Up to 50 minute practice sessions now! This is quite a lot of practice so divide it into two session if you need to. Some of this (like learning the notes) is mental so you can do this while you are on the tube or the bus or while you are having dinner if you like. Practicing in your "dead time" is something you can do a lot of, I spent a lot of time doing "mental practice", strumming in the air, imagining doing my chord changes and trying to mentally picture the notes on the fingerboard, so you might like to try that too!

Stage 8 Practice Schedule

Video Lesson

Things To Remember

Memorising Notes on 5th and 6th String
This one is VERY IMPORTANT - you will use this information lots of different way, you need it for your Power Chords now, and you will use it for all your scales and eventually barre chords, so don'y skip this! Once youhave these two strings learn, it is easy to work out the other notes all over the neck too. Instructions for this are in Practical Music Theory!

Minor Pentatonic Practice
You need to get this into your memory and it is also great practice for individual note picking and also works your finger stretch and independance. Do it slow and get it right! You should also be working a bit on the picking exercises in this time too. We will start to look at using it in the next stage so try and get it under your fingers as best you can!

Chord Practice
Remember that the point of this exercise is to get your chords sounding clear and train your fingers to go to exactly the right spot to get the chord sounding great. Start with a strum and then pick each note individually, except any strings that have the X next to them that you don't play. Try to play the notes with the tips of your fingers. Remember that dead sounding notes need to be fixed and the usual causes are either:
a) The finger is too far from the fret.
b) One of your fingers is touching a string that it shouldn't.

Move your fingers around as you pick out the strings until they all sound good and then strum them again, and as you give them the last strums, tell your fingers that this is how you want them to go to next time. It will look a little strange to anyone that is watching you, but it really helps! ;)

Power Chords
Work on the stretch and getting the thin strings muted. We've now got them on two strings, so you need to practice both - with an emphasis on muting the 6th string with the tip of your finger when you are playing the 5th string root chords.

One Minute Changes
The object of the exercise is to get your fingers moving quickly. Although you should be trying to get the fingers in the perfect positions that you have been working on in your chord practice, if they are a little sloppy it is ok, we are working the speed here!

The important thing here is to practice the chord changes that you struggle the most with. In your practice schedule you should write in the amount of changes that you made in that practice session. Make sure you use your timer, and push yourself to go as fast as possible.

Rhythm Guitar Practice
Just spend your time playing the pattern over and over again, don't try and add the strumming patterns to songs yet, that will be coming soon, and you will do it LOADS better if you follow my advice here and work on the patterns first before you try to apply them.

12 Bar Blues
Just trying to keep it in time and play it all the way through without stopping. Don't forget that playing this very slowly makes it sound cool, as well as giving you time to get it right - so don't be scared to play it slow!

Basic Fingerstyle
If you have done no fingerstyle before you might find this a little tricky, so don't be in a hurry and allow yourself time to develop these new motor skills!

Songs / Chord Sequences
Just have fun and have a go at playing any songs you like, from my suggested list, or just something else that you fancy playing (preferably ones that just use the chords covered so far). Try to keep strumming basic "4's", one down strum on each beat, and try and keep strumming along and get your changes fast enough to not have to pause between chord changes!

JUSTIN Training
This is important, getting your ears working. Just go through the exercises and give your ears the workout they deserve!

Hope it is all going well for you!

HELP!!!!

If you need to ask a question about this lesson - there is a topic set up specifically to help you with this lesson. To help you find it easily you can click the following link and it will take you right the topic. You'll be able to see questions that other people had and ask your own questions! Hopefully one of the very helpful members of our community will be there to help you soon, I do go there and answer stuff too - but there are just too many questions for me to answer alone! So click this link to get help with this lesson!

Justinguitar Beginner's Products

I have four great beginners products that will help you make the most of this course. Most popular is The Justinguitar Beginners Songbook which contains 100 songs arranged by difficulty that perfectly match up with each level of the course. Many people told me they like books more than web pages so we've made The Justinguitar Beginners Course Book (comes with 2 x CD's too!) and many people found being online to watch the videos a pain so we offer The Justinguitar Beginners Course DVD which also means you can watch the vids in much better quality. Together they complete the whole online course and are perfect when there is no internet connection!! Also very popular is Practical Music Theory for those that like to know what they are doing and why!! It covers very basic theory in an easy to digest way and puts it onto the guitar! They are all available in Bundle Packs too where you can save a bunch of money!! Buying products and making donations help keep the site free and growing! :)