THE 5-MINUTE PRACTICE SOLUTION

AN EFFICIENT AND EFFECTIVE METHOD

THAT GETS RESULTS

In the early 80s, I taught guitar at a music store owned and operated by the great jazz
guitarist Johnny Smith. Johnny was there every day and was always playing his guitar,
and I learned so much just watching him. One day he was playing, and he looked up at
me and said, "You know, I hate practicing." That surprised me, and I said that he was
always practicing. He replied. "Oh, that's not practicing. That's learning something new."

Learning something new is fun. Playing music is fun. Practicing is work.

Practicing is reinforcing things you've already learned. It's developing muscle

memory, hand-to-ear coordination, learning the neck, and so on. It's repetitive, and
frankly, it can be a little boring.

Still, there's only one way to get better at playing guitar, and that is to practice. But
practicing itself isn't the answer, and in fact, it can do as much harm as good if you do it
wrong. You see, practice doesn't make perfect, it makes permanent. You have to know
what and how to practice if you are going to start playing better. Because in the end,
you'll play what you practice.

There are generally two problems with practicing. Some of you are practicing a lot
but not really getting anywhere. Usually, this is because your practice is random and
inefficient. It's not you that's the problem, you just need a better plan.

©2022, George J. Hess, Jr. all rights reserved

 On the other end of the spectrum, if you're not practicing, it's not because you're lazy,
so you can stop beating yourself up. We procrastinate when we don't know what to do,
either because we are overwhelmed by the task or simply don't have a clue. You need a
better plan, too.

KNOW YOUR GOAL

The first step is to understand your goal. As young players we often have dreams of
stardom; I know I did. If your goal is to become a professional musician, you will need to
practice. A lot. And there's no time like the present to get started.

For the rest of us, dreams of fame and fortune were traded for career and family a
while back. We lead busy lives. The days when we could devote hours to practicing are
behind us. It's a hobby and while it may be important to you, it's not your top priority. We
also have less patience and aren't willing to waste time learning things we don’t really
need.

The bottom line is that we play music for fun and pleasure. Playing by yourself can be
rewarding, but when was the last time you had fun doing anything by yourself? Face it,
to have real fun playing guitar, you have to do it with others. It doesn't matter whether
it's one person or an orchestra, music is team sport.

And there's another reason. The best way to improve your playing is to play with
people, especially if they are better musicians than you. There's no substitute for this
experience and you can't get it in the practice room, not even with backing tracks. So
we need to get you out of the practice room and into the band as quickly as we can.

The solution then, is to learn to play songs you love and only practice what you need
to be able to play them. You'll focus more on learning something new and less on
practicing, yet each song you learn will add to your skills, knowledge and abilities and
you'll be able to use that when learning the next song.
©2022, George J. Hess, Jr. all rights reserved

 FINDING THE TIME

Since we don't have hours to practice, we need to make the most of the time we do
have. Practice needs to be effective and efficient and it needs to show results.

The good news is that you don't need to know everything at this stage, only the
things that will transform your playing now. So you don't need as much practice time as
someone training for a music career.

The first thing we need to do is establish the habit of picking up the guitar and doing
something productive and enjoyable when we do.

Consider this scenario. You decide to practice. You go to your practice space, get the
guitar out of the case, plug it in, turn on the amp, and then tune. After that you probably
noodle a bit and play a favorite lick or riff. Then you finally start to work on something.
But you've just wasted 15 minutes that you could have used to practice. Does that sound
familiar?

This is where I generally sit in my living room. One

of my guitars sits on the sofa, and I pick it up a lot.
But usually only for a few minutes at a time. An idea
will pop into my head, and I'll work it out. Other times,
I'll practice something I've been working on.

THE SOLUTION:
LEAVE THE GUITAR OUT OF THE CASE
AND WITHIN EASY REACH

©2022, George J. Hess, Jr. all rights reserved





 You might be thinking that you can't learn anything in five minutes. Let's take a look at
how it works.

Say you just learned a major scale pattern. If you play it non-stop for five minutes
ascending and descending at any tempo, you will start to develop muscle memory. If
you do that every day for a week, you will have it pretty well under your fingers at the
end of that time. I use four major scale patterns, so in one month, you can have all of
them under your fingers in just five minutes a day.

Next, you can reinforce that by playing each of the patterns in one key every day and
in two weeks you'll have covered all 12 keys (you can take Sundays off). Do that twice
and in just two months, you'll know all four major scale patterns in all 12 keys. From this
point on, you can pull these out once or twice a week until they become second nature.

Can you find five minutes a day?

You can break down almost anything you want to learn into bite size parts, that you
can do in five or ten minutes. For example, most songs are comprised of two or three 8-
bar sections, some of which repeat at least once. Start with the first section. If that's too
much for one session, then break it down further. Each 8 bar section can usually be
divided into phrases of two or four measures. You only work on what you can
reasonably accomplish.

