How to Practise at This Level

When to read this: after Session 1, “The Pain Rule”, “The Tempo Ladder”, “The End-of-Week Check”, “The Practice Log” (15 minutes); after Session 2, “Theory Cards” (5 minutes); after Session 4, “Recording a Backing” (5 minutes); after Session 7 (optional), “The Rotation Row” (5 minutes); after Session 13, “Two Sittings” (5 minutes). None of this reading is part of a session’s 50 minutes.

What You’ll Learn

This handout says how you practise in this course. You read it in parts, each after the session that sends you to it.

“The Pain Rule” (after Session 1): the pain rule in full, and the time limits it refers to.
“The Tempo Ladder” (after Session 1): how a tempo goes up, and how far it may go in one week.
“The End-of-Week Check” (after Session 1): how you decide on your last practice day whether to go on to the next session.
“After a Break”: no session assigns this section. START HERE names it, and you read it when you come back after three days or more without playing.
“The Rotation Row” (after Session 7, as optional reading): the Rotation row, which every week’s plan has from Session 7, and the cards it is played from.
“Recording a Backing” (after Session 4): how you record a backing to play over.
“Two Sittings” (after Session 13): how a day’s plan longer than 30 minutes is played.
“The Practice Log” (after Session 1): the line you write in a notebook each day.
“Theory Cards” (after Session 2): how you write the cards, and how they are used.

A week runs like this:

One session of 50 minutes.
Then the week’s practice plan, on the practice days.
Then the end-of-week check, on the last practice day.

The Pain Rule

The pain rule

Normal: fingertips that are tender, red or dented by the strings. Keep to the time limits and take the breaks.
Stop for today: fingertips that sting or burn, a blister or broken skin, or a hand that cramps or aches. With a blister, do not press strings again until it has healed.
Warning signs, stop at once: pain in the wrist, forearm, thumb joint or knuckles; numbness or tingling; any sharp pain; pain that lasts into the next day. Rest until it has gone completely. If it comes back when you play, or has not gone after two days, see a doctor or physiotherapist before you play again.

Never play through any of these to finish a session or to keep to the schedule.

The time limits the rule refers to are these: no stretch of playing longer than 30 minutes without a 5-minute break, and the daily limits printed beside barre work, slur work, little-finger work and three-string power-chord work. A break means the guitar is out of your hands.

The Tempo Ladder

Course tempo — The tempo, in BPM, that this course sets for a piece or an exercise: the figure you work up to and are tested at; for a complete piece it is also called its performance tempo. Where a recording is faster, its tempo is not a target. (Session 1)

A ladder is the beginner course’s word for the tempos that one item climbs, one step at a time. For each week a ladder has two figures: the figure the item starts the week at, and the figure it may reach that week. The week’s practice plan and the item’s Tempo line give both. Play no figure above the one it may reach that week.

Raise the metronome 5 BPM at a time, and only after three clean runs in a row. That is one step. The week sets how many steps you may take. In the week a hard new skill is first played, the rule for that skill is “This week, take one step at most.” The same rule holds for every tempo that rises in a lighter week. For every other tempo that rises, the rule is “In one week, take two steps at most.”

In the week an item gains a chord, a rhythm or a finger, it takes no step. Its Tempo line then says that it does not go up this week, and why.

To change from one note per click to two notes per click, halve the number first: two notes per click at 40 is exactly as fast as one note per click at 80.

A run is clean when every note or chord lands on its count, every string that should sound rings, and you do not stop.

Your strumming hand never swings down and back more than 100 times a minute in this course.

A recording’s tempo is never a target: the course tempo is.

If three clean runs in a row do not come at the week’s starting figure, set the metronome 5 BPM lower, then climb back. Never add minutes to a row that holds limited work, the work with a daily limit.

The End-of-Week Check

The end-of-week check is the Self-Check Questions of the week’s session. There is no separate weekly-plan handout in this course. Under its practice plan, every session prints this line:

This is your plan for the whole week. On your last practice day, answer this session’s Self-Check Questions as you play the rows that hold them: a question adds no minutes to a row and nothing to a daily limit.

You play a question inside the row that holds its item, in that row’s minutes, on your last practice day. A question never adds minutes to a row that holds limited work.

Read a question in its four parts: what to do, with its tempo and its length; the check; the pass mark, which is a number; and what to do if you do not pass. Answer yes only when you have met the pass mark as counted: on the metronome, on the tuner or on a recording.

If every answer is yes, go on to the next session. After a showcase session, take the phase’s checkpoint first. You take it also when an answer is no: the “Any no” line below is for a week whose session is not a showcase.

Any no: repeat this week’s plan for up to one more week and check again. If it is still no after the second week, go on, and add that item to your warm-up until it passes.

If the item is barre work, slur work, little-finger work or three-string power-chord work, do not add it to your warm-up: play it inside the row of next week’s plan that holds that work, in that row’s minutes. The daily limits do not change.

“That row’s minutes” are the minutes that the week’s line for that work gives the row (for barre work, the line under the plan that begins “Barre rows this week:”), also where the row is the “Warm-Up” row: the item takes the place of other work there and adds none.

A second week is never planned, and it is never a failure. It is the same plan, with the same figures and the same daily limits.

If you go on without having reached this week’s figure, start that row next week at the figure you reached, not at the figure printed, and take the steps from there.

Where next week’s row changes the note value or the click, the figure you reached is on the old count: change it as the session changes the figure printed for that row (half of it for two notes per click; a third of it for “Greensleeves” with two clicks a measure), round down to a 5 and start there. If the row is not in next week’s plan, do this the next time it is.

After a Break

This section is for coming back after days or weeks without playing.

