July 31, 2025 • 10 mins
Creating an effective practice routine is essential for guitar progress. Daily and weekly practice structures help overcome the feeling of being lost and ensure you're working on the right things.
• Practice fundamentals daily, focusing on chords that match your ability level and finger size
• Work on each chord independently before practicing transitions between them
• Choose songs that align with the chords you're practicing to create reinforcing learning
• Break song learning into components: chord practice, rhythm work, and understanding structure
• Set up a weekly rotation of skills like new songs, scales, theory, and improvisation
• Balance your practice schedule with flexibility to follow genuine musical interest on any given day
• Distinguish between following inspiration versus avoiding practice out of laziness
If you're struggling with guitar or feel lost when practicing, try developing a structured routine that fits your goals. Inside the GuitarZoom Academy, we'll work with you to create a personalized practice plan and provide ongoing support through daily Zoom interactions.
Links:
Check out the GuitarZoom Academy:
https://academy.guitarzoom.com/
- Steve’s Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/stinemus...
- GuitarZoom Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/guitarz0...
- Songs Channel → https://www.youtube.com/user/GuitarSo... .
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Steve Stine (00:00):
Hey, Steve Stine here.
Thank you so much for joiningme.
Today we're going to be talkingabout the absolute importance
of creating an effectivepractice routine.
Okay, if you're just playingthings and again, don't get me
wrong if you're loving whatyou're doing and nothing's wrong
(00:20):
and you're enjoying what you'redoing, I think that's wonderful
okay.
But if you're struggling at allwith your guitar playing and
you just kind what you're doing,I think that's wonderful Okay.
But if you're struggling at allwith your guitar playing and
you're just kind of feel lost,like every time you pick up the
guitar it's just kind of arandom thing and you don't
really know whether you'reworking on the right stuff Okay,
this is where developing aproper practice routine really
really comes in handy, and whatI always try and do with people
(00:41):
is get them to understand thebenefit of creating both a daily
and a weekly practice routine.
So I'd like to talk to you alittle bit about that and see
kind of how that works in myhead and see if it's something
that would benefit you as well.
So a daily practice routinewould consist of fundamental
elements that you need todevelop or maintain.
(01:05):
Whichever one it is.
Maybe it's both okay to worktoward whatever it is that
you're trying to do.
So let's break that down alittle bit.
Let's say you're a beginner andyou're trying to learn how to
play a song.
Now that song is going toconsist of whatever chords, and
(01:27):
even that is a conversation initself.
Are these the right chords foryou to be working on?
Are there too many chords?
Right?
Have you fully developed these?
Each chord itself needs to bepracticed right.
Bouncing all this stuff?
You probably know that I talkabout all those kind of
techniques that you can do tooptimize your cords.
(01:47):
So you work on practicing thiscord and then you work on the
next cord, and then you work onwhat I call lift and shift,
which is bouncing between thecords.
Like that's part of your dailypractice routine.
Is the development of thesecords?
Is the development of thesechords?
If you're a beginner, youshouldn't have 14 chords.
You just shouldn't.
(02:14):
Okay, the?
The role of the guitarinstructor is to see where you
are, give you some information,find some resources of songs and
things like that that matchwhat it is you're trying to work
on.
Okay, make sure that the chordsthat you're actually learning
are the best chords that youshould be starting with relative
to your ability of your fingersand the size of your fingers
and the kind of music that youlike.
All of those things areassessments that are taken into
(02:36):
consideration right away thatdefine which chords we should be
working on.
Therefore, the songs that we'regoing to work on, along with
these chords because if I canget you playing songs right away
, you're probably going to havea lot of fun and you're probably
going to practice more thanjust working on chords for a
year and a half Okay, so thatall needs to be worked out.
Once it's worked out now, yourjob is to spend time every day.
(02:58):
I always tell people practiceon the days that you eat.
