Hello fellas. Hope everyone’s having a great time with their guitar.
[feel free to skip this paragraph, a little note to Justin]
Firstly, thank you Justin for this amazing work of yours. Really appreciate the free courses online. Best teacher so far. I’m loving them. Just when I thought that you’re doing everything, you’ve started Playin’ It Forward. Love the program, helps people like me. Although I didn’t get one because of the limited shipping regions, I’ve recently got one after a lot of strategic planning to convince parents. I’ve learnt a lot through your beginner courses.
I’m in Grade 3 course as of now. I have an idea on what kind of musik I wanna learn, but I do not know what practice routine I should make for myself for Grade 3 modules. Not all of the boxes Justin recommends suits my taste and it’s a little messy. I like playing songs more than practicing a technique if it’s not something major like a pentatonic scale or something. Up until now, Grade 1 and 2 had practice routines to learn the chords, basic techniques, etc. But Grade 3 requires me to make one for myself. I’ve thought it wouldn’t be that hard but the songs I aim to learn require a lot more than what I know at the moment. While telling myself to slow down and focus on fundamentals, I’m a little stuck on what my boxes should be in a practice session. I play guitar for hours every day but mostly playing. As Justin said, a set routine is necessary to get the things, even if I don’t become god at them, I should know them.
At the end, my goal is put the musik in my head on to the guitar. People can’t read my mind lol.
I don’t know what info is needed to help me create a practice session, but I’ll provide some below. Hope it helps; and cheers
I like A Minor (we all do somehow, bluetooth connection i guess). I like to practice scales.
I wanna play rock musik (examples: queen, led zepplin, lynyrd skynyrd, etc.). Somehow I managed to learn Hotel California solo (30 secs) for musik club auditions and I got in lol.
I’m not afraid of musik theory as I’ve tried to learn piano in 8th grade, I know the basics.
I do not expect anyone to spew a routine, that would be foolish. I look forward to having a discussion and figuring it out. Feel free to ask any number of questions. I’m just lost on what kind of things I should practice. I feel like Grade 3 teaches a lot more subtle things that are necessary.
Here’s a good place to start. Listen to a lot of your favorite songs from these bands. I mean really listen and try hard to figure out what they are playing. It’s called transcribing. Justin has lesson on transcribing. Try and figure out what techniques are needed (scales, bends, strumming, etc) to learn the songs you love. Then look up the lessons on Justin’s website and that’s what you practice.
The more you do this the better you get at it.
To start you could look up some in the song lessons Justin has of these bands and not only learn the song learn the techniques used in these song. Use this knowledge to learn other songs.
I’m glad you’ve shared the tip. I think I could use what you’ve said when I am lost as to what to work on. As I was reading the second line, a thought popped up which you’ve explained after that. To learn what technique is needed to play those songs and learn them, practice. I think that’s a lot helpful.
You’ve helped me figure out a majority of the routine. Thank you very much.
Rick already gave very valuable input on how to set up your routine and what you should include. I was also about to hint that you should check, which techniques are required for the songs you want to learn and put them into the routine.
If you’re not afraid of music theory, it surely won’t do any harm to include either a small block of that in your routine, or have like one or two separate session for theory per week as well. Justin’s PMT course is highly recommended and links theory and practical approaches quite nicely.
Have fun and enjoy playing! Make sure you always include some fun parts in your practice sessions, too (like playing songs or whatever you enjoy doing).
I will share my experience as I was in a similar boat as you last year. I hope it helps a little.
After trying many things, the method that worked for me was to spend about 1.5 months on each module. About half of the time, I was doing the recommended structured practice and after that I was taking a break playing songs that I like. My goal was not to perfect every exercice in each module like grade 1 or 2, it was simply to try it for a few weeks and then move on.
It was not easy to keep the grade 3 structured practice as I found some exercice boring, but in the end, I’m happy I stuck with it. I have to admit that some modules felt like a chore to me and I would have prefer just playing songs. I had to start the grade over 2 times to accomplish it because of lack of motivation, but it was worth it as many things feel much easier now in the intermediate grades.