Missed 3 to 6 days: repeat the current week’s plan from its first practice day, then answer its Self-Check Questions.
Missed 1 to 2 weeks: go back one session and follow that week’s plan. For the first three practice days play each row that holds barre work, slur work, three-string power-chord work or little-finger work for half its minutes, and leave the full barre out; set every tempo 10 BPM lower than where you left off, then climb back 5 BPM at a time.
Missed more than 2 weeks: do the same, going back as many sessions as it takes to reach Self-Check Questions you can still pass.

“Half its minutes” is half of the minutes that the week’s line for that work gives that row (for barre work, the line under the plan that begins “Barre rows this week:”), never less than one minute; play the rest of the row as written, and the warm-up in full. Where no line names little-finger rows, none is halved. If the week you go back to is a showcase week, play its plan and do not take its checkpoint again. At the end of that week answer its Self-Check Questions and go on from there.

The pain rule applies as always.

The Rotation Row

From Session 7, every week’s plan has a row of 4 minutes named “Rotation”, so that nothing that is tested goes cold. Each day it holds one scale card, one change-test pair and two chord cards.

Scale card: shuffle the pile and draw one card. Play that scale from memory, up and down, in eighth notes at 60 BPM, twice. Then look at its TAB in the Scales and Arpeggios sheet. If a note was wrong, or you were not sure of one, play the scale once from the TAB and once more from memory.

The change-test pair: play it as the change test (Beginner Session 3), at the figure its ladder has reached. The week’s note on the Rotation row, above the plan’s table, names the week’s pairs and their figures: one of them a day, in turn. In a week whose note names no pair, the row has none.

Each chord card: place the shape once, pluck each string that should sound, let go.

If the shape will not come: look it up in the chord chart, place it three times, and put the card back in the pile.

When the row begins, in the week of Session 7, the rotation pile holds four chord cards: A7, D7, E7 and B7, the chords of Sessions 2 and 4. It also holds two scale cards: “C major scale, one octave, open position” and “A natural minor scale, one octave, open position”. Session 7 has you write all six. After that, a chord card joins the pile in the week its chord is taught. A scale card joins it in the session after its scale’s ladder ends. A chord that holds a barre is not in the pile, and that keeps Dm7 out: you practise it as presses in the barre rows. Write the Dm7 card all the same, in the week of Session 9, when the chord is taught: Session 12, the Phase 2 and Phase 3 checkpoints and the end-of-course assessment use it with the other cards of exit criterion E1, twelve in the end, and there Dm7 is pressed once and released.

To make the cards, take one slip of paper for each. On the face, write the name alone, spelled as the session that adds it gives it. Keep the pile face up: the name is what you read, and the back is how you check. On the back of a chord card, write its Strum line and the letters of its tuner check, and under them the sentence above that begins “If the shape will not come”. Write no TAB, no fingering and no tempo on a card.

Recording a Backing

A backing is here what it was in the beginner course: your own recording of a strummed chart, which you then play over. Session 1 tests your phone for it. You record your first backing in Session 4.

What follows is for a task in which you play measures of your own over the backing, as in Session 4. Where a session records a backing in another way, as Session 5 does for a tune in 3/4, that session’s own steps hold.

You record a backing in the session, with the metronome sounding. Let four clicks pass, then begin. Record no introduction. Record the backing one time round longer than the task: the first time through is for listening and counting, and you come in at the second ONE.

If your phone cannot record while its metronome app is sounding, listen to eight clicks, stop the metronome, and keep that beat with your foot.

If you lose your place while recording, stop, let four clicks pass, and start again from measure 1.

If you lose your place while playing, stop, listen for the next ONE on the recording, and come in again there.

If your phone cannot play the backing and record you at the same time, play with the backing sounding and judge it as you play; checking it on a recording then needs a second device.

One check before your next backing: record 4 measures of one chord, four beats to a measure, with the metronome sounding, and play them back. Pass: you hear all 16 clicks of the 4 measures, and you hear every strum over them. If not: move the phone and record the 4 measures again. If the clicks are still not on the recording, your phone cannot record while its metronome app is sounding, and the sentence above for that case holds.

Two Sittings

From Session 13 a day’s plan is longer than 30 minutes in every week that is not a lighter week. You then play it in two sittings, neither longer than 30 minutes, as the line under the week’s plan divides it. A lighter week (the weeks of Sessions 16, 22, 27 and 33) stays at 30 minutes in one sitting.

The rule in full is in Warm Up And Playing Time, the section “Two Sittings”.

The Practice Log

Keep a practice log: one line a day in a notebook. Each line holds five things:

The date.
The rows you played, by the plan’s names.
For each row with a ladder, the figure of your last three clean runs.
Any row you stopped because of the pain rule or a daily limit, and after how many minutes.
On the day of the week’s ear check, its result as a count with the test’s number, such as “7 of 10”.

The end-of-week check and each checkpoint ask for figures: a tempo you reached, a count of cards. The log is where you read them from, so you answer no figure from memory.

One check on your last practice day: count the week’s lines in the log. Pass: the log has 1 line for every practice day of the week.

Theory Cards

From Session 2, a theory handout that a session’s Read line assigns may have you write theory cards, or add to the ones you have. Sessions 2, 3 and 4 are the first. A theory card has a question on the front and the handout’s answer on the back. Copy the answer word for word from the handout. Never write it from memory.

The minutes of a Read line are for the reading: writing the cards comes on top, about a minute a card, and you do it before the first practice day at the latest.

Write a card only for a question that the assigned handout itself answers. Add nothing from outside the handouts. The theory handouts say which of their questions are for cards.

The cards make a pile. You use it at each phase checkpoint and at the end of the course (exit criterion E20): you draw cards from the pile, answer each one, and turn it over. At the end of the course you draw ten, and the pass mark is 8 of 10.

If you answer a card wrongly, read the answer on its back aloud once and put the card back in the pile.