The techniques of the guitar never came naturally to me. Which may seem strange, as I once was a professional classical guitarist. But you’ve heard of the 10.000 hours, right? Even if you lack the neural connections of a natural virtuoso, you can come a long way with stubbornness, stamina and consistency.

When I was younger I mainly put in the hours without much thinking. This time, though, I’ll try to be a bit smarter and add analyzing and what I call the micro technique perspective to my practicing. This is something I haven’t found much of on the net. One exception is Orhan Atrafana and his atrafanaSchool. Check out his How to Practice series on Youtube! Still, some techniques I will investigate even further in order to understand what I’m doing wrong, or less than optimal. My teacher Kai Narezo once said to me in an online class: “If your finger movements change when speeding up a technique, you are probably doing something wrong”. This happens in my picado—when speeding up my scales, the right hand fingers make bigger movements, thus limiting the speed. There is the need for the opposite, as Vahagni explains quite well in this video, and so I have to look into why my fingers behave as they do.

Also, don’t forget Diego Alonso‘s more holistic views on practicing. Check out his How to Practice blog!