Sample Practice Schedule

Becoming a better mandolin player is rewarding and fun, but it also takes dedication and focused effort. Having fun is a key part of playing music but it’s equally important to carve out time to sharpen your skills and learn new techniques. Simply playing can help, but it’s often inefficient if there’s no goal.

One of the biggest things I hear from new students is they don’t have a lot of time to practice – maybe 15 – 30 minutes a day in some cases. The great news is, practice doesn’t have to take hours. A focused 15-minute practice session with clear goals and exercises can advance your playing far more effectively than an hour of aimless playing.

I find spending some time just writing out your long term goals, then breaking those down to smaller achievable goals is a great way to keep focus. Once you have broken the long term goals down to the short term needs, you can then craft an array of practices that get you to those goals.

In this article, I’m going to breakdown how to break your long term goals into smaller more achievable goals, then how to setup daily practice arrays to give you variety while reaching your goals.

Setting Long Term Goals

Often this is the easy part. Ask yourself “why am I playing this instrument” and whatever that answer is, likely that’s your long term goal. When I started, my goal was to be able to jam with people. Then it evolved into being able to take more advanced breaks. Then being able to play someone else’s breaks from a recording. All of these goals were too big to achieve on their own. They all had sets of skills that were a prerequisite to achieving my goal. So, once the long term goal is identified, you need to break those down to smaller goals

Setting Medium Term Goals

Whatever your goal is, think about the pillars required to get there. These are the major skill sets you need to work on. Generally I look for 3 – 4 pillars per long term goal. For example, with the goal to “jam with others”, you have the below pillars

• Chord Knowledge
• Scale Knowledge
• Melody Knowledge
• Rhythm Knowledge

These pillars of knowledge are too vast to really practice in a vacuum. You could just “learn chords” but without having something to apply them to, it’s a highly inefficient use of time. So, let’s move on to Short Term Goals.

Short Term Goals

Once you have the pillars of knowledge needed to reach your long term goals, you can then tackle. Generally I like using a song or tune to help focus what I’m practicing from each pillar of knowledge. For example, if I’m learning Whiskey Before Breakfast in D – I only need to learn the D G A Em chords and the D major diatonic scale.

Sample Long Term Goal

Long-term goals (1-3 months): Set clear, specific objectives you want to achieve over the next 1-3 months. This goal should be a bit lofty but achievable. Keep your goals to a reasonable timeframe. Keep your long term goals limited to what you can accomplish within 1-3 months for the best results. Any longer, it may be tough to stay on track.

Short-term goals (weekly/bi-weekly): Short-term goals are crucial for shaping your daily practice sessions. These should be targets should be specific goals you can reach in 1-2 weeks. If you find yourself reaching a short-term goal quicker than expected, either repeat the practice to reinforce your skills or move on to the next challenge.

Daily practice: Break down your short-term goals into daily objectives you can complete in a single practice session. Be specific here, too. If you’re struggling to turn short-term goals into daily practices, your short-term goals might need more refining. Begin each session with a warm-up designed to prepare you for the focus of the day (for example, if you’re working on picking technique, include some simple picking patterns in your warm-up).

Optional extra practice: Sometimes, you’ll finish your targets a bit quicker than expected. In these cases, you can either move on to the next goal early or stick with your original schedule and add some extra exercises. These extra exercises should be challenging bonus material but not so challenging that they distracting from your main goals.

Pro Tip: Record your playing periodically especially when you are starting to tackle a new skill / goal. Video recordings are invaluable for identifying areas to improve and tracking your progress. Although it can be uncomfortable to rewatch yourself, it’s crucial for catching technique issues you may not notice in the moment. Plus, reviewing old recordings makes it easier to see how far you’ve come, especially with those small, incremental improvements that may otherwise go unnoticed.

Here’s a quick document I use to help me write out practices.

Practice Schedule Example

Start Date: ______________               Target End Date: ______________

Long Term Goal – 3 months

• Play the Kenny Baker plays Bill Monroe album at speed with accurate melodies in 2 positions with one written break for each song

Short Term Goals – weekly

• Play 1 track per week at speed with a basic melody and break

Kenny Baker Plays Bill Monroe track listing

1. Road to Columbus
2. Brown Country Breakdown
3. Lonesome Moonlight Waltz
4. Jerusalem Ridge
5. Monroe’s Hornpipe
6. Cheyenne
7. Big Sandy River
8. Stoney Lonesome
9. Mississippi Waltz
10. Wheel Hoss
11. Fiddler’s Pastime
12. Ashland Breakdown

