GUITAR WORKOUT

"There`s work to be done so let`s do it but little by little" - Bob Marley, "Wake Up And Live"

Many people try to learn the guitar by practicing scales, arpeggios etc. This is important, but if you just play scales it soon gets boring to listen to! Check out the top players and you'll see that its the things they do with those scales that makes their playing colourful and interesting. So a good approach is to learn the riffs and solos of these top players. This will help you understand the kind of approaches - slides, patterns, bends etc - that can make your playing sound better. By playing them repeatedly you can get those sounds "into" your fingers. However, learning riffs and solos like this is still not a complete approach! Why? Because any particular solo may contain this slide or that bend. But there are many other ways you can slide or bend which sound just as good! So how can you be sure to practice all the things you need to in order to be a confident, fluent player?

I've developed the Guitar Workout to answer this question. It covers all the important elements of guitar playing in one single routine. Once learned it takes 30 minutes, or a short version can be practiced.

• WARM-UPS
• SLIDES AND VIBRATO
• SWEEPS
• LAYOVERS
• PICKED SCALES
• HAMMER-ONS AND PULL-OFFS
• BENDS
• DOUBLE-STOPS AND TRIADS

Exercises are based on the blues scale - the basis of all styles from rock to funk.

The exercises take you through all the positions, up and down the neck in a smoothly flowing sequence. By practising in a different key each day you cover all the notes.

THE BENEFITS

The benefits of the Guitar Workout are in two parts: firstly, learning to play the exercises develops all the necessary skills and irons out any faults in your playing. Second, once the whole set has been mastered, 30 minutes a day spent playing the Guitar Workout will keep your technique sound, leaving time to work on other things.

A lot of books, CDs etc on guitar playing show you different scales, licks, and so on. This is fine as far as it goes. However, my experience has shown me that most students need something different; to develop the mechanical skills of guitar playing along with the necessary strength and dexterity - ie good basic technique.

GOOD TECHNIQUE

Technique is like the foundations of a building. It may take some time to develop, but all future progress depends on it. Without good basic technique your guitar playing can never sound really good no matter how much you practice. If you've seen a building going up, you might have noticed that clearing the ground and laying foundations is a process that can take some time, and in this time not a lot appears to be happening. Once the foundations are completed though, the building work can progress very quickly.

Similarly, once you acquire the basic skills of guitar playing, you can learn the different scales, licks etc without too much trouble. If the basics aren't sound, though, you're likely to hit a point beyond which you can't progress. You then have to go back and relearn the basics - and thats no fun!

SAMPLE EXERCISES

On this site, I will feature some exercises from the Workout series, beginning with examples on two often neglected aspects of guitar playing technique; sweeps and layovers.

Email: ac@pickguitar.co.uk      Design by FRIEZE