Guitar Excecises

Being a guitarist is a lot like being an athlete. A certain amount of practice has to go toward general maintenance of your playing on both a physical and mental level. You have to do exercises that will keep your skills in a state of readiness, so that when the time comes to go out and play you can do so in the best way possible. There are also times that you might need to regain a level of fitness after a period of inactivity.General fitness is even more critical if improvisation plays a role in your music, since you don’t know specifically what you’ll be playing when you solo. You have to be able to execute the ideas that come to you, whatever they might be. Being in shape makes is more likely you’ll be able to execute those ideas, rather than try and fail.Below, I’m going to go through some exercises that I do to either keep my lead playing and improvisation in shape, or to regain a level of fitness if I’ve been the musical equivalent of a couch potato.

Speed Exercises

First, I’ll demonstrate some exercises that will keep your fingers moving quickly.I personally choose to center my speed and technique exercises around scales rather than exercises that target more repetitive finger combinations. I figure, since I’m going to be using scales when I solo, I might as well keep the exercises as close to what I’m really doing when soloing.Since there are so many exercises out there that work on speed and technique, you have to be discerning in choosing a way of working on these things that is relevant to the music you will be playing. There are tons of scales out there, so you also have to be specific about which scales you choose to practice, unless you’re trying to put in 10 hour practice days. You should ask yourself:

• What scales are you likely to be using in the music you play?
• Which patterns of those scales are your strongest and weakest?

Your answers to these questions will tell you which scales to use for these exercises. For the examples I’ll give, I’ll just use this pattern of the C major scale: