Cut your practice time in half--and learn faster!
Learning to play the guitar, like any physical skill, involves muscle learning, and that means lots of repetition. There are many methods for getting students to practice sufficiently, because lengthy practice sessions are boring.
They are also completely unnecessary.
Any sports coach can tell you that you’ll never develop your talents if you only practice once a week. Most insist on daily practice, and the best require practice sessions twice a day. Learning to play the guitar is more like a sport than like academic learning. Minimizing forgetting time between practices is the key to muscle learning. And muscle learning is vital to playing the guitar. You don’t have time to think about what you are doing while playing. It has to become automatic.
I have found that four or five very brief practice sessions per day is ideal for most students, even if the sessions only last five minutes. That makes twenty-five minutes of practice per day, less than half the traditional, hourlong, daily practices. By minimizing forgetting time, the five-times-a-day student learns much faster, even though their total daily practice time is less than half. The results are so obvious that anyone can see the difference.
Short, frequent practice sessions also encourage motivation. You don’t have time to become bored. You can practice longer than five minutes, if you want to. But five-minute sessions, spaced throughout the day, will work. You come to each brief practice fresh, enthusiastic, and eager to learn. You can see daily improvement, and you look forward to practicing. And motivation is the key to success. I guarantee my students that they will see obvious improvement in any week in which they practice four or five times every day, or the next lesson is free.
In twenty years, I have never had to give a free lesson.
I have been playing guitar for more than half a century, but you can learn everything I know in a single year, if you practice four or five times a day. I have taught students of all ages, from seven years old to seventy, using this method. Even my youngest students mastered skills in one year that took me a lifetime to learn.
It’s fun, fast, and free. Try it and see the difference for yourself.
THREE Featured tabs this month!
Two of them are NEW Christmas carols: I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day, and O Little Town of Bethlehem-- enjoy! The third is an "oldie but goodie": ¡Regocijad! which is Joy to the World in Spanish.
I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
Every year in early December, I try to post a “new” Christmas song, to give you enough time to learn it before Christmas. I usually have a hard time deciding which to post. Christmas carols are my favorite music to play, throughout the year. I first heard this one performed by Johnny Cash, and it stuck with me forever. Even though it doesn’t mention the Savior at all by name, the constant repetition of his message, “Peace on earth, good will to men” keeps him constantly in my mind as I play the song. I hope you’ll love it as much as I do. Consider it an Intermediate song, but you will find it on the Featured page too. Merry Christmas!
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