What's happening? Welcome to Wong Notes podcast. I'm your host, Corey Wong. Today I got some

messages online asking me a question that I get actually a lot, which is, hey, Corey, I don't feel

like I'm getting any better at guitar. How can I practice? And I was thinking about it, and I think there's so many

ways to tackle that question. And one of the main things that I think about is in your routine

for practice, there's the brain work, the head work, you know, like the knowledge and the

understanding side of things. And then there's

the handwork on the guitar. And those can be split up into different things, right? Like,

there's left hand exercises, right hand exercises, and then there's synchronicity exercises to get

you your hands working together. So a lot of times people are working on practicing just whatever and they're not

realizing the thing they really need to focus on. It's in their hands. Or a lot of times people

are practicing and they're trying to work on something. It's like, I just don't understand how to do

this. And the issue is not with their hands. They have all the technical facility and dexterity in

the world that they would need.

It's actually more in the understanding of the fretboard, or it's the understanding of harmony or theory.

And when I say that, I kind of say that with a little bit of a caveat of, I don't think it's super important for every person to know tons of music theory.

I think it's just important to know the things that you need to know in order to communicate

with the musicians that you play with and to have a better understanding of just how

harmony works in general.

Whatever, that's fine.

But I think my number one tip in this, the simple thing is, whatever you're working on,

try to figure out whether the disconnect is a hands thing

or a brain thing. Do you actually understand this? I mean, the simple method is just like,

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