Until last week, the walls of my practice space were empty. I decided to hang the pictured piece of motivational artwork. It keeps me on task.

I think I'll try Steve Vai's thirty-hour guitar workout this week. It's spread over three days, an update to his previously published ten-hour guitar workout. I've read both articles but never tried to follow his routine exactly. I'm no stranger to practicing ten hours in a day, I just prefer to take a less structured approach than Mr. Vai.

I keep a list handy of everything I'd like to practice, a few of which must be done every day (sight reading, ear training, SRV). Then I can pick whatever excites me most from the list for the majority of my practice time.

The most valuable thing I've picked up from Vai's articles is that he always spends one hour on each element of his practice, then moves on. It's the perfect duration to focus on a single topic; I get plenty of time to delve into a technique or concept without getting too fatigued.

If I don't try the big workout this week, I'd still like to do it soon. When I do, I'll blog about it, since I know how to do that.

Today's Summary

• The interval trainer page is almost ready. Spent a number of hours trying to wrap it up today.
• warm-up: triad slides, all inversions, fingers, strings, 1 hr
• SRV: more from "I'm Cryin'", mostly upstroke strumming, 1 hr
• ear training, 1 hr