My schedule for each module looked like this :
Week 1 : Watch the videos
Week 2 : Follow the suggested practice routine for 4 days + 1 day Transcribing
Week 3 : Follow the suggested practice routine for 4 days + 1 day Transcribing
Week 4 : 1 last day of practice + 1 last transcribing. And then start fun time …
Weeks 5-7: Work on songs that you like (not necessarily related to the module).
For me, also, grade 3 was the start of my big project of learning all the songs in the JustinGuitar Rock Songbook. A really cool project that I’d recommend if you are into rock. They were not all my favorite songs, but each one builds on top of the other in terms of skills and it definitely had a big impact on my playing. See my post for more details Math07 JG Rock Songbook Project (10 out of 15) - 3 songs added 3 June
Thanks for the recommendation Lisa. I’ll check the course out and…
Have fun and enjoy playing! Make sure you always include some fun parts in your practice sessions, too (like playing songs or whatever you enjoy doing).
This is everything is I do . I keep playing the songs I know and try to learn some more. I’ll focus more on the techniques too.
I do not quite understand how long I should work on a module. In Grade 1, I spent around 2 weeks per module and in Grade 2, it was variable from 1 to 3 depending on the ease with which I could use the techniques.
What is a suggested time to spend on each module. In other words, when should I move on to next one and how long should I practice each?
Personnally, for each module, I had the goal of practicing about 9 times the 1 hour practice routine and 3 times the 1 hour transcribing exercices.
That’s like 3 weeks of practice per module at 4 days per week. And, I usually took 1 week to watch the lessons and play along to them at the beginning of the module.
So, in total, 1 month per module which is similar to my current pace on Blues Immersion.
And I took, some pauses between each module to play songs (rock songbook).
You can adjust the time based on your interest and motivation. The most important point is to keep it interesting for you.
And don’t worry about mastering everything in grade 3, it feels like an introduction to many subjects that you may revisit later in your intermediate journey. It’s not about mastering all the subtle details right away. But, having some basics in many techniques. The mastery will come over years of practice just like Blues Immersion program.
Thanks for the clarification. I’ve not tried to master everything. For example, blues is not my type so I’ve done it only to a point where I’m familiar with the ideas and can do it if I put some time into the songs. Like, learning to get the timing right, etc. Making sure that I’m familiar with the stuff Justin teaches. As for me, I practice around 2 hrs to 4 hrs a day including singing (I’m an addict lol), 7 days a week (more time on sat and sun).
Guess I’ll put the weekends for transcribing as they need quite some time. I’ll pick a song and learn it until I get it and learn all the techniques used in it.
Also, I’m liking improvising. I made a backing track for my Hotel California solo, after I was done with Don’s part, I’ve used the same notes to improvise and enjoyed it as it doesn’t need anything to be remembered like in a song. I’ll put some time for that in the routine. And playing along with some songs as Justin suggested and some music theory and interval training. As I said, I wanna play what’s in my head. I’ve watched some Rick Beato videos and most of the time, he says interval training is necessary and I never understood until recently in a practice session.
I’ve learnt that each string on the guitar (std tuning) is separated by 5 semitones (b string is separated from g by 4 semitones). That is a great one and it’s much clearer as to where to look for notes on the fretboard.
For now, this is the routine in my mind so far (some buffer time for other interesting stuff if anyone suggests here):
I’ve watched the video you liked Richard. I think I have an idea on what to focus because I’m interested in a lot of stuff like Justin is, I like the speed and accuracy in metal, melodies of The Beatles, sounds of rock, grooves of jazz, and a lot more. It really helped me.
Hey Math07, thanks for sharing your songs. I’ve watched the way you had your fingers on the fretboard for Should I Stay Or Should I Go. That gave me an idea and made Highway to Hell easier to play as I found the finger positions Justin showed hard. I’ve used my thumb for E string and naturally my fingers muted e string and A string and it was way easier to play. I’ll check out others’ covers fore more amazing ways. This new way of playing the chords also helped me groove and move my body while playing standing. Good one for stage performance.
One thing I’ll mention that has, and continues to be, an enormous benefit for me, is conducting all your practice in one key per week.
I have found, over and over again, that it has provided me with insights and connections that perhaps would have remained unknown or hidden.
During Grade 3, I just started rotating the very common keys like A, C, D, E, G, each week, then eventually, extended to every key.
