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Integrating guitar into your busy life


colder

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I've noticed that as time passes and I get older and busier professionally, and at home too - it's hard sometimes to get the amount of guitar in that I need! (Which of course is always "more!")

For those of you with busy lives, children, and lots of outside commitments beyond your practice room, how do you structure things so that you keep advancing in your playing as much as possible? 

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As it's well documented here on the forum,  I play on my lunch break in my car, and in our van at the mall when the wife goes shopping for yet...

But I have major difficulty practicing at night,  but try my best

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Get up at 5:30. Guitar and coffee go very well together. Evenings, I just noodle. Too tired to concentrate 

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Despite being retired, I find myself with more work now than when ran my contracting business. Primarily doing renos for the family and trying to get my house ready to sell. I try every night to lock myself in my office for 30 minutes between 9 and 10. As tired as I am, I try to stick to it and surprise, surprise, once the notes begin to ring out, the tiredness evaporates. Weekends I can usually put together a couple of hours.

Henk

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I have a guitar in every room I tend to relax in. My basement is my studio, so when I am down there, I have all my gear. The family room has my acoustic guitar. The Katana 50 rotates between my family room and the living room, and then one of my electric guitars tends to be where the Katana is, so I always have an instrument handy. I have a Ukulele in my family room, too, LOL.

For me, the inspiration has to grab me. I work a lot, and am generally quite tired when I'm home. Three kids, too. So I know that if my brain tells me, "HEY! Let's play guitar!!", I don't have to go far to have one in hand.

I'm also at a point where I don't call what I do "practice". If I get a melody in my head, or am thinking about a track to lay down, I play that, and then work on what goes over that, notes/solo wise. I am not schooled in theory, so I don't practice scales and such.

I also find that sometimes my greatest inspiration comes after a break from playing. I know that about myself, so if a few days go by without playing, I don't stress about it.

Edited by Old Guy
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Great ideas, all. Thanks!

I live in a loft in a high-rise building, downtown in a major city. We've got about 1400 square feet but it still feels like a small place, and the possibility of disturbing my better half's sleeping, reading, whatever, is always there. 

I can practice with an electric using headphones, but I don't really want to have my headphones on all the time when I'm at home, I want to be present when I'm home, since we're a family and all. :)

One thing that's helping is working on fingerstyle a lot - for some reason this background noise she likes, it's a peaceful sound - but the sound of me practicing electric (silently or not) or playing non-fingerstyle acoustic guitar is more of a disturbance.

And I just heard Joe Robinson remind us all last night that he used to get up at 4:00 AM to play. Maybe I will just begin setting my alarm earlier!

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