Develop a good warm-up routine

Perhaps you are one of the few that have decided to learn the ropes of "Heavy Metal." Technically, a better name for it is "Metalcore," which is a fusion genre that combines various elements of extreme metal and hardcore punk.

The name is derived from a blend of the names from the two genres. Musicians who participate in this style of music, sometimes call it "Sport Metal" and consider it vital to warm up for even an hour or more.

But, enough about that. When you begin finding your groove as a new guitar player, you will only be able to focus on what you know.

How can you practice and improve upon something if you don't understand the technique or even realize that it exists? One of the hardest things to overcome for anyone learning a new skill, is trying to not become overwhelmed by everything. If you muscle through it though, you will come out a much better person on the other side.

Some people call this inevatable problem "analysis paralysis," and it exists in all aspects of life when learning a new skill. Take heart though, anyone that is anything has gone through this before, so you are not alone.

Here's the good news, if you are brand new and don't have a general idea of how to go about developing a practice routine, there are literally endless possibilites available.

While it's true I don't know what type or genre of music you favor, it really doesn't matter. The purpose is to get the muscles warmed up and ready to tackle whatever you throw their way.

It's also true that as a person that has only begun learning about the guitar, you won't be warming up to practice some of the more advances techniques such as sweep-picking or galloping or anything like that.

What I would highly recommend focusing on is alternate picking, string skipping (only one string for now), and learning the fretboard by naming the notes as you play them.

Alternate picking as the name implies, is a technique that involves incorporating upstrokes in addition to the standerd downstrokes. Overtime it becomes quite natural and is the preferred method for improving picking speed right below economy picking, but we won't get into that at this time.

It is completely normal as well as natural to begin learning by using only downstrokes. It won't take long however, to find out how many limitations this can cause. On a side note, as you progress through the ranks, you will inevitably reach a point where you may decide to only use downstrokes. This will typically be a palm muted passage that drives a part of the song like the verse for instance.

Something else that you should pay very close attention to, is string skipping. This will throw many people for a loop when they are first starting out. Nail this, and you will have taken a huge step forward in you abilities.

What makes this technique so tricky is learning to coordinate both hands so they will land exactly where they need to land. The difficulty only intensifies as the amount of strings that are being skipped increases.

Honestly it can still present challenges from time to time for seasoned players. But, I want to show you this simple practice routine that will dramatically help you in your string skipping abilities.

First off, muscle memory is an absolute must here, as it will only increase the more you impliment various techniques on the guitar. But to give yourself a headstart, a great place to begin, is by making use of the chromatic scale. Sounds technical, but don't sweat it at this time.

Simply utilizing a one finger per-fret approach, will probably be your best bet. If you haven't had a quality rundown of the open strings they look like this, from thickest to thinest string: E A D G B E

With that being said, your goal is to fret the notes from the 1st fret (using your index finger) to the 4th fret (using your pinky.) Another side note here, make absolutely sure you include your little finger as often as you can. It might be the weakest finger, but it is absolutely awesome and it will serve you impressively, I am sure of that.

If you have decided to impliment this particular technique you will be fretting the index finger of your fretting hand on the very first fret on the fretboard, and that note is known as the F note, assuming you are in standerd tuning.

Continueing on into the second fret, hopefully you will be using your middle finger for this, you will have just sounded out an F#. Remember to use alternate picking, and by that I mean alternating down up strokes with the pick, and don't forget to call out the notes as you hit them.

After landing on your little finger in the fourth fret, (which will be a G# note) instead of going to the next string, (or open A note) you will instead skip to the next string which is the D string.

After landing on this, your goal is to repeat the process that you played on the previous string. And as always, make sure you are using alternate picking.

I have a degree of certainess that you can now pick out the pattern. After completing the shape on the open D string, move up this time to the open A string or 5th string and repeat the pattern.

Simple as that, continue that workout until you get to the High E string. From there, it is completely up to you where you decide to go.

This is just one of hundreds, if not thousands, of possible warmup routines that you can employ on your guitar as you learn the ropes.





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