Day 2: The guitar practice routine

Well I managed to get to the music shop and get a new set of strings yesterday (Elixir 010 gauge since you ask), so with my guitar freshly cleaned, polished, oiled and strung, it's time for the practice routine.

1. Chromatic Exercise
I start off with that old favourite, the chromatic exercise. For those unfamiliar:

And so on...
 

You play this with alternate picking (AP) moving up the neck from position 1 to position 9 and then back down again. I finish back in position 2, basically doing 8 up the neck and 8 down the neck. Obviously you use one finger on each of the frets you're playing. I play this in 16th notes using a metronome at 60bpm. That basically means for every click of the metronome you're playing four notes.

This is pretty slow and you'll probably find it quite easy, but the key is to make sure you really listen to how you're playing each note and making sure each one is ringing out with nice and even tone and volume. Also make sure your playing is as smooth as possible, that means small gaps and long notes (in comparison to each other). This will help you when you try to play faster stuff.

2. Three-note-per-string Exercise
Very similar to the previous exercise, you're still playing 16th notes at 60bpm using AP from position 1 through 9 and back again but you only play three notes per string. I do this in three different patterns.

Pattern 1

And so on... 

Pattern 2

And so on...

Pattern 3

And so on...

The first two patterns are played with one finger per fret like the chromatic exercises, but the third one is a 5-fret stretch so go with with fingers 1, 2, and 4 (first, second and little).

3. Pentatonic Exercise
A good one for loosening up. This is again played with one finger per fret from positions 1 to 9 and back down the neck again, 16th notes at 60bpm.

And so on...

4. Sweeps
I used to be quite good at sweeps then I completely didn't bother with them for about 2 years so this is good practice for me. It's 16th notes at 60bpm again, and you basically drag the plectrum down through the strings as you're going down the arpeggio and then up as you're going up it. Use your palm to try and mute any excess string noise, you only want one note ringing out at a time. It's a great technique once mastered, but it's difficult to get there. I basically start with a 3-string sweep and then add in extra strings as I go through the exercise.

Three Notes Per String

Four Notes Per String

Five Notes Per String

There's six note per string versions and other shapes but I'll leave them for now, perhaps I'll come back to them later.

5. Up and down the strings
This one I picked up from a book but I can't remember which, it's a fairly obvious idea anyway. Basically I take the patterns I did in exercises 1 and 2 and go up and down the neck on each single string from positions 1 to 9 and back as before to a metronome at 60bpm for the chromatic, and I then switch to quarter note triplets at 80bpm for the three-note-per-string shapes (three notes per click of the metronome).

 

Well that's pretty much it, I try and get through all of that without fail every day if I can. It takes about half an hour and works as a great warm-up before a gig or learning a new song as well. Please let me know if you spot any mistakes or anything that needs clarifying!

Tomorrow I'm going to look at getting the drum tracks set up in the DAW I'm going to use (Garageband). I might look at some simple EQ and compression tweaks to do on them as well if I have time, but I have quite a busy day tomorrow so we'll see.

PS: This was an utter ballache to write. I had the tabs all spaced out in the blog post, then posted it and they all went to shit. So I basically had to fix them, screenshot them all, and embed as pictures. Nice one, Google.

Day 1: So what's it all about?

Hi, my name is Alex, I'm a 23-year-old postgraduate student living in Bath, UK. I've been playing guitar since I was 15, took up bass 4 years ago and started taking singing lessons 2 and a half years ago. I've owned (and for the most part, still own) ten guitars, one bass, four amplifiers, seven stompboxes, one multi-FX, one soundcard, one MIDI keyboard, two DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations), one amp-modelling software package, and many, many sets of strings and plectrums in that time. I've spent pretty much all the money I've ever made on these.

And now I want to spend even more.

This beautiful bastard is the PRS Custom 24. It goes for roughly £2-3k. I've wanted one since the first time I saw it. And now I'm almost in a position to buy one. Great news right? Not really. Looking at what I've done with all the gear I have already, it's not much. Sure I've played in a few bands, recorded a couple of EPs, even won a Battle of the Bands competition once. But there's nothing I can put on a CD or MP3 player and say "that right there is all me".

That's got to change. Before I allow myself to indulge myself even further, I need to actually do something with what I have.

I'm going to record a full-album cover of Mastodon's Crack the Skye, with me on vocals, guitar and bass.

You probably have some questions:

Why not write your own album?
Baby steps. If I can't record an album's worth of material with a clear vision of what I want it to sound like I'll never get past the first riff of my own stuff.

Why Crack the Skye?
It's probably my favourite album right now, and it's just complex enough to provide a challenge whilst not so intimidating that I'm scared to try.

Surely you've been playing so long that this must be easy for you?
Yes but I'm very very lazy. My guitar playing is probably about half as good as it should be by now, my bass is terrible and I barely practice my vocals outside of lessons. Believe me, if I actually get to the end of this I'll be as shocked as anyone. And also delighted, because I'll have a lovely PRS Custom 24 to fondle.

Tomorrow I'll go over my basic guitar practice routine that I've been doing over the last few weeks to start building up to this. I can't do it today because I broke my top E doing a warmup, so off to the music shop I go!