How to Use the "5 Penny Method" to Learn Jazz Guitar Faster and More Efficiently

Here’s a technique that I came across that has really helped me to learn jazz guitar a lot faster and more efficiently.  It’s called the “5 Penny Method”. I just made up that name. You can use pennies or licorice sticks. It doesn’t really matter. The idea here is to use a goal/reward system to help you learn.

First, get five pennies and put them on one side of your music stand while you are practicing.  (By the way, you DO have a good music stand, don’t you? If you don’t you’re making your practice time way more frustrating than it needs to be. If you’re serious about improving, you’ll make this inexpensive investment. Take a look at the one I use: ProLine Conductor Sheet Music Stand . I highly recommend it.)

Ok, back to the penny method. Let’s say that you are trying to learn a two bar jazz phrase on the guitar.

For example, take a look at one of the phrases in my last post on “jazz language”. First, establish a slow metronome tempo at which you can play the phrase without mistakes. Quarter notes at 60 beats per minute should be slow enough.

Once you’ve played this phrase through once or twice, you set a goal of playing the phrase PERFECTLY at your starting tempo a set number of times.  So,  let’s say that you want to play this phrase perfectly 5 times in a row. All 5 of your pennies are on the left side of the music stand.  Each time you play the phrase correctly, you move one of the pennies from the left side of the music stand to the right side. But here’s the rough part: If you make a mistake and I mean ANY mistake (be honest!), you have to move one penny from the right side back to the left side.

So, the goal is to get all the pennies to the right side. Once you’ve accomplished this, you can move on to something else. I like this  technique because its fun and really gives you challenge. It’s really easy to get stuck on just moving your fingers around on the guitar, thinking that you’re really learning something.  How do you really know that you learned what you were trying to learn?  For example, with this technique you can easily and honestly respond “I know that I know it because I played it perfectly 20 times in a row at 90 bpm”.

Of course, whatever number of times it takes you to really learn something is unique to you but I have found this to be a great way to keep track of your progress and set benchmarks.

There are also many ways to make this game more interesting and challenging. Here’s one: Let’s say if you make a mistake, instead of moving only one penny back to the left side, you have to move all the penny’s back! So, if you get it right 4 times and make a mistake on last time you have to start all over again! That’s painful but learning to play under the pressure even though it’s fabricated will help to train you for some of the other pressures of playing, like performing.

Or, you can use multiples of 5 to vary things. For example, if you wanted to play the phrase 10 times, you could move a penny over when you play the phrase correctly twice. You can get really creative with this and that’s the whole point: To make practicing more fun, challenging and exciting. You can use this idea when learning songs, chords, phrases, learning to read music, almost anything that you’re trying to learn, even with non-music stuff.

Have fun with  this.  Let me know if you have any other creative variations of this idea.

Leon