First Daily Summary
Most of my practicing occurs in 1-hour chunks. Every day's first hour is warm up only. I have a specific left-hand exercise for the first 15-20 minutes of every day. It gently isolates the movements of each finger while keeping the others relaxed. I'll explain it in detail some other time. The remainder of my first hour varies from day to day. Today I ran 5 positions of diatonic scales (doesn't matter which mode) at 60 bpm in eighth notes, eighth triplets, sixteenths, sixteenth quintuplets, and sixteenth triplets. That's just 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 notes per beat. The key to this part of my warm up is maximum cleanliness of notes, paying close attention to the timing between the hands. Consecutive notes should only be separated by enough time for the pick attack. The left hand has to get ready for the next note while the pick is touching the string, no sooner or later.
Second hour was sight reading in Bb major, six different positions. I wrote a Python script to generate music for sight reading via LilyPond. Much more on that later.
Hour 3 was a review of the SRV and Charlie Parker tunes I've been working on lately.
I found Steve Vai's Guitar World article on his new 30-hour guitar workout. I figured I should read it.
I spent an hour on ii-V-I arpeggios in Bb. I set a backing track on loop and go through each position 2 strings at a time, then 3 at a time. I just play with whatever fragments of the 7th arpeggios fall into the strings and position I'm playing. This helps me find individual notes in an arpeggio without relying on playing the whole thing up and down.
Next hour was for ear training. I work through a great ear training program called EarMaster for an hour every day.
I did some picking exercises while watching an episode of Planet Earth. I like to do rapid 4-note bursts on single strings, starting with a down- or up-stroke.
I've been learning Charlie Parker's "Billie's Bounce" for a few days. I worked on the head for an hour or two.