The Art of Practising: A guitarists' guide to developing technical precision and efficiency.

This little book is full of very useful information for anyone who wants to improve his or her guitar playing,by practicing in a more efficient and effective way. The author emphasizes that the many patterns and exercisesin the book "are merely suggestions," to help a guitarist to chose, and experiment, and to then make his or her own exercise that helpsthat person with a specific problem in a guitar piece that is a problem for that player. As the author puts it: "go through a pieceyou are working on and search out any difficult spots. When you have found them, take them apart and break them down into a pileof simple little basic exercises to be worked on." And: "Whatever you may have to do in a piece that is difficult can always be reducedto one finger's doing one particular job, followed by another finger's doing something else, and once that sequence of motions can beisolated, it can be made into an exercise."One other quote from the book that I personally should copy and tape to the bathroom mirror, about the importance of practicing very slowly - "the most important lesson you could ever learn... the virtuosos who go sailing through passages of transcendant speed...are the ones who sit for hours at home playing things at a snail's pace and watching their fingers like a hawk for the slightest sign of inefficiency or lack of precision. But the people who practice at more normal tempos are the ones who keep finding that somehow they never seem to get much better, and that the piece that they couldn't quite manage to get through some years ago, they still can't manage to get through now.". (A great piece of advice I will try to remember every day.) :-)Lots of good advice in this little book for anyone who wants to improve.

This is a great book to have at home or on the road (since it weighs less than 3 OZ!) The volume of useful information concentrated in this 25 page book could easily fill 100 pages, and the value of the information is priceless. The book explains what the art of practicing means, describes the optimal sitting, left and right hand positions and potential problems to avoid, and provides advice on how to invent exercises for right and left hands that address your own specific technical problems. The author also provides several hundreds of exercises that would benefit players at any level. After playing those exercises my right hand became well balanced and technically proficient.

This is an excellent book for any finger style guitarist looking for daily exercises to improve flexibility,versatility, precision and strengthening of the fingers. It is written in a style very easy to read and suggests solutions to problems common to the average player. This vast collection of exercises allows you to select the ones that deal with your particular problems so that even plectrum guitarists eager to add right hand fingers to their playing - with a little adaptation- could find it invaluable. I would highly recommend this book for advanced beginners to advanced players.

As others have said the info about practicing is great.But the layout of the book is godawful. Looks like a 25 page term paper.

Excellent. Highly recommended.

This book has been nothing short of life-altering for me. Years ago, I tried to understand how virtuoso guitarists are able to play without mistakes, with smoothness, ease, flow and seemingly minimal finger movement and then, I found this book! My world was really turned upside down. I abandoned my quite extensive repertoire, (at that time), and focused on the exercises in the book. The first two months was not easy. That pinky kept jumping up! Then when I eventually got it right, I wanted more and more.After many months of playing nothing but the exercises in the book, I started dabbling in the pieces again. The results were astonishing! It felt as if I was not even doing the playing. It was as if my fingers were walking through the pieces by themselves! (I know that sounds exaggerated, but it REALLY was my experience). I did not have to exert the same effort as before, and I was getting more music, more beauty and more everything than I had ever gotten out of the guitar. My guitarist friends were amazed. When I played anything, it became standard behaviour for them to get up to look at my hands from all possible angles, to see what I was doing. I wanted all of them to do the exercises in the book!If there is a “magic formula” for reaching concert level guitar playing, I believe this book teaches it. I have returned to the exercises in this book and to the guitar after many years of absence. I have given myself a time line, and then I will record an album. I believe in this book that much! I am eternally thankful to The Force which led me to finding it when I did.

When I ordered the book, and receive it , first I was disappointed since it is very thin and neglected the book for a time but after many repeated mistakes I decided to give it a try and realized that if you really do what is told in the book makes difference in the guitar technique but you have to obey its advices exactly. Do not mistaken with other books it is about the core and if you follow the method written you would be surprised what you can do but do not over shoot as the author already declared. According to your needs you have to learn to use the book , don’t do enless combinations but take the one you need at a time. It also enabled me to find out my weak points. Thanks to the author for her direct guidence

A very different approach to practice much more discipline required.