You spend time every dayworking on this cord and then
this cord and this cord Developthem independently and then
developing them collectively,and then we have a song that we
want to learn how to play, andthis song should represent and
(03:20):
be in alignment with thesechords.
If we're working on thesechords and we get a song that
has nothing to do with thesechords, everything's out of
alignment and you're justcreating more work for yourself.
We need to find a song thataligns with what you're working
on and once we find that song.
Now what we need to do is wealso not only need to practice
these chords, but we need tostart learning to listen to the
(03:43):
song, to start getting a feel ofwhat is the song telling us.
What is the tempo or the speed,what is the groove, what does
the?
And we'll get to the strummingin a second, but what does it
feel like a strum would be forthis?
What are the sections?
Like, oh, there's an introwhere nobody's singing, and then
there's a verse, and then itgoes into a chorus and then
(04:04):
there's a couple of verses andagain, you might write this down
, you might be able to kind of.
You know, I always call itdriving.
You can drive through the songif you know the song well enough
in your head, even if you'venever heard the song before.
If you listen to it over andover and over, you start
learning.
That's how I learn, and so Idrive through the song.
So I'm listening to the songand I can see, oh, we're in a
(04:26):
verse.
Okay, here comes the chorus.
Now there's that weird littlebreak.
Now it's going to go into averse.
Like, that's what I'm doingwhen I'm listening to the song,
is I'm becoming aware of thesong.
Okay, I'm ingesting theconcepts of the song.
I don't know how all the chordsgo and everything like that,
yet I just know these are thechords of the song, but I'm I'm
acclimating myself to the songitself and I'm working on the
(04:49):
chords.
The other part is I'm going tostart working on strumming, or
what I call scratching to thesong.
So I'm not playing the chordsalong with the song, I'm just
scratching to the song, tryingto get used to what the rhythm
is going to be.
Okay, I call this organicstrumming.
And again, inside the GuitarZoom Academy, which we'll get to
in a second, this is what youwould learn how to do all of
(05:12):
this kind of stuff.
So not only are you learningthe components or the tools
needed to play the song, butyou're learning how to learn
songs.
So you're learning how to thinkabout structure, how to
memorize, how to ingest, how tolisten, how to analyze.
In a very simple sense, thatsong that we choose is very
(05:33):
important because if the songhas a lot of sections and a lot
of stuff, it's going to be a lotharder for you to play.
Our job is to find the rightsong that aligns with where you
are and what you're trying to do, even if it's G, c and D, but
it's got a lot of chord changesand a lot of stuff, it's going
to be harder for you to play.
We need to find something thatthe structure is very simple.
(05:54):
Okay, so now you're really doingthree different things
independently You're working onthe chords over here, you're
working on the strumming andyou're working on the song
structure.
Then we start implementing themtogether.
We work on this the strumming,along with the song.
We start trying to work on thechords without the strumming, we
just start trying to bounce ourfingers along with the song.
(06:15):
Once we learn how the chordchanges go, we start to put
those in if our fingers don withthe song.
Once we learn how the chordchanges go, we start trying to
put those in If our fingersdon't move fast enough.
We need to go back and startworking on this a little bit
more.
And again, the process reallyisn't that difficult, but it
just takes time Once you learnhow to put and there's more to
it, but once you learn how to dothat, now you've got a game
plan of how to approach thesongs that you want to play and
(06:39):
if a song has some element thatisn't in alignment.
That's okay If it's three plusone, but this one is the part
that's out of alignment.
Well, that's the one part thatwe need to start working on now.
That fuels our practice.
You see, that's how we set up adaily practice routine.
Maybe yours is technique, maybeyours is scales, maybe it's a
combination of all of thesethings, which is great.
(07:00):
You might spend 15 minutesdoing this and 20 minutes doing
this.
That's your core practice foreach day.
Then the next thing is settingup a weekly.
Okay, so your weekly might looklike I'm going to work on songs
.
