ADHD and Practicing guitar

If your living with ADHD practicing guitar has its own set of challenges. Songs with a lot of changes can be hard to remember, endless hours of picking exercises and running scales are out of the question, and sticking to a schedule is almost impossible. That last one has been the most important for me. Learning songs in a jam session has all ways been a weakness of mine. I have to write down the changes and go over them later or I'll never remember. I try to use TV time to do picking exercises and scales not just noodle. If the kids or your partner are watching something on the TV grab your guitar and work on whatever song your trying to learn. I'm normally working on 2 or 3 different songs at a time. One difficult song, and a couple of easy ones. Most nights, after the kids go to bed, I pull up 5 or 6 songs on the computer or Ipod, plug in headphones and play them over and over again till I nail them. Then I spend about an hour working on something tough. The last couple of months that has meant going back and forth between Van Halen's Eruption, and something from Hendrix or Stevie Ray Vaughn. I know that focusing on one thing will get you there faster but I can't do that. I have several ongoing list on my computer of songs that I'm working on. And if I just "don't feel like" I'll make myself run through my 5 songs. Most of the time this motivates me to keep working but if I'm still "not feeling it" then I just put the guitar up and do it again tomorrow. I'm going to go into each of these subjects into more detail in the future. If your reading this and have any questions or ideas feel free to post in the comments below.

Currently listening to: SRV Couldn't Stand the Weather

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