Practice Schedule 4 (Guitar Lesson IM-149) How to play IF Stage 4

Justin's Completely Free, Intermediate Guitar Course Lesson IM-149.
Stage 4, Lesson 9.

This guitar lesson we go through what people should be practicing on Stage 4 of my Intermediate Method Foundation. Probably not interesting to anyone else :)

Find the related course notes on the following link:
http://justinguitar.com/en/IM-149-PRACTICE-Foundation4.php

This is part of Justin's Intermediate Guitar Method, Foundation. A series of lessons available free online!

http://justinguitar.com/en/IM-000-IntermediateMethod.php

Taught by Justin Sandercoe.

Full support at the justinguitar web site where you will find hundreds of lessons on a wide range of subjects, and all the scales and chords that you will ever need! There is a great forum too to get help, no matter what the problem.

And it is all totally free, no bull. No sample lessons, no memberships, no free ebook. Just tons of great lessons :)

To get help with this lesson (and for further info and tabs), find the Lesson ID in the video title (like ST-667 or whatever) and then look it up on the Lesson Index page of justinguitar.com

http://www.justinguitar.com

Have fun :)

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Hi, how are you doing?
Justin here.

Welcome to IM 149, which is, of course,
the practice routine for foundation 4.

Now, we've got our usual 1 hour routine,

which you can of course break
into 2 half hour sessions if you like.

The first thing, we've got 5 minutes
of our barre chord practice,

we'll be doing
strum, pick out and strum.

Mostly focused on our A shape chords.

Either the major,
if you're still struggling with that,

or the minor, minor 7
and dominant 7th chords.

Remember to be picking
the ones that you find the hardest.

if you can do one relatively easy,
don't worry about practicing it anymore,

work on the ones that you can't do.

I've said it a million times,
I'll say it again.

Practise what you can't do,
don't practise what you can.

Then we've got 5 minutes of the One Minute Changes,

I have suggested changes for you,
but of course

you know to work on the ones
you're having the most trouble with.

We then have 5 minutes of the major scale
with the metronome.

Now, ideally we want you to be pushing
the speed up a little bit more now,

so one thing you might want to try,
if you're comfortable on a speed

but you're having trouble
moving up to the next one,

Let's say for example that you can do
120 beats per minute quite fine,

but you can't seem to get it any faster.

Try jumping it up to, say 130 or 135,

which will be a real struggle
and you'll make a lot of mistakes

so just have one or two goes at doing it
at that way too fast tempo

then move it back to 125.
That's a good way of doing it.

If you go really, really crazy
to a point where you really can't play it,

don't stay there for too long,

because you'll kind of practice the wrong things

and muck up the synchronization
between your two hands but,

if you can, push it up a little bit

and then move it back down.
It kind of feels a bit easy,

so that's a good trick if you're stuck
on the one tempo, but really,

that's what you should be working on now,

it's developing your speed of your major scale
with the metronome

We've then got 5 minutes of major scale improvising

which you should be doing
kind of a combination thing now.

A little bit of the one finger,

a little bit of the melodic pattern,
a little bit of playing.

Most important of course is using your ear.

Letting your ear be the guide,
not letting your fingers be the guide.

So making sure you listen to what you play

and the effect of what you play has
with the backing track.

Then we've got a big 10 minutes

on the Just Use Sound To Improve Now exercices
and/or transcribing songs on your own.

I have some suggested songs of course
on the songs page

but you can really be transcribing
whatever you like at this stage.

Now that you've got all your barre chords,

it's ok to be focusing on the songs
of the bands that you really like

that's fine just get stuck in there
and do as much transcribing as you can.

If you were going to extend
one part of your practice routine

I would recommend it to be
the transcribing section.

Ok we're on to the second half hour block now.

We've got 5 minutes
developing your melodic patterns.

So either working on the ones
that you've worked on already

or developing new ones
and practicing those.

Make sure you've done plenty of work
on the playing major scales in thirds.

Beacause that's a really, really important
melodic pattern to get under your fingers

that's one that you really want muscle memory
to be helping you out with there,

so plenty of practice on that.

We've then got 5 minutes on your string bending.

Really, really important you get that technique right.

And now just a reminder, what you're looking for
is here to feel really easy

When you get it right,
string bending is easy,

when you get it wrong,
it is really difficult.

Now, it will be ok at the beginning
for it to be wrong,

because you gotta to find
how those muscles work

and it's a little different for everyone.

So, really remember
that it's that motion with your hand,

it's got to be with your hand
and your arm that does the work

If you can remember that,
you'll be sorted, no problems.

Ok, then we've got some rhythm guitar.

Now, the rhythm guitar is introducing
that snare drum percussive hit,

so practice doing the hit first.

So your practice routine is probably going to be
wholly consumed

by just getting the technique right
to start off with,

but after a week or a couple of weeks,

you should be working
on incorporating that snare drum hit

into whatever strum patterns you can,
and as many as you can.

See if you can naturally just fall into it
whenever you like.

That would be the ideal thing.

Then we have 5 minutes of our blues scale

and our blues hybrid, just really experimenting
with those a little bit

mucking around with them.

Don't be scared of getting
sounding wrong at this point.

Just play with it,
find out what the sounds are,

improvise with it,
see what you can do.

If you like, you might want to incorporate
a little bit of the string bend in there with that.

But, really, make sure that you know
the scale from memory.

That's really important,
the memorising of your scales stuff.

And lastly we've got 10 minutes on repertoire,

which, of course, you know by now,
is just practising the songs.

Either some new songs,

always good trying to get
a few new songs in there,

or practising the songs
that you've already got.

Well, not the ones that you've got perfectly,

if you've got them perfectly,

you don't need to practise them all the time.

Because, as you know again,

you should be practising what you can't do,
not practising what you can.

I keep saying it,
because it's really important,

and it's the biggest mistake I see
in intermediate guitar players.

It's guys practising and playing stuff
that they can already do,

when they should be working
on stuff that they can't do.

Sorry for going on about it so much
if you're not one of those guys,

but I have to be sure.

So, ok, lots of stuff,
lots of new things going on there,

so plenty of practice.

Check the website for the list of goals
and the things you should be achieving

before you move on the foundation 5.

Good luck, take care,
see you for some more lessons real soon.

Bye bye.