The 2 Kinds Of Practice

There are 2 types of practicing guitar...

It always seems to me that there are different practice routines for just about every person under the sun.

But what I notice often is that what works for one person doesn't work for the next... not because the method is flawed. More often than not it's because they are trying to accomplish 2 different things.

So I'll try to explain the 2 types of practice, and about how much you need of each to accomplish your goals. The good news is... in many cases you'll be surprised at how little you can get away with.

To me there are 2 kinds of memories and that goes with the 2 types of practice: finger memory, and brain memory.

Brain memory is concepts. I often describe this as the "what" to play. It's in your mind that you decide you're going to use a particular scale or chord voicing. But your brain isn't what is actually going to execute the command...

For that we need finger memory. Your fingers need to just go do it when your brain tells them to. If the brain has to instruct the fingers on what to do, then it can't concentrate on cool stuff to play anymore. If it concentrates on cool stuff to play, it can't tell the fingers what to do.

This has nothing to do with age or experience... it's a simple fact of the way we're built and the way we work. It works this way for every student I've ever taught.

So now that you know you have "brain memory" and "finger memory," what to do about each?

Fingers learn by one way and one way only - repetition. The more times you do it right, the more likely your fingers are going to be able to do it on their own later. Finger memory comes from time on the instrument.

The good news is that you don't really have to pay attention too much during this time unless it really is some new scale or pattern that you don't already know. This is the perfect sort of thing for TV Practice (practicing in front of the TV) or during just about anything else.

Any time you can mindlessly play scales, arpeggios, chords, strums, licks, whatever it may be... that's going to improve finger memory.

Brain memory is a little trickier. The brain gets a new concept usually in a few minutes. But after that few minutes is up, the brain is done and it needs to go and work on it in the background for a while.

So let's say you've just learned that you can improvise with the major blues scale over the I chord of a blues, and the minor blues scale over the IV and V of a blues. That's a concept. It's for your brain deciding what to play - not for your fingers.

But you'll probably find that after a few minutes of working with it, you start to drift off and think about other things or you get frustrated or you lose your place. Basically you start to space out.

When that happens, your brain is done and it's telling you so - listen to it! At that point it's time to go back to finger memorizing that you can do on auto-pilot. Or you can take a break completely for a while. Of course, you can always just jam away on a few fun songs as well.

Good luck and happy practicing!
Griff