Again, depending on your goals,depending on your interests,
I'm going to work on songs onMondays and Wednesdays and maybe
Saturdays, and then I'm goingto work on, you know, because
(07:25):
this core is still going onevery day, right?
So I'm going to work on a newsong on these days, or I'm going
to work on scales on Mondaysand Wednesdays and theory on
Tuesday, and then I'm going towork on creatives like
improvisation on Thursdays andSaturdays or something like that
.
The beauty of that is is thatyou've got your core element,
that you're doing every singleday, that you don't want to lose
, because that's really who youare.
(07:47):
And then what you can do is youcan swap out these other things
depending on two things.
Number one, what your interestis that day.
And I always tell peoplethere's a significant difference
between interest and lazy.
You're not choosing becauseyou're lazy.
You're choosing because thatday you feel more technically
ready to go and you're on fire,and even though the thing
(08:09):
written on your wall says todayis a theory day, you're feeling
it and you want to do this.
I always tell people do this,don't deny what you're feeling
that day, don't deny how thingsare going.
Just because something'swritten on a piece of paper, go
with it.
If you find, for some reason,that you're never getting to
that no, no, no, we need toschedule that then we can't deny
(08:32):
that this needs to be developedfor you to be able to achieve
your goals.
We got to implement that.
So those are the two reasons.
Number one is because you'refeeling it Okay, or number two,
because you need it.
Those are the two reasons.
So that's what's great aboutsetting up a daily and a weekly
practice routine.
Now, inside the academy, that'sone of the things that we do is
we sit down with you, figure outwhat your game plan is what
(08:54):
your goals are, what yourstruggles are.
We talk about all that kind ofstuff.
We develop a daily, weeklypractice routine for you so you
know what you're supposed to beworking on.
But then what you do is youlean on us and we have
conversations literally on adaily basis, like on Zoom, just
talking to each other, gettingassessments of your playing,
giving you direction, giving youencouragement, motivation,
(09:15):
filling in the gaps of thingsthat don't make sense for you.
We do that interactively on adaily basis, not, you know, once
a week or something like that.
We talk all the time to makesure that your ship is upright,
you're doing the things that youneed to be doing, you're
getting assessments of yourplaying, you're feeling good.
If there's any confusion thatyou've got, we fix that, okay.
So, anyway, take care, staypositive, keep practicing, and
(09:40):
you know if you're doing this onyour own, I think that's
wonderful.
Give it a try, see how it goesfor you, but really think about
developing a daily and a weeklypractice routine that best fits
where you're trying to go.
All right.
Hey, Steve Stine here.
Thank you so much for joiningme.
Today we're going to be talkingabout the absolute importance
of creating an effectivepractice routine.
Okay, if you're just playingthings and again, don't get me
wrong if you're loving whatyou're doing and nothing's wrong
(00:20):
and you're enjoying what you'redoing, I think that's wonderful
okay.
But if you're struggling at allwith your guitar playing and
you just kind what you're doing,I think that's wonderful Okay.
But if you're struggling at allwith your guitar playing and
you're just kind of feel lost,like every time you pick up the
guitar it's just kind of arandom thing and you don't
really know whether you'reworking on the right stuff Okay,
this is where developing aproper practice routine really
really comes in handy, and whatI always try and do with people
(00:41):
is get them to understand thebenefit of creating both a daily
and a weekly practice routine.
So I'd like to talk to you alittle bit about that and see
kind of how that works in myhead and see if it's something
that would benefit you as well.
So a daily practice routinewould consist of fundamental
elements that you need todevelop or maintain.
(01:05):
Whichever one it is.
Maybe it's both okay to worktoward whatever it is that
you're trying to do.
So let's break that down alittle bit.
Let's say you're a beginner andyou're trying to learn how to
play a song.
Now that song is going toconsist of whatever chords, and
(01:27):
even that is a conversation initself.
Are these the right chords foryou to be working on?