So on any one day, for example, you may have a practice routine that includes 3 individual exercises etc on, say, the pentatonic scale, triads, and 7th chords.
Focusing on say, C Major, in all this practice, will start to reveal connections, relative functions, dependencies etc over and over again; and most importantly, things like intervallic relationships, and not just pattern based ones based on fret numbers or dots.
And, as you keep doing it, you develop the mindset.
This has given me another idea. If I did the routines for one scale a week and explore when I’m free, I’ll also be familiar with the scales and intervals and notes on the fretboard. I’ll make sure to include what you’ve suggested.
I see that you practice for many hours in a given week. Which is an amazing position to be in. Eight months subtract a handful of summer weeks isn’t very long at all. You are still very new to the guitar in absolute terms. I would encourage you from the end of Grade 2 and as you work through Grade 3 to take it steady and devote a lot of time to nailing the techniques and consolidating. This is your bedrock for all future learning and playing. If you get it right and shape it to be the best, most solid you can, you will reap huge rewards in the future and know you are building on firm foundations.
Here is an overview of Grades 1 and 2:
And here are Justin’s recommended practice routines - to be done several times a week for at least a week for the first few modules and longer than a week as the course progresses.
Using an estimated average learning and practice route of 30 minutes per day, increasing after a few months to 60 minutes per day on core learning, several times per week, Grade 1 is likely to take a few months.
Beginner Grade 1 has 75 lessons plus essential consolidation. Each lesson requires at least one day of practice time but by the end of Grade 1, in Modules 5, 6 and 7, I would say that to do the learning justice and really get solid in the basics, each lesson should respectfully be given several days or a week or more, each of the seven modules probably starting at one week for module 1 up to several weeks for module 7. I would even (albeit exaggeratedly to make a point) go so far as to suggest treating each module number as a guide to the weeks required.
Modules 1 to 7 = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 = 28 weeks. That is more than six months but is an inflated figure, especially for people who are able to practice for more hours in a week.
Grade 2 has 68 lessons. And as the learning ramps up the technical challenge and skill, each lesson and each module will require extended time to really get to grips with. I would suggest a similar approach.
Modules 8 to 14 = 8 + 9 + 10 + 11 + 12 + 13 + 14 = 77 weeks. That is more than a year. Again, those cumulative totals are on the high side.
I say this not to put the brakes on your learning, simply to prompt you to ask yourself if forward movement at speed is what you need or if additional time honing and embedding what you have already learned to consolidate is needed. And asking that question is not a one-stop shop. It is something you can keep asking yourself at intervals as you progress.
Hey @Richard_close2u , sorry for the late response. I don’t get notifications on my phone and didn’t check the site in a few days. I understand what you’re saying. I’ve spent around 2 months for grade one and before that, i did some exercises for the fretting hand that my friend suggested me to get started. And yeah, it’s not like I’ve done every single exercise justin suggested in grade 2 cuz i focused more on the things I’ve needed and enjoyed and spent enough time to get familiar with the things he taught.
My goal is not to move forward fast but to learn whatever I’m learning with quality. I’m patient and usually I practice at a very slow pace like around 30 or 60 bpm until i get the things good and smooth and work my way up.
But thanks for sharing the plans here. I’ll check them and see what I will have to revise after trying and seeing where inaccuracies are. Never bad to look back I guess.
After starting and stopping a number of times through the years (I’m 65 now) and trying to rush through Justin’s courses, I decided to just bite the bullet several months ago and start over (yet again, ugh), and start working through Lessons 1-3 again.
This time, I’m being through, and getting through Lessons 1-2 took me this whole time, even though I was pretty familiar with the routines. Now I’m working through Lesson 3 yet again, but being slower, more patient with myself (more forgiving too), and I’m feeling FAR more confident and still motivated even though I’ve done this before (not being careful and being impatient).
This time I’m incorporating more songs that I like, devoting more time to things I find I suck at, less time to those things I feel better about, since the songs help there.
Something that I’m excited about that people here showed me was Moises.ai. This makes it so I can just break down the songs into 4 parts so I can just play the guitar part. It’s like being in the band! Great stuff.
Anyway, I’m so glad I picked it back up! This time I’m sure I’ll make it!
Joe
. I keep playing the songs I know and try to learn some more. I’ll focus more on the techniques too.
