People Don’t Talk Enough About This Guitar Practice Strategy

When you’re working on a difficult passage, it’s helpful to try various approaches to improve your playing.

One useful strategy that’s not discussed enough is to experiment with different rhythms.

Recently, I was practicing the following passage.

After repeating it many times, I still couldn’t play it as smoothly as I wanted.

So I started playing with different rhythms.

1. Dotted Rhythms

I introduced dotted eighths and sixteenth notes.

a. Long-Short

First, I used a long-short rhythm.

b.Short-Long

Then I tried a short-long rhythm.

Often you will find that one of these will highlight the difficulties of the passage.

In this instance, I found the long-short rhythm increased the difficulty of the shifts. So I focused on practicing that one.

You can try other rhythm variations as well.

2. Triplets

If the passage is grouped in traditional pairs of eighth notes, you can try it in triplets.

3. Bursts

You can also change the rhythm to include bursts of quick notes in between slower notes.

For this particular passage, I found the long-short rhythm most useful. But when faced with a challenging passage, I like to try a variety of rhythms to see what works best.

If you try this approach, let me know what you think!

Before you experiment with various rhythms in a difficult passage, I encourage you to start your practice session with a simple Warmup Routine.

If you would like to get my Warmup Routine for free while joining more than 800 people who receive my free Saturday Classical Guitarist newsletter, click here.

Keep making music!