I still don't understand. But that's OK. All of the things I practice are 100% mine I designed for me. No one could design something with pre-programed lessons or exercises. I can see a few example exercises and default page examples. But no. This would be a journal. I find this crucial for my own practice. Mine go back many years. It'd be helpful to have it all in one place, instead of on various papers or Word docs. Not life or death, but a perfect app for iPad. Too small for me on the iPhone though . . .
Henry or Narzugon, not sure if you looked at the website I posted, but here are its basic 10 steps for creating a practice program. I would be curious which part you don't think is good ... or how you see this as "canned".
All I am wishing for is an app that does this type of thing for me (I'm sure the reason why these guys don't create an app is because they probably make a lot more money charging a monthly fee to their site).
STEP 1: Commit yourself to creating a truly personalized and customized guitar practice schedule. Avoid using 'pre-made' cookie cutter or general schedules that are not specific to you.
STEP 2: Create a schedule that is big enough to include all items that you need to practice in order to reach your short and long term goals. To do this effectively, you will need to know how to distribute each of those many practice items across many days. In other words, do not create a one - day schedule that you repeat each day, but instead a 5-10 day schedule that is effective, flexible and correctly distributes those items over several days for maximum results.
STEP 3: Learn how to accurately and consistently know how your various skill levels (for each individual item you need to practice) needs to best influence how often each separate item should be practiced. In other words, your current skill level for each practice item should 'partially' determine how much time each day that specific item needs to be practiced. (Hint: Do NOT assume that the more skill you have in playing something means you should practice it 'less' than another item that you might be struggling with.)
STEP 4: Learn to fully understand the different separate strategies to reach short and long term goals through practice time in a guitar practice schedule. Then build your customized practice schedules to implement those different strategies for each item on your schedule as it pertains to each type of goal you have.
STEP 5: Learn to fully understand the different ways various categories of practice items should be practiced in order to master each of them. (Hint: Some things are best mastered when you practice them more frequently, but in less time. Other things in your schedules are best mastered when you practice them less often, but for longer amounts of time)
STEP 6: Know how to correctly and effectively balance the urgency of wanting to improve something and your quest to reach your short and long term goals. An item which you feel is 'urgent' to learn and master may be part of your short term goals. Other times it will really be part of your long term goals. Yet other times it may be part of both, or neither. So in each of these cases you need to create the schedule differently for that item.
STEP 7: Figure out how to harness the strengths of your 'personality type' so that your guitar practice schedules take this into account. More importantly, you must avoid letting any weaknesses of your personality type (every personality type has strengths and weaknesses) influence your practicing in a negative way whenever possible. Your schedule should help you to avoid this so that you make the maximum amount of progress as a guitar player from your practice time.
STEP 8: Next, after you've created your new guitar practice schedule, it is important to use some kind of automated 'timer' that will keep track of your practice time for each item for you and tell you when it is time to move on to the next item in your schedule. Using an automated timer like this will ensure you stay on course easily and accurately.
STEP 9: You need to track every minute of every item that you practice in a log. This is important for many reasons. One of these reasons is to monitor progress. Another reason is to track any items that you may have missed (or not completed) practicing on a previous day so that you always know what items you may need to go back to and practice. Both are critical contributors to your guitar playing success.
STEP 10: The final step - and one of the most important - is to repeat steps 1-9 every 1-2 weeks. Yes, that's right, you need to create new guitar practice schedules on a regular basis. Why? Because your skill levels, musical goals and challenges will naturally evolve as you improve as a guitar player. Therefore, what and how you practiced last month will NOT be the most effective way for you to practice this month. Your practice schedules must evolve as your playing evolves, each time taking into account the above mentioned factors!
