On many a previous occasion I have mentioned my love for all things Reverend. Once again they have not let me down with these new entries into the Reverend Roundhouse Series.

Wow, don’t know which on I like better, the shiney black or the sparkley silver. Both of these beauties come with a solid korina body with black back and sides with cream binding, two Reverend Revtron mini-humbuckers that have been calibrated individually for each position.

The Reverend Roundhouse RT series is now available and they come in at a super affordable is $850US.

One mistake I think a lot of people make when it comes to practicing is to not practice efficiently. They just start playing along to a song they want to learn, or grab a tab and try to learn the a song, or just go through some exercises. Although every bit of practice helps, you are not getting as much out of your time as the effort you are putting in. This is why you should schedule your practice routine.

As an example, here is a good one hour routine and I’ll show you how I apply it.

• 0-10 mins - Warm Up
• 10-20 mins - Fingering Drills
• 20-40 mins - Playing Skills
• 40-60 mins - Fun Time

So with this plan in mind I am now practicing like this:

• 0-10 mins - My Super-Duper secret warm up exercises*
• 10-20 mins - 2 x exercises from the 30 Day Guitar Workout
• 20-40 mins - Lesson from Blues You Can Use Book 1
• 40-60 mins - Work on one of the songs I want to learn

In 1 hour, I get to cover all the areas I want to work on. The beauty of this is if you have more time (which I normally don’t) you can just extend out all the periods and still get a balanced workout.

I’d love to hear how others break up their practice time and what they find useful.

* My Super-Duper warm up routine won’t be secret for long. I’ll be sharing that shortly. It’s a killer.

In my quest to get my playing back up to where it was, I have gone back to an old faithful. This book WILL MAKE YOU TECHNICALLY BETTER. that doesn’t mean you will be a better musician, but anyways….

30-Day Guitar Workout

This is not an affiliate review type thing. I genuinely think that all guitarists should own this book. It will not teach you a thing about theory or and chops or licks, but it will make you change the way you look at what your hands do. I’ve used this book to great success in the past and hopefully I will again.

Basically, it’s an exercise program for you hands. It will help you with your hand strength, stamina, and best of all, a thing they call “finger independence”. Right from the first warm up exercise you will begin to use your left hand differently, and trust me, for most of us that is a good thing.

So see if you can get yourself a copy of this book. You will not regret it.

Wow, what a few weeks. So busy and no time for anything. At least I got my new web site design solution business up and running with a snazzy new website (and if that sentence looked weird, I was dropping keywords for you net SEO savvy people). So after some delay I’m back with some guitar stuff.

As mentioned in a past post about learning my favourite guitar songs, I’ve hit a snag and had a rething. One song I cannot find a tab for, the other is in an open tuning and I would rather stick with standard for now, and the other is possibly a bit ahead of myself. So I’m changing the tracks. I’m still using the same guitarists.

Slash : was Paradise City, now Sweet Child O’ Mine.
I love Paradise City, but this is such a memorable solo, I really just want to learn it.

Gary Moore : was midnight Blues, now Still Got The Blues
Again, an obvious choice, but for the same reasons as above

Rich Robinson : was Sting Me, now Hard To Handle
I can already play Hard To Handle, but I usually ad lib the solo with some references to the original. It’s time I learned the way the solo should be played.

So there is the new list. I got my trusty GuitarPro fired up and ready to go. Now the fun begins. I’ve just got some new audio software so as I progress I’ll record the improvements.