Practice Archives - GUITARHABITS

How to Apply Kaizen to Guitar

February 10, 2019 By Klaus Crow 8 Comments

The word “Kaizen” is a combination of the words “kai” (change) en “zen” (for better), which makes “change for better”. The philosophy behind it is all about the act of continuous improvement.

The term originally comes from the book Kaizen by Masaaki Imai, through which Kaizen was first introduced to the western world.

Kaizen is widely known as a systematic approach for business improvement, but it actually refers to any improvement, one-time or continuous, large or small in all areas of life.

So yes, it can also be applied to guitar practice, to hone, improve, and perfect our skill continuously every day.

The improvement isn’t necessarily focused on large scale changes, and huge wins, but more on smaller, incremental and immediate changes.

So, instead of thinking how to make a big, giant step towards becoming a brilliant guitar player, and start buying expensive guitars, equipment, and executing an extensive practice regimen, you focus on the smallest improvements you can make in your guitar playing right now.

A continuous process that is less intimidating, doable, long lasting and definitely adding up.

The New Guitar Regimen: Feel Great, Superfit and Improve Your Playing Faster

December 5, 2018 By Klaus Crow 10 Comments

To improve your guitar playing you have to practice regularly. That’s a no-brainer. To make sure you actually do that you must have time, motivation, energy and focus.

Time is one thing (if that is not enough), but motivation, energy and focus are equally important and really need to be in place to make your guitar regimen rock solid.

For some this may look unattainable, but it can be done.

Let’s take a look at the key ingredients to make this work:

Prepare
Yes, prepare, prepare, prepare!
1 – Write down in your calendar at what days, what times and for how long you’re going to practice (30 or 60 min).
2 – Schedule another 30 min extra time before practice (I’ll explain in a minute).
3 – Inform family and friends your practice time is sacred and they can’t disturb you while you’re at it.
4 – Find or create a quiet and private practice space, where nobody will find you :)
5 – Set up your equipment, your guitar(s), sheet music, and necessary tools (pick,capo,tuners,etc.) the day before practice, so you are ready to roll.
6 – Make sure nothing comes in between you and your practice regimen. Make it so.

Table of Contents
Next, write out the table of contents for your practice workout. How are you going to spend those valuable 30 to 60 minutes of full blown practice?

Make sure it contains everything you love to play and things that drive you to get better and better. Choose, print and write down the scales, licks, exercises, chords, progressions and solos you want to work on. Get your nice blues jamtracks ready for improvisation, find some ear training exercises, and music theory to study, and above all, select the songs you love to play.
Continue Reading

Improve Your Playing Through Slow Thorough and Full Immersion

April 19, 2018 By Klaus Crow 2 Comments

Nowadays every song is at your disposal on Spotify and Youtube, and you can also find how to play these songs on guitar tablature and guitar lesson websites. Having access to everything instantly makes you want to hear and learn things quicker, easier, faster, better and have more of it.

The tricky part is we tend to forget to dig deeper into the songs. We move on to the next and the next and might not give it the time and attention it deserves.

I’m also guilty of learning songs fast, effective and efficiently for teaching and gig purposes, but there are also times I just want to dive deeply into a song and absorb every single detail.

It’s an immense joy to take the time to learn, practice, and figure out all the nuances and things that make the song what it really is. Total immersion.

You slowly digest the song and learn an incredible amount of craftsmanship that’s built into the song that you probably don’t hear at the surface. You will appreciate and enjoy the song a whole lot more when you take the slow and thorough approach.

You don’t have to do this with every song, but at least with the songs you really love. Start with one or two songs and enjoy the process.

Here are the keys: Continue Reading

How to Quickly Transpose A Song Without Capo

March 14, 2018 By Klaus Crow 5 Comments

There are many ways to transpose a song in different keys. You can use a capo, play a song in bar chords and then move all the chords up or down, or write down all the chords of the song in the appropriate key.

Those are good solid ways, but sometimes it’s just nice to transpose without capo, bar chords or too much hassle of writing things down.

You want to switch between keys instantly using mainly open chords, because they sound nice and are easy to play. We’re not going for any sharp or flat keys in this post. We keep things simple.

So how do you go about that?

First, you want to know how to build chords of the major scale. If you don’t know how to do that, you can check out this post. If you don’t want to get into the theory behind it, no worries, you can also read on and just memorize the chord sequences that follow. You can always read more about it after this post.

Now we start with deriving the 7 chords from the C Major scale:
C – Dm – Em – F – G – Am – Bdim
Continue Reading