Practice Routine

Let’s talk about your practice routine. How do you practice?

Well, different people have different practice routine and it’s hard to say which one is the correct one.

For me, I started out the wrong way I guess. I have no one to teach me the basic fundamentals of playing the guitar. During the early years of my playing, I only used to learn from the chord book. But I guess learning to play the chords first is the basics of guitar playing. Almost everyone I know started out by learning to play the chords.

There are a lot of different chords that you can play on the guitar, but for a beginner maybe the basic chord shape would suffice. I remember when I was starting out; I never had the knowledge of how to play solos.

I learned to play solos from Malay rock songs and didn’t even know what scales are. During my early teens in the early 90s, I listened mostly to rock songs and tried to play the solos only by ear. I must admit that my ability to copy solos by listening is not 100% accurate, but at least it was a part of ear training which is invaluable until today. During those years there were no GuitarPro or Powertab because there were no internet for us to look for transcriptions and resources. All we had were just guitar magazines with some transcription in it.

When I was in school, I had a good friend who plays the guitar with me. He is still my good friend until today and for me he is one of the best rhythm and chord melody player locally. His knowledge on the instrument and music theory is one of the best in Brunei.

We often played together during those years and it’s was like a competition for me personally because his playing was that good. I had to work on my solos so that I would not be left behind. But until today my rhythm and chord melody playing is way far behind him and I think I need to catch up on that....haha!! It was good times during the school days and I remembered we even brought our amps and Ibanez guitar to school to jam together.

There was one local guitar player who to me was one of the best in Brunei. He was in a band called ‘Potensi’ and they had their album came out during the early 90s. This guitar player was only a kid during that time, I guess he was about 16 yrs old and was the youngest member in that band which comprises of musicians and their late 20s and early 30s. When their album came out I remember I bought a cassette. I didn’t have money to buy their CD!! When I played the album I was shocked and inspired. The guitar playing of this kid was sooooooooo good that it was really melodic, mature and inspiring. I was then motivated to practice harder and almost everyday play their songs on my “Hi-Fi”. I think I learned to play all their songs in that album and until today I think I can still remember every part of the guitar solos on that album. Maybe the new generation of today never heard of ‘Potensi’ but if you ever had the chance to get hold of that album, I recommend you guys to have a listen to the guitar playing of then a 16 yrs old kid and buckle up your seats as you might be blown away. He is one of my good guitar friend today and still one of my favourite local guitar player.

I remembered the first instructional videos I bought were a Richie Kotzen Rock Chops video. Oh man this guy was just incredible. His guitar playing was just flawless and it made me wonder when I can play like that. But then I was just only around 14 yrs old when I bought that video lesson. After that I bought some more video lessons from other guitar players and I guess during which time I was more into the shredding stuffs. I listen to a lot of Yngwie Malmsteen....alot!!

I guess Yngwie Malmsteen was one guitar player who really inspired me to be more interested in the guitar shredding. I listened and tried to play like him but I was unable to because I did not have the right basics and scale knowledge to be able to shred. I only knew how to play the simple basic shred stuffs like the 3 note arpeggio and some Yngwie pedal tones, and other than that I just tried to play solos as fast as I can.

Then I was introduced to Paul Gilbert and began to listen and watch his instructional videos. Paul Gilbert was the one guitar player who can really teach the right way of guitar shredding and I really progressed alot by watching his instructional video. I also began to understand the correct way of picking and scale playing and was much more systematic in my practice routine.

I began to use the metronome and it did help alot for accuracy especially when you are practicing alternate picking. Until today if I ever wanted to nail a particular lick I often used a metronome to get it right.

So my practice routine nowadays is just playing scales up and down the neck. I have not got much practice time due to other responsibilities. So just to keep my fingers warm I will play for maybe half an hour just noodling on my guitar to just keep in shape (I mean my fingers).

My practice routine has evolved and now I concentrate not so much on physical training of the fingers due to time restraint and alot of other responsibilities, but much more to listening to music and analysing the theory behind it which is something that you can do whilst driving and listening to music or just anywhere you go where you hear music.

There is so much more to learn on the guitar and it’s a never ending process no matter how good you are. I guess I better go get my guitar now and try to figure out that Gilbert lick for my next practice routine.

See Ya

Guitar Rules!!