How To Maintain Your Guitar Technique When You're Really Busy

If you've ever isolated a guitar technique and really worked hard at it, then you probably already know the following things...

• The progress you can make with that specific guitar technique can often be staggering. For Example: If you were to dedicate 30-minutes a day to string-bending technique, then I think you'd be amazed how much better at it you would be in 12-months time.
• Focusing on just one technique can really help you become more creative with that technique. Because you are spending so much time on just that technique you'll have to keep creating new ideas that use that technique. Why? Because it gets boring practicing the same exercises over-and-over! You'll start to create variations and new ideas to keep yourself interested.
• You'll learn the technique on a VERY deep level. The more ideas and exercises you work on that use the technique, the more deeply-ingrained that technique will become in your muscle-memory. It will eventually become as easy to you as breathing. (And ultimately ALL techniques you learn need to become that easy. You need to be able to use them without having to think).

As you can imagine, these benefits are huge. And I definitely recommend spending time on isolated guitar techniques that you want to master. But there's a massive potential problem with this practice strategy...

What happens when you get really busy?

The one downside of doing practice on guitar techniques in isolation is that it can be very time-consuming. For Example: If you wanted to work on four techniques for 30-minutes each that would add up to 2-hours a day just on guitar technique.

That shouldn't be a problem normally if you're an extremely dedicated practicer. But let's face it...sometimes life gets in the way. At various times throughout our lives we all have weeks (or months!) from hell when our normal level of guitar practice is simply impossible...

So how do you maintain your guitar chops during this busy period?

The answer is simple...

Technique Maintenance Licks

What are these?

Probably the easiest way to explain what they are is with a couple of examples. Please check out the guitar licks below...

Technique Maintenance Lick 1:

 This guitar lick uses the C Natural Minor scale and is one that I composed to help me maintain the following guitar techniques...

• Alternate Picking.
• Hammer-Ons.
• Pull-Offs.
• Left-Hand Tapping. This is when you play a note on a new string without picking that note. Some guitar players refer to this technique as "hammer-ons from nowhere". In the TAB above I've used this symbol ) to indicate this technique. (If you look closely at the TAB, you'll notice this symbol above the fifth note of the first measure, and above the first note of the second measure).
• String Bending.

Technique Maintenance Lick 2: 

This guitar lick uses the G Dorian mode and is quite a bit more advanced than the first lick. I composed it to help me maintain the following techniques...

• Sweep Picking.
• Hammer-Ons.
• Pull-Offs.
• Slides.
• String-Skipping.

It's a pretty simple idea isn't it? The basic idea is to compose a guitar lick that mixes numerous techniques into the one lick. The techniques that you choose depend entirely on the techniques that you would like to maintain.

A Few Final Words

That's all for now. I hope you enjoyed this lesson!

As a little bit of homework, I really recommend doing the following...

• Write a list of guitar techniques that you would like to maintain. These should be techniques that you are already relatively comfortable with. (Remember that maintenance licks are used to maintain technique not to learn and develop new techniques).
• Grab your guitar, a pen, and some TAB paper.
• Compose a lick that uses those technique that you wrote down. Have some fun with this...and see if you can use those techniques in a way that sounds really cool to YOU.

Until next time...practice your ass off.

All the best,

Craig Bassett.