You may get a little impatient and want to learn more of the song, right now. That's
great, you can do as many 5-10 minute sessions per day as you want. Just be sure to
stick to one thing for each session.

Now that you've developed the habit of picking up the guitar, you'll suddenly find that
you're practicing a lot more than ever before and even better, you're improving,
because you can focus more intensely for such a short time. And it's all happening in
time that was essentially being wasted, anyway
©2022, George J. Hess, Jr. all rights reserved



 THE PLAY'S THE THING

By now, you should enjoying your practicing more as you're learning a lot of new
things and not just repeating the same things over and over. But we can't ignore the
power of playing. This is where backing tracks come in. Playing over tracks is fun and
great for developing skills you'll need to play in a band, like following the form and
playing over changes.

You should do this once each week as a reward for the practicing you've been doing,
and to apply those new skills. For the most part, just play. Believe it or not, one of the
hardest things to learn is to not think while you play. You listen and hear the music and
try to let your fingers play. Some people call it "The Zone" or "The Space". Charles
Mingus described it as being a "conduit from God." Or as Charlie Parker said, "First you
learn your axe, then you learn your music and then you forget all that shit and just blow.”

ARE YOU LISTENING?

In order to play well, you have to hear it first. That's where the music is, in your ear.
Learning to play from tabs, fake books, and sheet music will teach your fingers what to
do, but it likely won't include your ear in the process.

As a developing player, you must listen to the music you want to play. You don't need
to transcribe it, just listen. Get the sound in your ear. When no one is looking, sing the
melody or the bass notes. You'll learn the song much faster when you do.

Listening needs to be an active process. It's ok to have the music in the background,
but to learn anything, you need to focus on it, without doing anything else.

Can you find five minutes a day to listen?

©2022, George J. Hess, Jr. all rights reserved

 THE MIND'S EAR

When you take a vacation, you might think about bringing a guitar, but it's not easy to
travel with one and your partner might not think it's such a good idea, either. But you
don't want to take a big step backwards while you're having fun.

You can still practice for those five minutes without the guitar. Just close your eyes
and see in your mind your fingers moving along the fretboard. I was taught this when I
was young and it does help with the fingers. But they forgot to tell me one thing. You
have to hear it in your head at the same time. If you do that, you'll go a long way to
connecting the hand to the ear. So don't just do it when you are on vacation. 

Mental practice like this will help you maintain and improve your skills. And it's
therapeutic and almost meditative. It's a great way to refresh. 

FINAL THOUGHTS

1. Think about you've learned. 

Just learning to play something isn't enough. Now you want to look more closely at it, so
you can apply it to other songs. This is where theory will come in, either learning or
applying it. Labeling things makes them easier to remember

2. Don’t practice the easy parts

Each year, students come to my school to audition and there are always a few who will
sit down and play their piece and come to a challenging part and flub it. Then they'll
back up and flub it again. The reason is this is how they practiced it. They start at the
beginning and fly through the easy parts and when they get to the hard part they mess
it up, back up, mess it up again and then go on and finish the piece which is more easy
parts. They would have gotten it if they had spent five minutes a day on the hard part
and not practiced the easy parts every time.
©2022, George J. Hess, Jr. all rights reserved



 3. Don’t Practice Mistakes

Just because you've only got five minutes doesn't mean you have to play everything at
breakneck tempos. Slow down and play it right. 

4. Take a Break
You'll be making real progress which will motivate you to pick it up again and to play
longer. But take a break after 20-30 minutes. Beyond that your concentration will wane
and you'll see diminishing returns. That only applies to practice, not playing or learning
something new. 

And if you're struggling with something a little too long, put it down and come back
when you're refreshed. You may even be surprised that the thing you couldn't possibly
do after practicing so hard, will suddenly just come together. It works that way
sometimes. 

YOU GOT THIS! 

Some people will scoff at the idea that you can practice for five minutes and make
progress, but it's something I've been developing for a few years. I use it, my students
use it, and it works. You'll develop a practice routine that is easy to maintain and even
one short, highly-focused daily practice session will produce results. And as you add
more sessions per day, you'll see even more progress. 

You got this!

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©2022, George J. Hess, Jr. all rights reserved






ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. George Hess is an educator, guitarist, composer and author. An

award-winning teacher, he has taught music technology, jazz and
theory at leading universities for over 25 years and has presented
clinics and workshops throughout the world. As a professional
guitarist, George has performed extensively throughout the United
States with such artists as James Morrison, Bob Mintzer, David
Liebman, Wycliffe Gordon, Jim Nabors, the Osmonds, Ryo
Kawasaki and Myron Floren and as the leader of his own
ensembles. His recent album, The Light Ahead is available on all
major streaming sites.

Contact George at george@georgehessmusic.com

©2022, George J. Hess, Jr. all rights reserved