Recently we set a challenge for students to play a short musical idea (30 - 60 seconds) every day for 21 days and film their progress.

Depending on the student, this involved things like:

• Chord changes

• Sweep picking

• A solo or part of a song

• Scales

The result? As you’d no doubt expect, everyone improved significantly over those 21 days: you can see the first and last day of their performances below (great effort, guys).

Now, if that’s not enough of a motivator for you to set your own 21 day challenge, let me run through a few little practice secrets that explain WHY it works so well.

Why 30-60 seconds is perfect

For most people, 10 minutes of practice on one thing is manageable. Lots more and it gets a bit repetitive, and less can be hard to get into the swing of things.

You can certainly work on multiple “chunks” like this, but it’s more about breaking something down into a small enough part that you can play it multiple times each practice session.

The Steve Vai approach is to play it correctly ten times in a row before increasing the tempo, but at the very least, try to play something correctly 3 times in a row before you consider your practice done for the day (even if that is particularly slow).

The other reason why 30-60 seconds is great? Even if you have the busiest day of all time, everyone has a spare 30-60 seconds.

Why 21 days?

Common wisdom states that 21 days is the minimum amount of time required to create a habit. So, if you’re not already in the habit of daily practice, this challenge will help with that.

Even if that exact measurement is just a myth, I guarantee you, after playing something for 21 days straight, you won’t forget it in a hurry.

This means that if you do happen to miss a day, or you have a day where you’re just not getting into the zone, it’s not as big a deal - it’s the exception to your usual routine.

On top of this, your brain will get into the habit of thinking about the song or idea that you’re working on even when you’re not playing (it’s not uncommon to dream about it or to visualise it while you’re doing other non-guitar stuff).

How to actually progress over the 21 days

There are 3 ways to improve a part:

• Increase the tempo (speed)

• Improve the performance and tone of the piece

• Learn more of a part

Tempo Increases

This one is easy, but requires discipline. Start at a really slow tempo, play it smooth and clean, then gradually increase the tempo each day. Don’t worry if your progress isn’t linear - you’ll have spikes and plateaus, which is completely normal.

Improve the Performance

When your aim is to make a part sound better, we’re not talking about fixing mistakes (if that’s what you need to work on, I’d slow it right down and focus on bringing the tempo up without mistakes first).

Focus on interpretation, really nice tone, dynamics and all the other little things that will take the piece from “correct” to “good”.

Learn More of a Part

If you’re working on a guitar song, you could aim to add on a bar a day, for example, as a good challenge. The catch is that you can’t do more than 30-60 seconds of music, so try to only add a little bit at a time. Again, only add more when you can play the initial part smoothly - some parts might require a few days, and that’s totally fine.

So, start your own guitar challenge-blog/its-time-again-for-the-shred-tember-challenge, learn from it, and adjust your practice routine with anything you discover! Little challenges can be great ways to mix up your playing, but remember, they’re still meant to be enjoyable.