Hello, how're you doing? Justin here.
You're at the end of Stage 7. Well done!
Lots of cool stuff to be getting on with
and we've now bumped you up
to a 40-minute-a-day practice routine.
If that's too much,
remember, break it into two twenty minute sessions
and alternate them depending on what day you're going to do.
So, the things that you should be doing,
my recommended practice schedule,
is as follows:
two minutes on remembering the notes in open postition.
So that little exercise I mentioned earlier
where you put down the chord
and you try and work out what all the names are of the notes in that chord.
It's a really good exercise getting familiar with the guitar neck down there.
Then you wanna spend three minutes
remembering the notes on the thickest string.
That's really important,
this getting-to-know the notes on the thickest string on the guitar
is an absolutely essential part of your guitar study.
You won't be able to play any of your scales
or your barre chords or your power chords or arpeggios.
Most things related to a guitar beyond the beginner level,
you need to know the notes on the bottom two strings at least,
if not the whole guitar but at least the bottom two strings.
For now we're starting with just the thickest string.
So, three minutes a day
just looking at it, practising it,
naming what they are, that kind of thing.
Then we've got five minutes on the minor pentatonic scale,
just playing the scale up and down.
Use all down picks, keep it simple,
just work through the scale,
all down picks, up and down, up and down, up and down.
Don't worry about a metronome,
don't worry about any of that stuff,
just keep it really, really straight and simple.
OK, then you're on to Chord Practice.
Strum, pick out, strum: five minutes.
Just as before you pick any of the chords that are slightly hazy,
got any dodgy notes in them, then you want to practise them,
make sure that you get them really good.
It's quite possible that at this stage
you're pretty confident with all you chords
and all your chords sound pretty great
in which case you can leave doing the 'strum, pick out and strum'
of your routine now if you are at that stage.
Then you're at your One Minute Changes.
One minute changes
you should be working on your Dsus4, Dsus2
in conjunction with either D major or D minor,
also your Asus4, excuse me, Asus4, Asus2
in conjunction with A major or A minor
and then you got three free choice ones to do.
I would probably recommend that you'd still be working on the F chord.
So F chord to whatever other chord you feel like you wanna work on.
But F chord is probably, for most people,
the one that takes the longest to get used to in you chord changes,
so a bit of work on that.
Then you've got five minutes on your power chords,
so making sure that you really work on that stretch
and that you've got all of those notes working for you properly.
So, just really working that stretch between the first finger and the third finger.
Very important.
You might wanna also practise just moving it up and down.
Just experimenting.
Maybe trying to play a chord progression or two, or a riff or something.
That would be OK
but really predominantly working on getting the stretch
between the first finger and the third and fourth fingers.
That would be a really good call.
So, then we've got five minutes working on songs or chord sequences,
so whatever songs you've learned up until this point
Might be worth checking out a power chord tune.
You never know, there's a few around that could be good for that one.
So have a bit of an experiment on some of the power chord songs
or your regular songs,
all your repertoire up to date, it doesn't matter.
Just be working on some songs that you're enjoying.
And lastly five minutes on your JUSTIN training exercises
which is your ear training
which is gonna be like working at your power chords sounds
and do a little bit more advanced kind of transcribing skills
- oh advanced - advanced beginner's level transcribing skills.
So you got a lot on your plate now.
Just remember: take each little chunk,
use your timer so you do five minutes.
You hit the start button on your timer,
then you do five minutes : practice, practice, practice, work on it.
Timer goes off : ding-ding,
end of five minutes, stop practising.
Try not to be tempted too
just keep on going through your practise
cause what you're probably find,
particularly things like the minor pentatonic scale,
it's really easy to start practising that and practising it for an hour,
which is not a bad thing,
but it's a bad thing if that means that you don't practise
any of the other stuff you should be doing.
So by all means, go through, do your whole practice routine
and then go : 'Oh, I really like working on that scale'
and go back to it and do a heap of practice on it
but do your whole practice routine first. Little hint for you.
OK, take care of yourselves, get really into this practice.
You're doing some cool stuff, work it hard,
when you feel like you're ready to go on to the next one
you can join me for Stage 8.
See you !