Practice Schedule

Now I have some more time and I am devoting time again to learning to play, specifically with a book/DVD to help teach myself how to play jazz. I am going to be practicing for about 1.5 hours a day, sometimes more, and allowing myself to just "have fun" messing with improv or learning some songs on the weekends a bit. For now, I am learning major scale forms and saying each note as I go, working on all keys, and hoping this helps me learn the fret board really well. The instructor on the DVD said it is really vital to learn the major scales very well, so I am going to do it the "right" way. So far I have the 6-1, 6-2, and 6-4 forms down pretty well.

So ... what is your practice schedule if you have one?

Start warm up with some riffs and exercises. Then I will work on building a skill for a certain amount of time by finding songs that utilise it better than I can or writing something and building up the speed I can do it at. I'll then do that till it's up to speed or I run out of time.

If I get it up to speed I then just consider my work done and play purely for the joy of playing :P

Also because of school work I often don't have the time to do that (this week being a good example 2 days to finish 3 pieces of coursework to a good standard). Because of that I will just fiddle with stuff I'm writing in the morning for maybe 15 minutes then no more guitar.

But it will be worth it when I'm confronted with the longest summer holiday of my life.

Mine's written up as a lesson.

But I really recommend using a program called Band in a Box if you wanna mess with Jazz. Best way to "jam".

i don't even know what the 6-1, 6-2, and 6-4 forms are!!!

I practice a certain principal in my life called "delayed gratification". Basically, it means to do what you don't like first then do the thing/s you do enjoy after. I do this with almost all things. Especially work. HOWEVER, I do NOT do this with the guitar. When I play and enjoy playing, I am practicing. Then, once I am satisfied with having fun, I practice things I need to improve upon. For me, it works better to delay in reverse of this principal in regards to the guitar.

Sorry to get so philosophical but that's how I tick!

I warm up by playing hard and as fast as I can, only for a few minutes and then take a 10 min break and and then run some scales up and down the neck and then take about a 5 min break, then my hands are usually warmed up, sometimes I will practice for hours at a time, but I try daily to do runs up and down the neck just to keep my hands in shape, repetition gets boring but I guess thats a part of learning

i love biab! thats most of my practice time. other than that i just learn licks and chord voicings, i don't really mess with finger exercises i think their kinda a waste of time. although i do run my scales and arpeggios, work on string skipping and alternate picking. but always in a musical way like i will write a lick or something with that technique in it. biab helps me the most though. its music so i try to think musically when i practice. yadadamean?

i dont really have like a set time or amount of time i practice, just for like half n hour here 15 min there type thing. i find i learn better if i practice in shorter increments throughout the day instead of one long practice.

im always in the process of learning one or two things right now its a kurt rosenwinkel solo transcription and a chord melody of bluesette. not just five min ago i learned juju by wayne shorter and wrote a few whole tone licks:) playing guitars lots o fun:)

I also get inspired by an artist and try to do his/her licks in a song/album I like. Right now it's Steve Howe from Yes. The album in particular is Fragile. I wouldn't have even tried to learn anything from Steve Howe 10 years ago.

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@ jazz

I checked out the band in a box software, it looks pretty amazing. Which pak do you have? Just browsing, it seems the best bet is the MegaPak for $269. Is the base package valuable enough to get? I guess I am just wondering your thoughts on which package is the best for the money. It is not cheap software, I will have to save for quite a long time to get that, that is for sure.