How To Find The Best Guitar Technique Exercises

Have you ever felt overwhelmed with trying to select the best guitar technique exercises to practice?  Between thousands of guitar websites, guitar instructional books, DVDs and other resources it is very easy to lose focus and become frustrated with trying to find effective guitar exercises that will improve your playing.  

One of the most important things to know about improving guitar technique is that you do NOT need a large number of guitar exercises to achieve this goal.  What you do need is a targeted list of highly effective guitar technique exercises that focus on your guitar playing problems and an understanding of how to practice each one of them correctly.  This does not mean that you must limit your guitar practicing to a handful of exercises (your guitar exercise list can and should evolve as you progress), but you should not be trying to cram hundreds of guitar technique exercises into your practice each week either.

The following breakdown of 3 main categories of guitar technique exercises will help you to understand exactly what type of exercises you should use in your guitar practice routine at any given time.  As you get more advanced as a guitarist, you will be able to determine for yourself more precisely what guitar exercises you need to practice, but if you are stuck right now with trying to know what to practice to improve your guitar technique, the following categories will help: 

The Essential Guitar Technique Exercises:
The most specific and targeted guitar exercises should come from the specific music you are playing and practicing.  Examples can include: excerpts from songs or guitar solos that you are learning, sections from the music that you are composing or anything that relates directly to the music you are playing on a regular basis.  Isolate specific problem areas in the music you want to play (that you cannot play well yet) and turn those excerpts into your guitar exercises.  Practicing guitar technique exercises in this group is not the same as “learning songs” and practicing your repertoire, since you will not be playing actual pieces of music all the way through during this part of your guitar practicing.  Spend about 45% of your guitar technique practice time on exercises from this group. 

General Guitar Technique Exercises:
Although the guitar exercises from the group above are generally the most relevant guitar technique exercises for you to work on, you should also include several more general exercises focusing on the guitar techniques you use most often in your musical style.  These guitar exercises will help you to both add variety to your practicing and develop your guitar technique more broadly.  The best way to organize guitar exercises in this group is through sub-categories.  Here are several examples of sub-categories (your list can vary depending on the specific guitar techniques you want to practice):

• Arpeggio exercises
• Guitar scale sequences
• Tapping exercises
• Directional picking exercise
• Legato exercises

It is generally good to have 1-3 exercises to pick from in each category and rotate/update them periodically.  Rotate between working on 1 exercise for each technique every week.  Spend about 35% of the time you spend on guitar technique exercises on this category. 

The Supplementary Guitar Technique Exercises Group:
These guitar exercises should be practiced to refine a highly specific problem area of your guitar technique.  Examples of highly specific problems include: problems with rolling technique for sweep picking, the picking motion inside of the strings for scale sequences, or inability to do stretches.  Spend about 20% of your guitar technique practice time on exercises from this group. 

As you practice guitar, include guitar exercises focusing on a variety of guitar techniques from the 3 categories above.  Do not make the mistake of focusing one week practicing only the sweep picking technique (for example), before starting to work on legato technique the following week.  This will help for your guitar techniques to develop simultaneously. 

Likewise, in addition to practicing guitar technique, remember to also set aside enough time to work on your other musical skills to avoid focusing on any one area of your guitar playing too much.

Applying the advice above will help you to become more organized in your practicing and become a better guitar player faster.

How to maximize the results you get every time you practice your guitar.