In my first blog you were shown how Jsmusicschool operates in terms of what it takes to become a great all round musician in the most structured way. I will now go on to explain why all the technical aspects of your guitar study are important for progression.

Warm up exercises:

At college and university it was stressed many times to integrate some warm up exercises into your practice schedule.

The reason for this is it will improve your technique and dexterity massively. Warming up with a metronome is really important as timing is essential and you can also push yourself.

Warm up exercises will also be instrumetal in developing your alternative picking for your scales/arpeggios. The A chromatic scale is a great one to use

– start on the 5th fret low E string and play 5,6,7,8, then cross to the A string and go 4,5,6,7, then on the D 3,4,5,6, then G string 2,3,4,5, B string, 2, 3, 4, 5, then go 1,2,3,4 high E string.

(going down,up,down up with the right hand for every note)

That was ‘ascending’ as in going up in pitch

You can then go ‘descending’ by going down in pitch.

Once you are on the 4th fret high e string, slide your little finger up then go 5,4,3,2 on the same string, then 6,5,4,3 (B), 6,5,4,3 (G), 7,6,5,4 (D), 8,7,6,5 (A), 9,8,7,6 then slide down your first finger to finish off on the fret you originally started with (5th)

With your metronome start off playing 1 note per beat (crotchets) at a tempo of 70bpm (4 beats to the bar). Once you get comfortable at that speed increase the speed in 10bpm increments.

Once you’ve got it up to 110bpm go back to 70bpm and play quavers (1note every half a beat – count this as 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + – so 8 in a bar)

Apply the same process and get comfortable with that at 110bpm.

Then play the pattern using semi-quavers (1note every quarter of a beat – count this as 1e+a, 2e+a, 3e+a, 4e+a – so 16 in a bar)

With your fretting hand ensure that you use all 4 fingers for each of the 4 notes on every string.

So ascending you start with your 1st finger, then descending start with your little finger

If you do this for 5-10 minutes a day you’ll notice the improvement and you’ll find it’ll help all the other aspects of your playing.

Many thanks for reading and i’ll be explaining how useful the CAGED chord system is on the next blog.

You can also find me on twitter – @jsmusicschool

ROCK N ROLL