What would you say if someone told you there was one simple exercise you could do…
…That will improve your dexterity, timing, groove, confidence, and all-around musicality?
You might think, well, that sounds like a lot of work.
Well, what if I said you can improve all this, with less than a few minutes of practice per day…
All while playing a really impressive piece of music that is fun and sounds nothing like an “exercise”.
It’s possible, and that’s something I have for you.
You see, when you teach students one-to-one (as I have done for countless hours over the years), you tend to try out lots of things…
In fact, students of mine have often joked they are my guinea pigs or that I’m a mad scientist experimenting on them or something!
Well, like any experiment, for multiple reasons, some ideas didn’t work all that well.
…And others really blew the lid off of how students learn.
I hate seeing other teachers regurgitate the same old tired, boring lessons out there.
This includes countless exercises like the following that I see time and again:
- Playing scales with a metronome. This can be useful, but for beginners or those with bad technique, not so much. At least not until they get great timing and technique. We all know the soul-destroying feeling of trying to play to a click and everything being too hard!
- Typical “finger gym” exercises. Most of these sorts of exercises are really tough, require big stretches, and the teacher rarely mentions technique. That just leads to lots of bad habits, sore fingers, and painful playing. I hate the phrase “finger gym” by the way. We all know what it’s like trying hard finger exercises which feel like someone has hit your hand with a sledgehammer by the end of it!
- Complex picking exercises that require a 64GB computer-style memory. I used to spend ages with these sorts of exercises, which were supposed to be practical ways of using scales. The problem was that they took ages to learn, and by the time I could remember the notes, grey hairs were starting to sprout!
Nope.
I don’t do a huge amount of the above in my teaching.
It’s not that there is anything wrong with the above, it’s just that for the beginner, these things can be far too hard, and actually detrimental.
…And not only do these sorts of exercises often take ages to complete…
Most only help you improve one or two things if you’re lucky.
This is a really poor way to spend your time, especially if playing real music is important to you.
So, why not do one really good exercise daily that will improve your all-around playing…
Then get working on playing the songs you love?
Well, an exercise I teach in the new Dan Thorpe Acoustic Academy lessons is one such exercise…
It works for absolute beginners all the way to intermediate players and each stage is broken up into three further levels.
Meaning anyone can do it, as it’s made to suit your current skill level.
Plus, it’s fun.
Anyway, the lesson is out on the 1st of August for all members of this below…
The Dan Thorpe Acoustic Academy
Have a great day!
Dan Thorpe
Guitar Domination
P.S. This post was originally taken from Dan Thorpe’s private email list. To get blog posts like this sent to you which are full of great tips to make fingerpicking, strumming, and learning guitar more enjoyable (especially if you are over 40) join Dan’s list. It’s 100% free, HERE.
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