What is your practice schedule?

If you are learning an instrument, it is important to have a practice schedule. Your teacher probably gives you new material to learn and expects you to be able to play it at your next lesson. But how do you go about it?

Here is one example of a practice schedule (assume your lesson is on a Monday....)

Monday (after your lesson) - warm up - 10 minutes; practice lesson - 10 minutes; play anything - 10 minutes

Tuesday - warm up - 5 minutes; play anything - 10 minutes; work on finger exercises - 10 minutes

Wednesday - warm up - 5 minutes; practice lesson - 15 minutes; experiment - 10 minutes

Thursday - play anything - 30 minutes

Friday - warm up - 5 minutes; finger exercises - 5 minutes; practice lesson - 20 minutes

Saturday and Sunday - warm up 5 minutes each day; practice lesson 15 minutes each day; play anything 20 minutes each day

There you have it! You've managed to practice your new lesson material for 1 hour, worked on finger exercises for 15 minutes and had a lot of fun warming up and just playing your instrument the rest of the time. The above plan is for 30 minutes a day - you may want to practice and play more, so just add minutes to each of the various activities. Or, practice twice a day!

What should you play when you "play anything"? How about music from previous lessons which you really liked? A song or some chords you haven't played in a while...a new finger exercise...a new picking method...experiment with different sounds...try out a slide...explore a different tuning...in short, ANYTHING!

Not only will you see better and faster results, but you'll have a lot more fun than just practicing your lesson.