Practicing Electric Guitar With And Without Distortion

If you have ever searched for the best electric guitar practice methods, you have probably heard this very common advice about learning to play electric guitar: "always practice guitar with a clean tone (or unplugged) to learn to play cleanly without mistakes and practice guitar with distortion as little as possible". 

Although there is some value in this guitar practice method, this approach to learning electric guitar will produce limited results if taken literally. 

The reality is that in order to learn to play electric guitar at a high level, you need to practice guitar with distortion and a clean channel at different points during your guitar practice sessions.  Knowing when and how to balance one approach with the other is key to learning to play electric guitar really well. 

Although playing guitar with a clean tone is very important for improving your picking articulation and refining synchronization between your hands, there are several important reasons why practicing on a distorted guitar is just as (if not more) important for your guitar playing:

1. When you play electric guitar with distortion, the compressed signal creates a lot of extra noise and feedback from the guitar strings and pick ups (that is not audible when playing guitar with a clean tone).  You must learn to mute this extra noise to make your guitar playing sound smooth and clean.  If you have spent the majority of your guitar practice time playing with a clean tone, you will be very surprised when you turn on the distortion and find that your guitar playing still does not sound "clean" due to the extra noise that you never had a chance to eliminate from your playing.
2. Your picking articulation and guitar phrasing will be different depending on whether you play guitar with distortion or a clean tone.  Because of this, it is important to spend at least a moderate amount of time getting used to playing with the sound/tone you plan to use for your lead guitar playing in real music.
3. For most guitar players, playing a distorted electric guitar is infinitely more fun than playing with a clean tone all the time.  The more you enjoy the time you spend practicing guitar the more likely you will be to spend more time doing it and do it consistently.  So in addition to the benefits above, the "fun factor" is also an extremely important reason for why you need to practice electric guitar with distortion.

Now that you understand that it is just as important to practice guitar with distortion as well as with a clean tone, here is a general guitar practice method to take in order to truly master the exercises or guitar solos you are practicing from every angle and benefit from practicing guitar with distortion as well as with a clean tone.

When you first learn any new exercise or guitar solo, spend the first moments of practicing it with a clean tone on your amp while also using the BRIDGE pick up on your guitar.  During this time you need to work on learning the notes of what you are playing, refine your picking hand articulation and make sure that your hands are synching up perfectly at a slow speed.  By using a clean tone on guitar and playing through a bridge pick up, any inconsistencies in your guitar picking articulation will become very noticeable and easy to correct. 

After the exercise is learned and you have no trouble playing it on guitar consistently and without mistakes, continue practicing it with a distorted guitar sound and the NECK pick up for the majority of your practice time from that point on.  You should continue playing this exercise with a clean tone as a warm up and to review/reinforce the habits of articulating each note, but do the majority of your serious practicing with a distorted guitar.  This guitar practice method will enable you to get the best of both ways of practicing electric guitar and master the materials you are practicing from all angles. 

Following the approach above will help your guitar playing sound consistently clean regardless of what you are playing or practicing.

Learn to get HUGE results from every minute of your guitar practice time.