Are there too many chords?
Right?
Have you fully developed these?
Each chord itself needs to bepracticed right.
Bouncing all this stuff?
You probably know that I talkabout all those kind of
techniques that you can do tooptimize your cords.
(01:47):
So you work on practicing thiscord and then you work on the
next cord, and then you work onwhat I call lift and shift,
which is bouncing between thecords.
Like that's part of your dailypractice routine.
Is the development of thesecords?
Is the development of thesechords?
If you're a beginner, youshouldn't have 14 chords.
You just shouldn't.
(02:14):
Okay, the?
The role of the guitarinstructor is to see where you
are, give you some information,find some resources of songs and
things like that that matchwhat it is you're trying to work
on.
Okay, make sure that the chordsthat you're actually learning
are the best chords that youshould be starting with relative
to your ability of your fingersand the size of your fingers
and the kind of music that youlike.
All of those things areassessments that are taken into
(02:36):
consideration right away thatdefine which chords we should be
working on.
Therefore, the songs that we'regoing to work on, along with
these chords because if I canget you playing songs right away
, you're probably going to havea lot of fun and you're probably
going to practice more thanjust working on chords for a
year and a half Okay, so thatall needs to be worked out.
Once it's worked out now, yourjob is to spend time every day.
(02:58):
I always tell people practiceon the days that you eat.
You spend time every dayworking on this cord and then
this cord and this cord Developthem independently and then
developing them collectively,and then we have a song that we
want to learn how to play, andthis song should represent and
(03:20):
be in alignment with thesechords.
If we're working on thesechords and we get a song that
has nothing to do with thesechords, everything's out of
alignment and you're justcreating more work for yourself.
We need to find a song thataligns with what you're working
on and once we find that song.
Now what we need to do is wealso not only need to practice
these chords, but we need tostart learning to listen to the
(03:43):
song, to start getting a feel ofwhat is the song telling us.
What is the tempo or the speed,what is the groove, what does
the?
And we'll get to the strummingin a second, but what does it
feel like a strum would be forthis?
What are the sections?
Like, oh, there's an introwhere nobody's singing, and then
there's a verse, and then itgoes into a chorus and then
(04:04):
there's a couple of verses andagain, you might write this down
, you might be able to kind of.
You know, I always call itdriving.
You can drive through the songif you know the song well enough
in your head, even if you'venever heard the song before.
If you listen to it over andover and over, you start
learning.
That's how I learn, and so Idrive through the song.
So I'm listening to the songand I can see, oh, we're in a
(04:26):
verse.
Okay, here comes the chorus.
Now there's that weird littlebreak.
Now it's going to go into averse.
Like, that's what I'm doingwhen I'm listening to the song,
is I'm becoming aware of thesong.
Okay, I'm ingesting theconcepts of the song.
I don't know how all the chordsgo and everything like that,
yet I just know these are thechords of the song, but I'm I'm
acclimating myself to the songitself and I'm working on the
(04:49):
chords.
The other part is I'm going tostart working on strumming, or
what I call scratching to thesong.
So I'm not playing the chordsalong with the song, I'm just
scratching to the song, tryingto get used to what the rhythm
is going to be.
Okay, I call this organicstrumming.
And again, inside the GuitarZoom Academy, which we'll get to
in a second, this is what youwould learn how to do all of
(05:12):
this kind of stuff.
So not only are you learningthe components or the tools
needed to play the song, butyou're learning how to learn
songs.
So you're learning how to thinkabout structure, how to
memorize, how to ingest, how tolisten, how to analyze.
In a very simple sense, thatsong that we choose is very
(05:33):
important because if the songhas a lot of sections and a lot
of stuff, it's going to be a lotharder for you to play.
Our job is to find the rightsong that aligns with where you
are and what you're trying to do, even if it's G, c and D, but
it's got a lot of chord changesand a lot of stuff, it's going
to be harder for you to play.
