JOIN THE INSIDERS!

I'll send you emails every week or so with guitar lessons, tips, inspiration, and more...

No Spam, Ever! Unsubscribe anytime.


5 Minute Practice Session #1 And The 80/20 Rule for Learning Guitar


First Practice Session Video

This is my first in what may turn into a series of five minutes practice sessions for the guitar.

I’ve often thought it would be cool to be able to practice along with my teacher. It would have helped me with my discipline, but also give me a chance to see if I’m doing it right as I practice. I decided to try creating videos that my students could practice along with. It’s an experiment. I think it could be really useful.

The trick will be for me to gauge how slow or how fast I need to go to keep my students engaged. In this first video I tried to start out kindness simple. By the time you get to the end of the five minutes session gets a little more challenging. Of course there’s no way to make everybody happy and to make use of that you’ll have to be somewhat flexible.

How To Use This Video

One thing to keep in mind is that this is not a lesson. It's a practice session. I deliberately keep the explanations to a minimum. I'm thinking that if you are practicing with this video over and over to get really annoying to listen to my same explanations over and over. I do the teaching and another video.

The second thing to keep in mind is that I meant just for be something to be that you would repeat many times. That's the idea practicing. Do it over and over until you get it 80% right, then move on.

If you find this very difficult from the beginning stop the video and practice a little on your own and come back to it. If you find it too easy get to the part that is a little more challenging and just repeated. Of course at the whole thing is too simple for you want to another video.


80/20 Principle Applied To Learning Guitar

I base this practice session on the material that I taught in my video lesson How to Finally Play the Guitar: 80/20 Guitar and Minimalist Music. I’ve included some links at the bottom that will help you if you’re not familiar with this lesson.

Did you find this practice session helpful? Would you like to see more of these? Are there any particular areas you’d like me to deal with first?

Here’s the link to the Tim Ferriss post:

How to Finally Play the Guitar: 80/20 Guitar and Minimalist Music

And my lesson on fingering these chords:

Using the 80 20 Rule for Learning Guitar


Tell Us What You Think - Please Comment Below!

We would love to hear your comments and questions. What specific things are you struggling with while learning guitar?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  1. Tomas: Even though I found this practice very easy, I think the idea is a great one. I hope you are going to do it with other chord progressions. Right now I am working on the song “Today”: “Today while the blossom still clings to the vine,” etc., and am having difficulty with moving to Dm from Am and the easy F. Something like this would be a great help. I look forward to more of these practice videos. Thank you!

    1. Hello Katherine,

      Today by John Denver, very meaningful song.
      Your suggestion is very well noted, Katherine.

      Thank you.

      Hazel
      Starland Guitar
      Customer Support

  2. Hola Maestro,

    As always a very helpful lesson. I especially like the practice along video on changing chords. I would love to see more of the same. Thank you for helping me become a guitarist. Your love of music is inspirational.

    1. Hello Alfredo,

      Being able to help someone like you to become a guitarist
      is very self-fulfilling, overwhelming and very inspiring.

      Thanks,
      Tomas

  3. Thanks Tomas. This kind of practice is just what I needed. I am a 72 year old who just started playing about a year ago. I found myself downloading a lot of videos from Youtube and buying guitar courses and books, but was getting very frustrated because I really didn’t feel I was making real progress. My problem was I was not focused on any one thing. I was jumping all over the place. With your 5 minute practice session I can focus on one aspect and keep repeating it until I feel I have some mastery of it. I hope you will keep these kind of practice sessions coming.

    1. Hello Tom,

      Thank you for your comment. Learning guitar at your age is truly awesome.
      You can find many more of Tomas Michaud’s tutorials at https://tomasmichaud.com

      If you’re ready to make steady progress and can make time to practice you would be best of going with a structured course. Check this out: http://www.realguitarawesomeness.com.

      There’s more about Tomas Michaud’s story and how he can help you play guitar on the web page.
      http://www.realguitarawesomeness.com and that 5 minute practice is just an icing on the cake.

      May you find these links helpful to you.

      Thanks,

      Hazel
      Starland Guitar
      Customer Support

{"email":"Email address invalid","url":"Website address invalid","required":"Required field missing"}