradually.

Longevity matters more than short-term gains.

If nerve or tendom problems persist, it may be time to seek medical attention or physical therapy.

Bottom line: Don't push too hard and injury is unlikely. But if you do, only work within your capacity without causing further damage.

10. On Talent

Talent is overrated.

Yes, people differ slightly in reflexes or motor retention. But those differences are trivial when compared to:

Motivation
Consistency
Practice intelligence
Temperament

Practice literally rewires your brain such that over time, what was once learned becomes innate.

Creativity is not a fixed trait either. It grows when exercised.

So stop worrying about whether you are “talented enough.” Instead, take action. Stay inspired. Play the music you love. And keep building.

Eventually people will call it "talent."

IN CLOSING

Guitar playing is not a straight line.

It’s cycles:

Inspiration
Frustration
Breakthrough
Plateau
Renewal

If you maintain balance between:

Technique
Musical Understanding
Creativity
Practice Strategy
Mindset

You will continue evolving.

Not overnight.

But steadily.

And steadily is enough.

Start with the Core Curriculum >