We need to find something thatthe structure is very simple.
(05:54):
Okay, so now you're really doingthree different things
independently You're working onthe chords over here, you're
working on the strumming andyou're working on the song
structure.
Then we start implementing themtogether.
We work on this the strumming,along with the song.
We start trying to work on thechords without the strumming, we
just start trying to bounce ourfingers along with the song.
(06:15):
Once we learn how the chordchanges go, we start to put
those in if our fingers don withthe song.
Once we learn how the chordchanges go, we start trying to
put those in If our fingersdon't move fast enough.
We need to go back and startworking on this a little bit
more.
And again, the process reallyisn't that difficult, but it
just takes time Once you learnhow to put and there's more to
it, but once you learn how to dothat, now you've got a game
plan of how to approach thesongs that you want to play and
(06:39):
if a song has some element thatisn't in alignment.
That's okay If it's three plusone, but this one is the part
that's out of alignment.
Well, that's the one part thatwe need to start working on now.
That fuels our practice.
You see, that's how we set up adaily practice routine.
Maybe yours is technique, maybeyours is scales, maybe it's a
combination of all of thesethings, which is great.
(07:00):
You might spend 15 minutesdoing this and 20 minutes doing
this.
That's your core practice foreach day.
Then the next thing is settingup a weekly.
Okay, so your weekly might looklike I'm going to work on songs
.
Again, depending on your goals,depending on your interests,
I'm going to work on songs onMondays and Wednesdays and maybe
Saturdays, and then I'm goingto work on, you know, because
(07:25):
this core is still going onevery day, right?
So I'm going to work on a newsong on these days, or I'm going
to work on scales on Mondaysand Wednesdays and theory on
Tuesday, and then I'm going towork on creatives like
improvisation on Thursdays andSaturdays or something like that
.
The beauty of that is is thatyou've got your core element,
that you're doing every singleday, that you don't want to lose
, because that's really who youare.
(07:47):
And then what you can do is youcan swap out these other things
depending on two things.
Number one, what your interestis that day.
And I always tell peoplethere's a significant difference
between interest and lazy.
You're not choosing becauseyou're lazy.
You're choosing because thatday you feel more technically
ready to go and you're on fire,and even though the thing
(08:09):
written on your wall says todayis a theory day, you're feeling
it and you want to do this.
I always tell people do this,don't deny what you're feeling
that day, don't deny how thingsare going.
Just because something'swritten on a piece of paper, go
with it.
If you find, for some reason,that you're never getting to
that no, no, no, we need toschedule that then we can't deny
(08:32):
that this needs to be developedfor you to be able to achieve
your goals.
We got to implement that.
So those are the two reasons.
Number one is because you'refeeling it Okay, or number two,
because you need it.
Those are the two reasons.
So that's what's great aboutsetting up a daily and a weekly
practice routine.
Now, inside the academy, that'sone of the things that we do is
we sit down with you, figure outwhat your game plan is what
(08:54):
your goals are, what yourstruggles are.
We talk about all that kind ofstuff.
We develop a daily, weeklypractice routine for you so you
know what you're supposed to beworking on.
But then what you do is youlean on us and we have
conversations literally on adaily basis, like on Zoom, just
talking to each other, gettingassessments of your playing,
giving you direction, giving youencouragement, motivation,
(09:15):
filling in the gaps of thingsthat don't make sense for you.
We do that interactively on adaily basis, not, you know, once
a week or something like that.
We talk all the time to makesure that your ship is upright,
you're doing the things that youneed to be doing, you're
getting assessments of yourplaying, you're feeling good.
If there's any confusion thatyou've got, we fix that, okay.
So, anyway, take care, staypositive, keep practicing, and
(09:40):
you know if you're doing this onyour own, I think that's
wonderful.
Give it a try, see how it goesfor you, but really think about
developing a daily and a weeklypractice routine that best fits
where you're trying to go.
All right.
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