How To Practice as a Parent

As a guitar teacher, I tell a lot of students to have a guitar close by at all times, and I’m going to suggest the same for parents. Make it as easy as possible for yourself to get the time on the instrument when the opportunity presents itself. Don’t leave the guitar in the case, try leaving it in the room you most frequent with your child. You don’t need to be plugged into an amp to be practising, and I find it much easier to simply grab the guitar when there isn’t so much equipment to set up. Plus, there are fewer hazards for your little cherub to fall over. Be mindful of which guitar you have lying around; leaving your one of a kind private stock PRS around with a chance of getting knocked over might not be the smartest decision. Whichever guitar you don’t mind getting little fingerprints on is the best one to keep around your little darlings.

My morning routine looks something like this: I am woken up around 5am by my three year old son, I take him downstairs, sort his breakfast (and my much needed coffee) and then I grab the guitar as early as I can in the day while he plays and/or watches his favourite TV programmes. If I try to find time later in the day to practise or write, life finds a way of presenting you with things that will stop you from doing that. Get playing as early in the day as you can and steal pockets of time as and when you can throughout the day. Having the guitar close by, ready to play, will make that more likely to happen.

As fun as it is to noodle around on the guitar, when time is of the essence before you are beckoned again, it is important to know what to practise. Whether this be a riff, a lick, a solo, a song, technique, scales, arpeggios, songwriting, ear training, improvising, or any matter of things we can devote our playing time to; you need to know what you want to accomplish. Sitting idly with guitar in hand playing what you know inside out from pure muscle memory, may not be the best use of time when you know that at any moment your child will demand your attention. I always have a list of things I want to work on and split my time accordingly. If I have 10 minutes to practise, I’ll split it into different 2 minute sections; or I sometimes concentrate on one thing for the full 10 minutes, and move onto something else the following day. The key is consistency and having a pre-thought out plan of attack. If you’re learning a song, have the audio and/or tab ready to go as soon as possible. You don’t want to spend valuable time searching for reliable tabs online and then not actually finding the time to play.

If your child is anything like mine, the second you start playing guitar around them, one of three things will happen. 1: they’re not bothered at all. 2: they want you to stop as soon as possible by screaming at you. 3: they won’t leave you and your guitar alone. For scenario number one, this is great. They’re happy playing alone for a while and this will give you time to play. Scenario number two, put down the guitar and attend to your child. There will be time later in the day at some point, so don’t ignore them. In scenario number three, if they won’t leave you alone, I encourage you to embrace this. Let your child touch the guitar. Let them stroke or pull the strings and discover what the guitar actually is.

My son loves strumming the strings while I play a bunch of chords for him. He seems absolutely mesmerised and it brings a smile to his face that he’s doing something that daddy does. You never know, your child seeing your joy of playing music may pass onto them and they might gravitate towards the instrument a few years from now.

Not long after my son was born, I found my practise routine changed in the sense that I started to make the ear training side more fun by working out TV theme tunes and children’s movie scores. Take for example, our household’s favourite show: ‘Peppa Pig’. As much as the theme tune grates on me as it seems to be on every five minutes for the rest of our lives, I’ve started to treat it as a cool ear training exercise. See how long it takes you to figure out the chords and melody to your child’s favourite theme tunes. Once you have figured out the chords and melody, work out what key it’s in and get improvising over the chord progression. You will have a whole new appreciation of Disney films when you try to work out and improvise over those chord progressions. Some great key changes, and some crazy theoretical concepts. ‘The Lion King’ soundtrack is a particular favourite of mine to solo over.

As soon as our son is asleep, that is the time to get the housework done, get any other commitments done as quickly as I can, and then I try to devote at least half an hour to good, focused guitar practise. Hopefully, I’ve been able to grab a couple of minutes here and there throughout the day, but now is the chance to really dig deep into the things that naturally require more time and attention. Learning/playing along to songs, learning solos, and writing take place during this time.