Chords for Everyday Practice Techniques for the Intermediate Player

Hi, my name is Steve Stein, and I've been teaching guitar for over 27 years.
Today, what I want to do is discuss three essential techniques for you to practice on a daily basis.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to break down right hand, left hand, and synchronization between the two.
And these are going to seem fairly straightforward, but if you do them correctly, I guarantee you're going to see success.
So let's go ahead and get started with the first one.
The first one's going to be a right hand technique.
The big thing here is to take a metronome and to set it at a speed that's going to be effective for you to practice on a daily basis with what I call the three minute technique.
You need to find that true speed that you can lock into and become effective.
And just accept the fact that over time, it is going to get faster, but you need to keep working at it until it gets faster.
I'm going to be using the metronome at 120, and I'm going to be doing eighth notes.
So I'm just going to do down strums. _ _ _
_ _ [E] _ _ So if I was doing 120 and I was doing two per click, which is eighth notes, and it was way, way, way easy,
then logically I'm going to move that metronome up.
I'm going to keep moving it up until I get to the speed that I can start feeling it.
I can last the three minutes, but when I get done, I can feel it.
That's what I'm looking for.
If you get all the way up to the top of the metronome and you got to start all over, then you start doing 16th notes.
So you're doing four per click. _ _ _
_ [N] The same thing is going to happen with your alternate picking.
You'd want to find the ideal spot.
So I'm going to use 120 again for you right now. _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [E] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ The goal with that is that I want to line it up.
I got to feel the alternate pick first before I worry about how fast I can do it.
Now, if that's really comfortable, again, you do the exact same thing.
You just keep moving it up, moving [B] it up until you find that _ ideal speed to be playing at.
So let's say I've made it all the way around the metronome, and now I'm back at 120,
and I'm doing my alternate picking. _ _ _ _
[E] Again, _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ I want to focus on doing that for three minutes.
If I can't last that long, I got to slow the metronome down a little bit.
If it's really easy, I got to speed it up a little bit.
So that's the first thing that I want you to focus on, okay,
is really learning how to truly develop your right arm with down picking and alternate picking
as effectively as possible and being honest about it.
The second exercise is a legato exercise that's done with your left hand
to create strength with all of your fingers, okay?
The stronger your fingers are, the longer you can last,
and the more things that you can do, obviously, and the faster that you're going to be.
Now, again, if you've been playing a while, your first finger and your second finger,
and even your third finger to a certain degree, are usually pretty strong.
It's your pinky that you have a hard time with, or combinations with your pinky.
It might be your third and your pinky together or something like that.
So what we're going to do here is what I refer to as the 20-second exercise.
This does not require a metronome.
What you're doing here is you're going to set a stopwatch or a clock or whatever it is you want to do,
and for 15 or 20 seconds, depending on what you can do,
you're going to try and do this entire sequence all the way through without stopping.
And I guarantee you, it doesn't matter how long you've been playing,
if you do this as hard and as fast as you possibly can,
you're going to be pretty worn out by the end, and it'll give you some other options.
[B] So basically what we're going to do is we're going to take our first finger,
and it doesn't matter where we go, but for today,
we're going to go to the fifth fret of the third string, okay?
So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to do a series of hammer-ons and pull-offs
to my middle finger, and you want to hit that hard, and you want to hit it fast, okay?
[Ab] As well as_
I'm not going to do this. _ _ _ _
[G] Okay, you're going to do that for 15 seconds.
Maybe the first time you try this, do all of them for 15 seconds to get a feel for it.
And as you get better, you can do it for 20, and then you can keep going from there, okay?
So I'm going to do that for 15 seconds or 20 seconds as hard and fast as I can.
And then without stopping, I'm going to switch from 1 to 3.
So now I'm on fifth fret, seventh fret of the third string.
I'm going to do that as hard and fast as_ _ _ _
for, again, 15 seconds or whatever it's going to be.
And then without stopping, I'm going to switch to my pinky,
and I'm going to do the same thing, okay?
So now I'm on fifth fret to eighth fret.
So I went from fifth fret to sixth fret with these two, _
fifth fret to seventh fret, [Ab] and then fifth fret to eighth fret.
Now without stopping, you want to set your middle finger down on the sixth fret of the third string,
and now you're going to do middle finger to your third finger as fast as you can
for, again, those 15 seconds or whatever.
And this is where you're really going to start feeling it, okay?
And then without stopping, you're going to switch to your middle finger and your pinky.
And again, you're going to do that for 15 seconds or 20 seconds or whatever it is you're doing.
