PRESENCE - Volume 84

Inspiration For Guitarists

Why Your Practice Isn't Sticking (It's Not What You Think)

I've taught over 30,000 guitar lessons in my life. And in all that time, I've watched the same problem show up in a thousand different ways.

Some players spend months learning songs but never feel like they're actually getting better. Others can play a solo note-for-note but freeze the moment someone asks them to improvise. Some know a handful of chords but have no idea why those chords work together — or that they could use them to write their own music.

Different symptoms. Same root problem.

They're collecting fragments instead of building a framework.

The chord player learned the song but not why those chords belong together. They don't realize those same chords show up in dozens of other songs. They can't use them to write something new. The song was a dead end instead of a doorway.

The solo learner spent hours getting every note right, but they were memorizing a finger pattern, not learning a language. It's like being able to recite a phrase in French without knowing what it means. You can say it, but you can't use it.

The player who learned chord shapes up the neck? They can finger the shapes, but they don't know what they're playing. Lots of time invested in something very specific for one song, with no access to the bigger picture those shapes are actually part of.

The fix isn't more songs, more solos, or more shapes. It's having a framework that makes everything else make sense.

Here's what I tell my students: spend 20 minutes a day on three things — the Number System, the CAGED System, and the Landmark Pentatonic shapes. That's it. Twenty minutes. Most people spend longer than that scrolling before bed.

A lot of players struggle because they don't know what to practice. This is a simple answer to that question. You're not adding more fragments to the pile, you're building the structure that everything else hangs on.

Do that consistently, and the songs you learn will start to connect. The solos will start to mean something. The shapes will tell you where you are on the neck instead of just sitting there.

You'll stop collecting and start building.

- Dustin

P.S. If you want the framework already built for you — the Number System, CAGED, and Landmark Pentatonic Shapes, laid out in order with backing tracks that show you exactly what to play — that's the Essential Skills Course. It's the shortcut to the 20 minutes I mentioned above.