Waking up and playing guitar in the early morning isn't exactly common, especially if you've only ever practiced guitar at night time. In this post, I’m going to show you a very cool Blues-Rock Scale that I'd like you try doing every morning. Test this type of practice to find out what playing in the morning is like for you. Doing this could change your practice habits forever...




EARLY MORNING PRACTICE:
A lot of guitarists find that early morning practice helps them increase their focus (especially with their technical and creative playing). Many guitar players also find that early morning practice helps them to overcome focus problems.

Even if you don't spend a lot of time practicing technique, try doing some early morning practice to discover how it works for you.

WATCH THE VIDEO:



HAVE YOU TRIED IT?
One of things I’ve noticed after teaching hundreds of students over the last 26 years here at Creative Guitar is that some of the best students that I’ve ever had are the ones who always get up quite early and play guitar for 20 or 30 min. before they start their day.

For a majority of players, there’s something really good about "early in the day" guitar practice that seems to help them better integrate as well as memorize material.

I’ve done early morning practice myself and it has made an impact on my own guitar playing, so I do know that this type of practice holds merit.

And so, in this video, I’m going to suggest that you test this out for yourself and find out what it can do for you…

For a practice suggestion, (to test out this early day study approach), I’ve got a unique fingerboard shape for the Blues-Rock Scale that you can learn to play and use.

The shape of this "Blues-Rock" scale pattern covers a lot of ground, and it blends the sound of the Blues with the Blues-Rock flavor of the Dorian mode's "Major 6th."

The scale shape is easy to play, and it’s suitable for almost every Blues or Rock chord progression that you’ll ever come across. So, let’s start things off here by learning the lower fret-region of this Blues-Rock scale pattern.




BLUES-ROCK SCALE (LOW REGION):

[KEY OF "D"]



Alright, now that you’ve learned the lower fretting region of this neck pattern (in the key of “D”), let’s move this shape up the string sets and start understanding how this shape can function up in the higher range of the strings.

The next pattern I have for you carries on where the previous pattern left off and we’re going to organize the next octave range from off of the top strings at the 7th position to continue up the neck with the notes of the key of, "D."

BLUES-ROCK SCALE (HIGH REGION):

[KEY OF "D"]




MORNING PRACTICE:
If you put in about 3 – 5 min. per pattern each morning and focus on working toward the development of your; memorization, your picking ability and your speed, with these shapes, (using a metronome), you’ll start to have a solid sense of recall for the way these patterns sit on the neck.

After that, it’s going to be a good idea to work a few more days at being able to start joining together the two patterns so that you begin recognizing and fully understanding the layout of this scale as a two-octave idea along and across the neck.

So now, I’ll play through the way that this pattern would sit on the guitar fingerboard as a fully connected two-octave scale shape.


BLUES-ROCK SCALE (2-OCTAVE):

[KEY OF "D"]



JAM-TRACK /LOOPER PRACTICE:
The other thing that’s important to your early practice routine with this Blues-Rock scale is to make sure that you also include some time spent working towards putting this scale pattern to use.

Having a good jam track progression is obviously really important for that. So, I’m going to help you out with a Blues-Rock jam-riff that’s ready to go for applying the key of “D” scale pattern that we’ve been working on throughout this lesson. Here’s what the riff sounds like.

BLUES-ROCK JAM:

[KEY OF "D"]



Spend some time and record the chord progression shown above. If that isn't possible, keep things simple and just use a looper pedal to be able to play it back. If you can't do that use your phone and record it!

Regardless, it is really important that you make a recording and apply the scale. Without doing that you'll never fully develop the sound and application of this idea.




MOVING FORWARD:
What I’d like you to do with what we’ve discussed in this post, is to start working on this Blues-Rock scale idea in the earliest part of your day, and find out what it does for you.

Take notice of whether or not working in the early day on guitar seems like it improves your sense of recall, or if it helps with your focus, or if you feel like your attention is better.

Some of my own students have said that doing morning guitar practice for 20 – 30 min. helps them the most with doing technical work, like; practicing scales, doing technique exercise drills, and also with doing music reading exercises.

From other guitar players who study with me, I’ve heard that they enjoy the early morning for making up melodies and doing some jamming and for their most creative work.

I should also say, (full disclosure), that I have had some guitar students of mine come back (after trying this) and tell me that the early morning practice routine just didn’t work them.

And, I can understand that because we all know that some people aren’t “early morning people,” and the fact is that some guitar players won’t enjoy doing early morning practice. That’s just the way life is. Different strokes for different folks!



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