And then without stopping, you're going to set your ring finger down,
and you're going to do the same thing to the pinky.
Now by the time you get there, you're going to really feel it in your arm.
And again, this is why stretching is so incredibly important.
You can stretch out before you can play.
You can stretch out after you play or after you practice, okay?
And it doesn't take a lot of time.
So you'd go through the sequence of doing this one,
_ [G] _ _ _ _
_ [Cm] _ _ _ [Db] without stopping, you're going to set this finger down and do this one,
[Ab] _ _ _ [D] without stopping, you're going to set your ring finger down and go to your pinky.
[A] You'll try and do that over and over and over for 15 seconds apiece or, again, 20 seconds apiece,
whatever works for you, okay?
Now let's say you get done with that and, you know, it's a little while later,
you're stretched out, you can feel the blood flowing, you're warmed up,
and maybe by going through that a few times, you've realized that your third in your pinky
or your middle in your pinky is what you really need work on.
Then what you can do is you can alter that exercise
by simply practicing certain groupings that you really need, okay?
The truth is you need them all, but certain ones you're probably struggling with more than others,
so you might want to take those ideas out, extract those, excuse me, a little bit,
and work on those in addition to the normal exercise that you're doing.
_ All right, and the final exercise is a synchronization exercise between your two hands,
and this is a fairly common one that many people do,
but I think it's really important to understand how to do it effectively
and to do it on a regular basis.
One of the things about learning how to play is trying to get your hand
_ _ [C] _ to synchronize with each other when you're playing, whatever it is that you're doing, okay?
And we're doing that by learning how to do certain exercises with our right hand,
certain exercises with our left hand.
Well, the last thing now is to start figuring out how to get your two hands
to synchronize with each other.
And so the technique we're going to use here is just a simple four-finger technique
of doing alternate picking, and I'm going to play 1, 2, 3, 4,
and then I'm going to go to the next string, the fifth string,
and I'm going to play 1, 2, 3, 4, and I'm going to keep going all the way up,
and when I get to the top, I'm going to move up a [N] fret,
and I'm going to turn around and go 4, 3, 2, 1, second string, 4, 3, 2, 1,
third string, 4, 3, 2, 1, and so on all the way down.
Then I'm going to move up and go back up, and then I'm going to move up and go back down.
Down for me meaning this way, okay?
But what I want you to really think about is effective synchronization between your two hands.
_ _ _ _ [Abm] _ Efficiency, for instance, when you're playing this,
you don't have to keep taking all your fingers off, right?
If you start with your first finger here, you could simply set the next one down,
set the next one down, the next one down, and somewhere in here,
you're going to be lifting this finger up to get ready on the next string,
and then you're going to go through the same sequence.
Because really, a couple of problems that people have with this,
number one is this finger combination between 3 and 4,
which is why we're doing the legato exercise.
Number two is trying to move from one string to the next,
and you have to remember, I call it Frankensteining.
What you do is when you move from one string to the next,
you've got to make sure that if you think about it when you're walking,
you don't Frankenstein, you don't walk like this.
What you do is one foot goes down, and it's still there when the other foot goes down,
and then the other one comes off.
So you find a nice stride to your walking.
The same thing happens with your picking.
At some point during this sequence, [Ab] _ this guy's got to come up
and get [Eb] ready on the next string so you can seamlessly work through each string.
Okay?
So you're trying to line this up, you're being honest with yourself at how fast you can go,
and remember, you're always as fast as your slowest part.
That's as fast as you can go.
So if your problem is your 3rd and your pinky,
you're going to have to adjust to go the speed of your 3rd and pinky.
And then of course in your other times, you're practicing increasing the tempo of that
or increasing your strength or your stamina with that as well.
Okay?
So you're going through _
_ _ [Ab] some _ [E] alternate picking.
I get to the top, [N] _ _ _ [Abm] _ _ [G] _
[Gb] I'm coming back down again,
and as I do that, I'm still alternate picking.
Now of course, lifting up and going that direction is different than going that direction, right?
Because now I've got to get my fingers out of the way. _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [F] _ [Gb] So on.
Okay?
Now this again, you could use a metronome with it.
_ _ [Eb] _
_ _ [B] _ _ [Eb] _ _ [Abm] _
Okay?
And I'm going to roll through that whole sequence,
and I might move all the way up.
I might go all the way to the 12th fret and then maybe work my way back down.
So hopefully these are some tips that you can find useful in your playing.
If you have any questions, please get a hold of me through the website lessonface.com,
and I would be more than happy to help you.
Have a great day. _ _ _ _ _ _