Lesson: Practicing Technique Through Your Repertoire

ByBradford Werner
2020

Lesson: Practicing and creating technique exercises from your repertoire. How to create a small technique warmup for your pieces. As and example I’m using An Malvina by Johann Kaspar Mertz (1806-1856). From Bardenklänge, Op.13. You can see the piece in the video below. You can find my sheet music edition for it here: An Malvina by Mertz from Werner Guitar Editions.

When you look for things to practice consider looking at:

Textures/Balance: Maybe the piece has a melody, bass, and accompaniment that you can try to add more separation or balance to.
Tricky Passages: Can you break down the passage into small logical technique chunks?
Techniques: Are there slurs, barre, scales, arpeggios, or tricky chord shapes that you could work on?
Right Hand: Would it be beneficial to just practice the right hand alone on open strings to learn the fingering or balance?

Bradford Werner

Bradford Werner is a classical guitarist and music publisher from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. He originally created this site for his students at the Victoria Conservatory of Music but now shares content worldwide. Curating guitar content helps students absorb the culture, musical ideas, and technique of the classical guitar. Bradford also has a YouTube channel with over 94,000 subscribers and 13 million views. He taught classical guitar at the Victoria Conservatory of Music for 16 years and freelanced in Greater Victoria for 20 years and now dedicates much of his time curating content online and helping connect the classical guitar community. See more at his personal website.