Imagine you’re trying to learn how to juggle. Would you start out by trying to juggle three balls at once? Probably not, because that’s way too much to handle at first.
You’d start with one, focusing on its movement, trying to get the arc just right, and making sure you’ve got the fundamentals of the movement down cold.
Once you’re comfortable, you add another, and then another.
This step-by-step progression isn’t just the secret to good juggling – it’s also the key to effectively practicing guitar, and it’s especially important when you’re practicing jazz guitar.
There are a lot of different skills involved in playing jazz guitar – scales, arpeggios, chords, rhythm, and tons of concepts that tie into those skills.
It’s tempting to try to cram as many things into a practice session as possible, in an effort to learn faster.
But I’ve found that the best way to make faster progress is to slow down, and only focus on one skill at a time.
Side note: I’m still terrible at juggling… but I’m working on it. Anything to keep my one-year-old entertained for a few minutes.
Single-Tasking: The Art of Isolated Practice
When you’re practicing guitar, there’s an easily overlooked strategy you should be using: isolated practice.
This means putting all of your attention on one specific skill: a new scale pattern, a tricky chord shape, or a challenging arpeggio pattern.
By practicing this one element by itself, you can get deeper into that particular skill. You’ll learn it faster and retain what you’ve practiced better.
This is one of the only real shortcuts I know of when you’re learning guitar. It takes longer in terms of seconds and minutes, but you’ll learn much faster in terms of weeks and months if you follow this strategy.
Laying the Groundwork: The Importance of the Basics
In jazz guitar, understanding and mastering the basics—scales, arpeggios, and chords—is one of the most important things.
These are the building blocks, the core mechanics of your music. You want to be able to access these skills without thinking about them, so you can focus on the actual music that’s going on around you.
You can’t listen to other players, make creative decisions, or decide what to play on the next chord change if you’re still thinking about where your fingers need to go in order to play a certain scale, chord, or arpeggio.
When you invest time in practicing guitar fundamentals, you’re laying a solid foundation. You’re creating muscle memory and carving neural pathways.
You’re taking care of the physical side of playing guitar, so you can spend your mental energy on the music… not remembering where to put your fingers.
The Fast Track to Mastery: One Skill at a Time
It may seem a little bit backwards, but practicing one guitar skill at a time can actually lead to faster progress. You won’t cover as many topics per practice session, but what you do work on will stick with you longer.
This approach allows you to really focus on one thing, avoiding the mental overload that comes from having a “laundry list” of things to practice that day. Allowing yourself to work this way helps to foster mindful, purposeful practice that really helps you improve.
By focusing your attention in this way, you can identify problem areas and fix them quickly, so you don’t have to go back and undo your mistakes later on.
The Harmony of Integration: Bringing It All Together
Once you’ve spent time mastering scales, chords, and arpeggios in isolation, you’re now ready to put everything together as you play jazz standards.
This isn’t necessarily a linear process – you won’t spend years only playing scales, chords, and arpeggios before you’re ready to play songs. You can pick your way through songs as soon as you know a couple of chords, or one scale pattern.
Mastering each skill involved in playing jazz guitar is a lifelong process, and it’s important to find a balance… you don’t want to just grind away at scale patterns for years without learning any songs to play.
The best way I’ve found is to split practice time between real focused skill development, and playing through songs.
What I tell all of my students to do is to pick one skill to focus on – and really zoom in on it. Spend ⅓ to ½ of your practice time on developing that skill, and after a few weeks, change gears and work on a different skill so things don’t get stale.
The rest of your practice time in each session should be spent on whatever else you want to do – preferably working on songs to play. It should be fun, and songs are a great way to review other skills that you aren’t really focused on right now.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it’s crucial to remember the value of mastering one skill at a time. This methodical, focused approach not only ensures a sturdy foundation but also accelerates your journey towards jazz guitar mastery.
And remember to find a balance between skill development and playing music – they’re not the same thing. At least ½ of your practice time can be spent just playing through songs with the skills you already have.
The focused practice just helps level you up over time.
So, pick up your guitar, choose a skill, and start practicing – one step at a time.