Drills, Warmups and Practice Routine. Need a Recommendation

[Kenny]

Long-time player, trying to get back into it after many years of being on sideline. I am working my way through a bunch of Steve Kaufmann material (Learning to Flatpick DVD). Short of getting a teacher (not happening for now), I would love to find some structured approaches to working on rudiments and technique that I can just spend 15-20 minutes on everytime I practice. I spent some time googling and couldn't really find a what I was looking for. Recommendations would be appreciated.

[Guy Hill]

I'd strongly advise taking a look at our very own host Dan Miller's excellent "Flatpicking Essentials" series.
I have the 1st 3 volumes & they've helped me enormously.

[Tom Hanninen]

I am currently working through Russ Barenberg's, "Exploring the Fingerboard" series. So far it has been a great method to work on practicing understanding the fretboard. I then work whatever music I'm currently working on.

[John Mitterholzer]

As a long time sidelined player as well, I've been working with Dan Miller's Flatpicking Essentials 1-5, especially #4, I also picked up a couple of Ron Greene's Wheels. One for Rhythm guitar and the other for lead guitar. I usually work about 15 minutes on each wheel first thing, both for training and warmup using the same key for each and just one key per day or practice session. I rotate and change keys daily. This is really helping me get around the entire fretboard. Then I go onto a lesson in Flatpicking Essentials and I keep returning and reviewing the different sections of all the Flatpicking Essential materials. This really helps me. After that, I go onto playing some of my fun stuff and usually end up getting lost in time.

John

[Thomas Ray Pulliam]

John,
I joined some time back and had the same basic problem, how to go through the drill etc. Only been playing about 2 years but not much practice in the last 9 months due to work and moving back to NC from Florida. I'm a tarheel by birthLOL What years and editions were of suggestion to Kenny.
Thanks,
Ray in NC

[Jon Finley]

I'm extremely new to the flatpicking world and just recently re-invigorated my playing as well here is my take.
I've dedicated around 30 minutes to an Hour to just work on technique, theory, etc... and use any spare time to play around on songs the rest of my time.
My Current technique involves really solidifying my right hand righ now.
I Equally divide my time up with the following things
- Tremelo on open strings focusing on right hand only (Triplets, and Eights, with a metrenome)
- Sequences of 3's in Major Keys (Open position scales and CAGED forms all keys) (Once around the cycle of 4ths with an applied focus on the open position because the fingering is different on some of the closed forms.
- Intervals of 3rds the same as above
- Crosspicking: Common Chord progressions with various patterns
- Crosspicking Scales Diatonically (Key of E, A , D) up the neck i.e. in E the following Chords (E, F#m, G#m, A, B, etc...) For this excercise I use the E shape chord leaving the B and E string open and in the Key of A it's the A shape but I always let the High E string ring open.
- I have a few other things I throw in but I think that's the meat of my just technique only

- I'm using the following Books as technique builders
- Jeff Troxel's Right Hand Technique Book
- Mel Bays Right Hand Technique Book
- Crosspicking Book by Mickey Cochran

Funny, I started out with Kaufmans DVD and found the songs really easy to play, and jumped over and picked up Jeff Troxels book with 20 tunes in it for some more tunes.

My biggest thing is memorizing things... I'm really bad at it.. :-( I play in our church praise band so most of the music I play is just thrown in front of me, we play it... next week it's different...

My next book is Dan Millers #2, I picked up #1 and I'm really soaking in the idea of training my ears and not just learning tunes note for note... if you know what I mean...

the other thing I do is work pick out licks in songs and then play them around the cycle of fourths and try to make the licks part of my repertoire..

I'm really enjoying the journey... :-)
-Jon

[Bruce Bushaw]

Jon, "I'm extremely new to the flatpicking world". That's a pretty aggressive practice schedule - but looks like an excellent approach for fast progress. You might want to jump ahead to Dan's #4 - it deals with most of the things on your list and might have some interesting new insights.