One important part of learning how to master an instrument is developing your muscles to instantly know where chords, notes, and scales are on the instrument in order to play them without any effort of thinking about them. We learned about what muscle memory is last week and applied it to playing the piano. Let’s take a look at some general exercises guitarists can use to develop muscle memory:
Acoustic/Rhythm Guitar
- Practice progressions. Find the I-IV-V progression in every key you can play with open chords (chords like C, G, D, E; played in the first position of the fretboard) and run through them over and over daily.
- Start strumming. Find new strumming patterns to use and work the muscles of your right hand so that they get used to the pattern.
- Place your Pick (and your fingers) – Train your fingers on your strumming hand to know where each string is so you are able to call out specific notes within the chord. Practice playing each chord with just your fingers so you are able to develop more finger-picking technique.
- Break out of the low position of the fretboard. Start learning how to play chords in different shapes and positions higher up the neck. Once you’ve done that….
Electric/Lead Guitar
- Know how to play each chord in a different shape and position on the fretboard. Each chord shape can be moved up the frets in order to play it in any key. Play every different shape and inversion of one chord over and over until your muscles know exactly where to find it in each position. Once you’ve done that, put the different shapes together in progressions in each position by knowing which shapes to use together with each other.
- Practice scales. If you want to be a good lead guitarist, you must know your scales. Period. All solos and lead lines are built off of some form of scale. Learn major, minor, pentatonic, blues, and every other scale possible. To develop your muscles to the point of recognizing where your fingers go, start by playing one type of scale over and over again very slowly until you’ve mastered it at a certain speed (set your metronome and don’t stray from that speed until you can play the scale with no mistakes!) Once you’ve mastered the scale at a slow speed, increase your metronome slightly and practice it at that speed until you have no mistakes. Keep doing this and gradually increase speed as you perfect the scale. Then move on to a different scale type and start the whole process over.
A great resource for learning to play acoustic guitar for worship can be found here (affiliate) and here’s a great resource for playing electric guitar for worship (affiliate).
I’m not a master guitarist by any means, and I’m sure this is just scratching the surface for what you can do to develop muscle memory on the guitar. Long-time, experienced guitarists – what do you do to develop muscle memory?
(Photo by Asher Lohman.)
