Best exercies to work on accuracy

[loki963]

Ive been doing 1234 chromatics for about 3 weeks to a metronome starting slow and working up faster (till I make error, then restart) at 16th notes and I was wondering if this alone would be effective enough to help on picking accuracy and speed. What are some other exercies I should do and should I learn scales at the same time im doing this?

[espf-250htd06]

trills help alot with accuracy as far as your fretting hand other than that just do alot of picking exercies

---------
-8-7-----
-----9-7-
---------
---------
---------

[drewhet]

http://www.insaneguitar.com/mc/alternate.html

[clairvoyant]

See: Troy Stetina instructional stuff

[Cool Beans]

http://www.musicianforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=413171

I wrote a lesson on this..

[rob91]

try playing the major scale going up 4 notes and then up 4 notes from the second note etc....

e|---------------------------------------------------
b|------------------------------------------------------
g|----------------------------------------------------4-- etc etc.....
d|-----------------------------4----4-5--4-5-7-4-5-7---------------
a|-------3----3-5--3-5-7-3-5-7-5-7----7--------------------------------
e|-3-5-7--5-7----7-----------------------------------------------

all alternate picked, practice it both starting on a down and an upstroke

[Trigger_003]

http://www.musicianforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=308621
http://www.musicianforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=308621
http://www.musicianforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=308621
http://www.musicianforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=308621
http://www.musicianforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=308621
http://www.musicianforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=308621

/THREAD!
:thumb:

[loki963]

alright, thanks alot for all the links and direction but I still have one last question about this. How should I schedual my practices im completely lost on what I should be doing to be better. I wish I had enough money for a teacher but online is my only source of info :(. I found alot more pages and sources of exercies but I still really have no idea how many times, how long, to do them. So how do most of you guys practice and how long?

[Trigger_003]

Here's something I wrote up on practise a while ago. It's a bit of a read but it should be worth it :).

The thing about practise is, it's not as time-relative as so many people seem to think. It is entirely possible to practise for 10 minutes and achieve more than someone who has "practised" for 3 hours.
How the heck can that happen? Well the guy "practising" for three hours could be repeating the same thing over and over again, not getting anywhere. A very common example of this is just playing songs that they already know, and while this is practise - to a (quite minimal) degree - if that's all you do, you aren't going to get as far within a given time-frame as someone who goes out with a goal and a purpose. However, the person playing for 10 minutes (in this example of course) thinks about their approach, does something about it if need be, and actually learns/masters something. Now this is in no way me saying you should practise for 10 minutes - that's just for the purpose of the example - just think about what you're actually doing when you do practise. Give yourself a direction.

Practise is about accomplishing what you're trying to, and, well not really racing through things, but being efficient about learning something. What I mean by this is, if you really can't get something, sit back and think "Am I doing this right? Why aren't I getting this? What's holding me back?" It's no use playing the one thing over and over again mindlessly if you aren't getting anywhere by doing it.
It could be that you need more information, perhaps be shown how to do a certain technique again. Maybe you have to slow down what you're doing and gradually speed it up (as I said in that exercises thread). Do you need to go back over what exactly you are trying to accomplish? Those are the kinds of things you should consider.

In organising your practise, a great thing to do is set goals. Reasonable ones. Not "I'm going to learn Eruption in the next 5 minutes". Ok, I own up to this not being the most exciting thing to actually sit down and write out goals, but it really does help. They don't need to have strict times on them (1 hour, etc.), but make sure you give yourself a rough guide... say a day, week, or so on.
Check out http://www.musicianforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=9476335#post9476335 for info on this.

While actually practising, try to cover a lot of things. Not all at once obviously, but attempt to rotate your practise time between various aspects of music. By doing this you can make yourself more of an all-round musician. Here are some areas you might like to get into/cover when practising:

- Warm up. Just get you hands warm, yourself into position, and a few slides, tuning, some short exercises, all that jazz.
- Theory. LEARN it, and more importantly, learn how to APPLY it. Even if it's just basic, it extends your abilities so much. Ear training, learning standard notation, and so forth is well worth doing too. If you're looking at learning theory, head on over to http://www.musictheory.net and if you don't get the whole notation thing, http://www.musicianforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=407990.
- Get into music/scales/rhythms/techniques from other genres. Get into some international stuff and/or jazz if you want some really complex polyrhythms and that. They make you compositions more interesting and knowing these further you musically.
- Correct technique. If you can't get lessons for this (or even some DVD lesson or something like that), the best way to develop it is probably to check out a good classical book. There are other good aspects of getting a classical book, but hey, that's not what we're here for. You might like to have a look at one of Aaron Shearer's or "The Carcassi Method for Classical Guitar". Regardless of how you do, make sure you do develop good technique. Improper technique/posture can lead to aches and damage to various joints and so forth... not particularly a good thing if you're wanting to be a great guitarist.
- Composition.
- Exercises. Do what you feel is going to benefit your type of playing, or extend you in some form or another most effectively. If your hand is hurting, give yourself a break and try again a bit later. Maintain these exercises for as long as you can (or is required for the particular exercise), but not so much that you will injure yourself; that'll just send you backwards.
- Sight reading. Useful if you ever want to audition for a music school/course, and/or many bands.
- I said before that just playing songs does get you somewhere, albeit a slow approach. Don't get me wrong here. Being able to play songs will assist in composition, jamming, applying theory, improvisation, and so much more. DO play songs, just make sure that you don't solely do this.
- Gear/gigging/industry knowledge. If you're looking at performing, recording, perfecting your or others' sounds, getting into a band or anything at all like that, there's a lot to learn. If you're getting into any of these kinds of aspects (apart from guitar orientated gear which is more based here), head over to the Jam Session section of this forum, as that's where we deal with most of that.

Also, take short breaks every half hour/hour or so when you're playing (you could read up on some theory or something during your playing breaks if you want). Jus learn to pace yourself; even doing a few of the areas listed above should help you immensely.

Hope that helps :thumb:.