Hey guys, it's Marc back here again with you from Jazz Guitar Lessons. And in this episode, I want to cover a quick and dirty 30-minute practice plan. If you want to get better at guitar or anything for that matter—in this case, specifically learning the ropes of jazz—I’ll suggest a quick routine.
So let’s get down into it.
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So first off, warm up. A big caveat—people typically warm up for too long. If you only have 30 minutes, I would recommend you do about 90 seconds to two minutes. Just keep loose, keep warm, make sure you're in the right posture. Also, in your practice room, make sure you have everything at hand, right?
I have a music stand, and I need maybe a pencil, paper, a timer, my metronome, my picks, and my amp is on. Shut the door, make sure you're not going to be distracted. This pays off huge dividends in the long term. Recently, I sent a quick note via text to one of my students who also happens to be a long-time friend, and he replied and said, "Well, you're interrupting my practice."
And I told him, "Why are your phone notifications on while you're practicing? You should turn that stuff off. Turn the phone off, or to the beeper, or whatever." So that's a big, big lesson. Warm up and take that time to really set up everything so you know you're not going to be distracted. Another tip is to use a timer because it’s easy to spend three, four, five, ten, or even twelve minutes on a warm-up while you only have 30 minutes to practice.
So you’ve got to be smart, got to be diligent. The whole point of the timer—usually when my students start with me, they believe we use a timer to stay accountable and tally practice time, like, "Oh, you didn’t practice enough, crank up that number." Actually, the use of the timer is not that at all.
The use of the timer is to stop myself once the topic is over because I could easily spend 65 minutes on the same chord. But if I stop myself after 20, I’ll think, "Hey Marc, you’ve done a good job on this. You gave it a good beating. Come back tomorrow. Don’t neglect the rest of your practice routine."
Yeah, that’s a great tip. After you’ve warmed up, I would say go straight into the tune that you’re working on. There should be one priority, one thing that you have in mind, especially if you have short practice sessions like this.
In my case, I would recommend doing at least a five-stage process. You can find it in the Jazz Guitar Fellowship on Skool, which is free to join and free for life as well, with a bunch of training. The point here is to segment the standard I’m working on, whether it is "Autumn Leaves" or "Summertime" or "Stella by Starlight" or anything else that floats your boat.
Segment this into different pieces of work. There’s a piece where you want to learn voicings—chords, right? There’s a point where you want to hold the form at a steady rhythm. There’s a point where maybe you want to have a chord melody—a minimalistic chord melody, but still a chord melody. There’s a point where you want to learn to outline the changes with your improv. There’s a point where you want to put it all together.
So personally, I segment them using what I call a divide-and-conquer approach to learning standards. After you’ve warmed up, launch immediately into the segment you’re working on. You could probably spend the majority of your time on this—about 20 minutes or so.
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Lastly, I would work on something harder, like a technique or a technically demanding task. Five to ten minutes. It could be the good old hammer-ons, roll-offs, or pull-offs. It could be whatever.
While you’re warm and the blood is flowing, it’s the time to do that. Some students try to do that first to "get it over with." But I say, might as well start with the thing that’s most demanding in terms of mental RAM.
After the warmup, work on a tune. The thing you don’t want to do is make it boring and tedious. Consistency brings tremendous results. We invent all kinds of distractions to avoid working on tunes—learning techniques, analyzing, guitar shopping, new pedals, transcriptions, substitutions, etc.
But nothing will bring you more benefit than working on the song for the majority of the time.
So: two minutes warmup, 20 minutes on a song segment, five minutes on technique, and the last few minutes recording yourself.
That’s it! My name is Marc from Jazz Guitar Lessons. Thanks for listening. Leave a comment, rate the podcast, and let me know your questions. See you soon on the website, YouTube, or podcast. Jazz Guitar Lessons—improve your jazz, start playing with a real teacher. Thank you and take care.