“I make studies out of difficult sections of pieces. I rarely practice a piece all of the way through. When I create a study, I abstract technical difficulty. In other words, I approach a problem not only as it exists in a piece, but also in an abstract way. For example, I may play a phrase backwards or play it very slowly in a different position on the fretboard.”

- Julian Bream

Julian Bream is one the most famous classical guitar performers. This quote from his interview was first seen in The Guitar Player Magazine in June 1990. This and other interviews and lessons with greatest guitarists covering past 40 years of guitar history are published in a book The Guitar Player Book – The Ultimate Resource for Guitarists.

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Do you have some spare time and no guitar around? Try these exercises:

They are great no just for warm up, but for developing finger independence as well. read on

Guitarists need stretching no less than gymnasts. Without proper stretching how do you expect to reach for those weird chord voicings? Good stretching will benefit your overall playing, so it is important to work on it regularly.

So lets begin. This exercise is taken from the book by Guthrie Govan, called Creative Guitar 1: Cutting Edge Techniques. Here it is:

Difficult part is that you have to keep all four fingers on the strings all the time. How else can you get stretching! We start with a Emaj7 chord and move the fingers one by way until we reach Ebmaj7 chord (same chord shape but one fret lower), then do same maneuver, one more time, one more… continue until you reach the nut (do not be frustrated if you cannot do that right away). read on

Here is a little etude for the right hand warm up. It help you not only to warm up the picking hand, but also review the major scale harmonization.

Please notice that first two notes of every arpeggio are picked up, while the third one is picked down. Make sure NOT to sweep-pick those notes. The idea is to give the picking hand as much work out as possible, so we are not after the economy of motion here.

Workout is not just for sportsmen, it is necessary for musicians as well. Exercise that I will show you today, is played by generations of guitar players. Perhaps it is single best exercise to develop and keep the chops up. It is equally great for the fretting hand (finger independence) and picking hand (alternate picking) as well as for two hands synchronization.

Here is the basic form of the exercise:

As you can see each finger is responsible for one fret. I start with the 1st fret only because the pattern is more obvious there (fret number corresponds to the finger number). It is advised to start playing the pattern higher on the neck (say 12th fret and then move down to the nut).

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Great way to work on legato technique (hammer-ons/pull-offs) is to play 3 note per string scales in different positions. Here are some patterns for the major scale:

I marked the root in every position for reference. Its always nice to know where the roots are!

Start slowly, make sure that each note is sounded equally loud and with right timing (yep, use metronome). Try to keep your fretting hand as relaxed as possible! Remember, legato is all about quick and light! Making effort to hit the string harder will not do any good. So stop and relax as soon as you feel that your hand is overstressed. You might also want to start higher on the neck, so there will be not so much stretching and gradually move down to the open position. read on

It is great to play scales not just note by note but with chords. I must warn you that this exercise is not so much fun, and it requires you to know roman numerals (5-10 minutes for review) and at some basics of music theory (1-2 hours of reading), but it is really useful in several aspects. Knowing chords, build within the major scales, and the scale degrees from which they are build will give you a lot of power when picking up songs by ear or transposing songs into new key.

As an example lets harmonize C major scale. We all know that it can be played with notes like this

C D E F G A B C

It can as well be played with chords like this:

C – Dm – Em – F – G – Am – Bdim – C

Up, thats harmonization! Chords are very basic so I will do not think it is necessary to tell you how to play them. Playing this exercise name the chord you are playing and also the scale degree, from which it is build.

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Chess masters can play chess in their mind without having chess board at sight, but how many guitar players have a clear picture of all the notes on the guitar fretboard? Too say the least many have no idea what notes are there on the fretboard even when they are looking at it.

Visualizing fretboard is a great exercise that can be done literally at any time and any place. It is not easy at first, so take your time. Start with a single string on just one fret (remember open positions!) and build your fretboard step by step going from fret to fret and from string to string. Practice visualizing scale patterns, chords, arpeggios, riffs, solos, anything you can think of.

When you feel comfortable with naming the notes, try to learn degrees of the scale (interval from the root) as well. That will come in handy for many things like building chords.

One of the greatest ear training exercises is to sing all the notes you play. Do not worry if you don’t have a great voice. Hitting the notes (signing in tune) is good enough. You do not even have to sing outloud, humming will also do. So sing anything you play, from simple melodies to scales to improvisations. This kind of practice brings your ears and hands together.

Another thing to practice is singing the notes and then playing them. The ultimate goal is to be able to play what you hear in your head. Remember it is not as hard as it seems! Just give it a try! Start slow with something simple, and gradually build up the speed and complexity.