- A guitar player's workday starts late and ends late. She may get up late because she performed late into the night the night before. Her day starts off with a warm up. Warm ups include playing different scales over and over and playing warm up riffs. Warm up riffs can be individual notes or chords. The warm up riffs are designed to "get the fingers working," and uses the entire fret board.
- Once the guitar player's fingers are limber and ready to rock, he starts practicing songs for the next concert. The guitar player practices the same song over and over until he gets it right. If there is a difficult piece in one of the songs, he will work on only that part of the song for a set amount of time. He plays the part of the song giving him trouble slowly at first, then faster and faster. If he makes a mistake, he will start over, playing it slower. The purpose of playing it slow, then getting faster, is to train his brain and fingers to hit the proper fingerings.
- Once the guitar player can play the trouble spot perfectly at a slower speed, she speeds it up to tempo, and continues to play it until she can play it perfectly at tempo. The guitar player then starts at the beginning of the song and plays it through. She plays the song at a slow tempo until she gets all the parts correct, then she will practice playing the song at tempo. Repeating the song over and over also helps memorize the song, so the guitar player doesn't have to use sheet music on stage.
- There are two different types of guitar players--soloists and guitar players that play in a group. If a guitar player is a soloist, the only thing left for him to do during the workday is to get dressed for his concert and play the concert. If the guitar player is part of a band, he meets with the band, sometimes every day. The band practices together. Sometimes the band might decide to change something in the guitar player's part. He will then practice the new riff for a few minutes, then he will play it with the band. The band goes over and over a song until they get it right. Once it is perfected, the song is ready to perform, but the practicing does not stop there. The guitar player and the band will play known songs at least once a day in order to keep in practice for an upcoming concert.
- Once all the songs in the program are able to be played to the band's satisfaction, they will do a rehearsal. They either get access to the venue they are playing or they will set up in a studio to play the entire concert as they will play it live. This gives them a chance to make any acoustic changes in the sound equipment. If the band or guitar player does not have access to the venue ahead of time, they will go on stage and play a few chords right before the concert starts. If things do not sound right, they will make minor adjustments to the sound equipment.
