It is strange to pick up guitar after nearly 10 years of not touching the thing. And to pick it up with the intention of being great at it is just as strange (or even stupid).

I find that re-learning scales, arpeggios, chords, and to even be able to phrase in a nice way, is a bizarre experience. There is a constant newness in the day to day learning, but also an odd feeling of deja vu that comes along with it.

Perhaps the deja vu points to something important…

Perhaps it is saying, “Hey, you’ve already practiced this over and over, and it didn’t really help you much before, otherwise you’d have never put the guitar down in the first place. Why are you practicing this again??”

I understand there must be a certain amount of facility on the instrument, but I fail to see the point in incessantly running scales all over the place.

As musicians, we all must have sounds in our heads. Phrases, songs, small bits and large bits, all screaming to be heard. If we are able to listen to those sounds, they will teach us what we need to practice.

It is probably best to build our practice sessions based on the sounds already present within us, and not based on what every other guitarist is doing.

Let practice sessions be the knife that cuts through the cheese!