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Ahh - The days of summer freedom are once again at hand!

All over this great country, kids are finishing up their finals, and generally getting really, really, really, really excited that summer vacation is about to start.

Hold on a minute...

Before you start the cycle of:

• sleeping until 2 p.m. everyday
• waking up
• eating
• swimming
• eating
• playing video games
• eating
• going to a movie
• eating
• hitting the sack at about 2 a.m.
• dreaming of eating

I challenge you to take advantage of this free time to become the baddest cat in your school before fall term starts.

Daydream with me...

Picture this - Everyone knows that you are the best player in school. Everyone that plays will be in awe of you and everyone that needs a guitar player will be calling you. Jam sessions, starting your band, being "the guy and/or girl" when the school needs a guitar player for anything (concerts, musicals, talent shows, etc).

Sounds cool doesn't it?

Well, if you take all your free time this summer and carve just a little out from eating and other things you do, you can improve tremendously before school starts.

Case in point -

Steve Vai

A monster player - A guitar god if you will

His story is like that of Van Halen, Tom Morello and other great players. When school was out for summer, they had a good time just like everyone does during the summer. The difference is they spent much of their time at home playing guitar and jamming with friends. A new pack of strings, a cool chord progression and someone to solo over it was all they needed to burn through several hours each day during the summer.

Are you sold yet on the daydream yet?

Great!

But you need help figuring out what to do, right?

That's why I'm here.

Here is your summer "Become a Bad Cat before school starts" practice routine!

Caveat 1 - the more you practice and keep the guitar in your hands, the better you will get.
Caveat 2 - I'll give you a minimum routine. My hope is that you do more than what I put down below!

Practice days per week: 6-7

Time needed each day: 2 1/2 hours (minimum)

What you need to do:

1. Get out of bed at 10 a.m. at the latest. Most kids lose their time sleeping until all hours of the day. Sleeping late is good, I agree. But get a few extra hours back by getting up at a decent hour.
2. Eat breakfast and wake up. Stay away from the T.V., Internet and your Xbox 360. Those are traps that will suck away time faster than sleeping all day.
3. Warm up for 15 minutes. We're going to get your fingers and ear ready to work with the warm routine.  For the warm up, pick a different scale each day that you already know. Set your metronome at a slow speed and starting on C, play the scale over two octaves up and down. Then, repeat the scale in this order - C - G - D - A - E - B - Gb - Db - Ab - Eb - Bb - F - C. That's the cycle of fifths. Try to make the changes smooth between positions. As a bonus, sing the notes with the scale as you play. This will get your ear ready to go.
4. 15 minutes - chord work. Learn a new chord grip every day. There are many ways to do this, buy a chord book, buy a real book and figure out chords on your own, go online and lookup a chord site. However you do it, if you learn and retain one grip a day over the summer, you should have 60-75 new grips under your fingers before school starts.
5. 15 minutes - scale work. Similar to the chord study, you should work on learning all 5 pentatonic patterns and all 7 diatonic modes. However, don't just play the scale up and down, practice them using melodic sequences. Joe, the practice-a-holic, has a great article on melodic sequences here...
6. 30 minutes - work on learning a song. I'm not talking about learning 15 seconds of the introduction that everyone knows, work on learning a whole song - intro - verse - chorus - bridge - outro - etc. Pick a song that you abso-freakin-lutely love and make it a summer goal to be able to play this song by the end of summer.
7. Summer Time fun - take a break at this point (if you must) and do whatever it is you do - swim, go to the mall, movies, play video games (BioShock is the Bomb!), whatever. Have fun!!! But not too much because you still have more practicing to do.
8. Warm up for 15 minutes - yep, we're back at it later in the day/evening. This warm up take some of your challenging chord grips, those you can play but require a bit of a stretch, and start them high on the neck (12th fret or so). Arpeggiate the chord one note at a time and work the chord down the neck until you reach your comfort zone. Do it with a metronome and make sure every note is clean and in tempo.
9. 15 minutes - Ear Training. So much to do, so little time to do it. Here are some ideas. (Beginner) Tune a single note on your guitar and then tune all the other strings by ear. Pull out your tuner and check yourself. Play a note on the guitar and see if you can match the pitch with your voice. When you can do this, sing any note first and then find it on your guitar. (Intermediate) Go online and find ear training sites and/or ear training methods and work through the exercises. Granted, it's not the most fun in the world, but you want to be great right? So do it! (Advanced) Learn a solo by ear. Perhaps on the song you're learning. Don't use the tab unless you get stuck. Try to pick the notes and phrasing out by ear. Learn it at tempo and only then go back to the tab/score to see how close you were!
10. 15 minutes - chord progressions - all the chords you learn won't amount to anything unless you can play them. Take your favorite grips and put 3-4 together and work on playing them rhythmically and musically. Who knows, this could be the start of your own songs. Once you have a full progression under your fingers, pick new chords and a new rhythm and repeat until school starts.
11. 30 minutes - work on learning a song. We're back to your song. Keep at it and own the song completely!
12. You're free - do what ever you want, but be sure you get out of bed before 10 a.m. the next day so that you can get back to it!

This may look like a lot, it sure was a lot to type! But if you enjoy playing the guitar and you really want to be the best you can be, this routine will help you in your goal. Good luck and I can't wait to see how much you improve over the summer!







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