Warm up – includes 15 to 30 min or as time allows

1. Picking hand exercises at speed of the day and song
   • Picking rhythm focused on Tremolo practice and syncopated playing ala Bill Monroe
2. Arpeggio practice in key of song over progression
   • Straight chord Arpeggios 
   • Dom7 Arpeggios 
   • Added b3 
3. Chord progression at speed multiple positions
   • Straight chords
   • Double stop “chords” on all strings
4. Recap of prior day
5. If prior day goals are not met, revisit that goal rather than moving on

Daily practice

• Day 1 – basic melody and rhythm position 1 at 50%
• Day 2 – basic melody and rhythm position 1 at 75%
• Day 3 – basic melody and rhythm position 1 at 100%
• Day 4 – basic melody and rhythm position 2 at 50%
• Day 5 – basic melody and rhythm position 2 at 75%
• Day 6 – basic melody and rhythm position 2 at 100%
• Day 7 – blending positions at 100% and written break

Additional practice as needed

• Play melody in another position
• Change keys by ½ or full step
• Play at 110% speed
• Rewrite arrangement with chord substitutions 
• Write standard notation charts for melody and written solo

Daily Practice

I like learning (and teaching) using songs / tunes as a guide since usually our goals when practice is to play something better.

When learning a particular song or tune, I find breaking up the individual parts / techniques needed to play it makes it easier to handle. Rather than “learning a song or tune” at once, I focus on perfecting each phrase of a song individually. I find this approach helps me (and my students) saves a lot of time and avoids the issues of practicing mistakes – you know where you play the A part of song great, but always mess up on the 2nd measure of the B part, so you start all over only to make the exact same mistake! By breaking the song down into multiple areas of practice, you can better target specific skills and avoid practicing mistakes.

The below example is essentially a “choose your own adventure” for practice. If you have time to do them all – that’s awesome. If not, pick one or more exercises you want to work and just focus on those. Maybe today is a day you feel you really want to work on your ability to play chords – great, focus on those practices primarily (or only). Tomorrow you want to really nail the arpeggios? Awesome, do those!

Goal – learn how to play INSERT SONG in INSERT KEY

Picking hand exercises – warm up by getting your picking hand going. Remember to stay loose and don’t grip the pick too tight!

• Rest Stroke in quarter and eighth notes on all strings (more on the rest stroke here)
• Playing a few exercises like these
  • 58 exercises
  • Picking Hand Lesson
  • Picking Hand Lesson 2

Chord exercises – Learn each chord in the song and how to play those chords in multiple different voicings across the neck.

• Play chords in one position
• Play chords in in another position
• Play chords switching between the two positions
• Play double stops for chords (i.e. use the G and D strings to play through the chord progression)

Scale exercises – Scales are a great way to learn the notes that you can hit during your solo breaks or when you’re embellishing the melody. Note, scales are only guides to what notes will sound good most of the time – the “off notes” or those outside of the scale give color to your breaks – so don’t exclude those.

• Play the arpeggios of each chord individually (not to the song)
• Play the arpeggios of each chord in time with the song
• Play the major diatonic or major pentatonic scale (not to the song)
  • Straight through
  • Skipping 3rds
  • Running 3rds

Melodic Practice – Learning the melody in time

• Review a chart of the song and identify “phrases” to break the melody up into smaller parts
• Practice each phrase independently in one position
• Practice adjacent phrases together (i.e. phrase 1 and 2; phrase 2 and 3; phrases 1, 2, & 3 etc) in one position. Repeat until you have played all phrases together.
• Practice melody in one position
• Repeat the above in another position
• Play the full melody to a backing track in as many positions
  • Start with one position only
  • Then move to another position and play in that position only
  • Then blend the two positions – i.e. 2 measures in the 1st position and 2 measures in the 2nd position and etc

Solo Practice – to a backing track – Here you’re focusing on learning the notes that are in the key of the song. You’re also looking for where the color or “off tones” are that can add tension and make your breaks more interesting.

• Play the arpeggios straight through
• Play the arpeggios trying to target important melodic notes (usually the note on the 1st beat of a measure is a good target)
• Play the major diatonic or pentatonic scale on 2 strings only or up to the 5th fret only etc
• Play one measure of the melody followed by one phrase of an arpeggio
• Play the melody with added off notes (those outside the melody and/or scale). This could be just adding a b3 before a 3 note or a triplet hammer on / pull off somewhere etc

Have Fun!! – The above practices are about perfection, but this is just about enjoying the fruits of your labor. Having fun is a big part of learning – so don’t ignore this part of your session. This practice is where you try to incorporate all the practices you just did into your playing. Play through the song a few times etc.

• To a backing track, implement as much of the previous practices as you can.
• If you make mistakes here, try to play through them (as you would in a live setting).
  • If you can keep playing in time, just make a note of it to practice later. When you’re done having fun, go back and practice the problem part
  • If you can’t keep playing in time, stop and work on the problem part

Happy Picking!

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