practice, practice.

[dbreslauer]

i just read an interesting article over at wired about the benefits of different methods of practice. the findings are interesting, supporting the idea that practicing with selective "reenforcement" material is as effective as just "drilling" for twice as long...

 

here's a link to the article:

 

How Much Should We Practice?

 

 

personally i can sit and listen to music, noodling around passively, or break out the books and read stuff i'm trying to learn: it's all fun to me. I thought this would be interesting discussion, the ways others hone their skills.

 

thoughts?

 

Don

[rocketman]

Although this may be true I'd like to see their standard deviations because the result looks more like a mean result. My point is that different people react differently. I've been practicing guitar for quite some time and my chops are certainly better than my brother's chops who has only been practicing guitar for a few years. Yet there are things that he picks up right away that take me much longer to learn for some strange reason.

 

This is also true of things that I practice too. For example, I quickly learned YYZ but yet it took me forever to get this fairly simple part down from The Trees. So I think there is more to the story...

[Corrosion of conformity]

I try to get 2 hours a day of solid practice, and I'm always playing my acoustic while I'm on the computer or watching tv.

[sparky scott 29]

I know I should practice lots more than I do. Call me lazy it certain times I guess... But, I'm not trying to make American Bandstand though...

[46 and 2]

At least 3 or 4 times a day depending on what kind of source material I can find on the internet or under my bed or whatever...wait...you mean practice the GUITAR don’t you... oops...I practice guitar about every other day and on the weekends with my band.

 

Everyone learns different but for me several short sessions do more than long marathon sessions. I think repetition and muscle memory are key. I play my best when it just flows and I don’t have to think too much and I can only achieve that through repetition, practicing the same think over and over in short bursts, works for me.

[duane v]

I can go for weeks without practicing with no affect to my playing..... I put in the hard work a long time ago

[cabba2203]

About an hour per day on my own.

Band practices 2x a week, more if we are about to do a gig or head out on a road trip.

[RB72]

I should practice more than I do. With the band I get about 5-6 hours a week. At home I pick up the guitar

more than I used to since I got the LP. I'm lazy sometimes I guess.

[saturn]

I'm kinda like Duane. I sometimes go more than a week without practicing and it doesn't seem to hurt my playing, in that I don't seem to get worse. But, I'm sure my chops could be a lot better if I practiced more regularly.

[Golem]

.... ...... the benefits of different methods of practice. ....... ....

idea that practicing with selective "reenforcement" material

is as effective as just "drilling" for twice as long .... ......

 

here's a link to the article:

 

How Much Should We Practice?

 

...................

Thaz why I play rehearsal recordings at work and at

home while I'm sleeping. No, wait ! That didn't come

out exactly right ! I never sleep on the job. I edit the

recordings, so I don't sleep-learn my own mistakes,

but I don't worry about anyone else's clams.

 

 

`

[L5Larry]

For me there is a BIG difference between "practicing" and "noodling", and I only really practice when I'm working toward something. The two bands I play in are "concert" bands, therefor the "show" is changed regularly, and I may practice a couple hours a day leading up to concert time, with full band rehearsals once a week.

 

The Big Band has a concert in two weeks, we'll be playing 18 charts, 15 of which I had never seen until about a month ago (or less), seven of those I heard the recordings for the first time last week. You might say it's crunch time for me, so I will be putting in at least a couple hours a day until concert night. We have only three rehearsals left with the full band (20 piece band plus two vocalists), and it's very important to my ego not to SUCK.

 

Gotta go, time for more practice.

[WahKeen]

If there's a complicated solo I'm interested in nailing, I'll put daily time and effort into that particular task. To keep my chops in check and not lose my calyces, I spend at least one hour playing every day (skip a day or two once in a while). And it has to be fun for me (crazy isn't it?)

 

I like to feel that I know what I'm doing walking into a playing situation. So far so good, but I don't get the glory...

[daveinspain]

I have band rehearsal every Thursday night... The rest of the week I practice every day, usually at least one or two hours but many times 4 or 5... I go over the band tunes everyday. Been working on my own stuff in between... I need to bone up on scales and finger exercise in hopes of some day being a good soloist...

[RobinTheHood]

Like others stated above, if I go for a couple weeks without playing, i dont lose any ground. But if I want to improve, I need to practice for an hour a day, every day. Pretty typical, really. But honestly, I cant fathom not picking up the guitar or bass at least once a day, whether it is to noodle, learn a song or whatever. Its a habit I've gotten into, even if its just for five minutes.

[milod]

As a teacher I always used to tell students, "Practice doesn't make perfect, it makes habit."

 

As a mostly solo guitar player nowadays in terms of public performance...

 

Well, there's Pickin' for finger flex and fun in my little office/guitar room. I may play whole songs in different keys, something I've done for decades just 'cuz I wanna, or I may just mess with the strings with bits of this and that.

 

There's pickin' to figure out how I want to do the guitar arrangement or to change something I've done for 40 years and I just wanna change it. That's start and stop, maybe recording to the computer. Growling and messing with technique to get whatever it is I think I want but can't quite figure out. Change keys to change fingerings...

 

There's pickin' to figure a new technique or new places on the fingerboard to do something differently than I did last year regardless of "song" I use it with. I basically made no real change in how I played "Misty," for example, for 35 years. Now I'm trying to do some different perspectives on it.

 

Finally... there's preparation for performance. That's where the "habit" should be coming into play, IMHO, at least as a solo picker. Yeah, if you're truly taking off on an improv, you may do some notes and timings differently every time you play them, but the timing and the actual tune you're working with doesn't change... so... "habit."

 

Larry alluded to that too, in terms of working on new material - get the recording, learn the feel of it, know what's expected in a "band" situation... get it down well enough so you know what you have to do throughout a piece.

 

At least, that's how I look at it.

 

m

[WahKeen]

[DeVeeWee]

About an hour, all different kind of stuff... spread over the day.

[BigKahune]

I read the article and took a look at the paper. Part of the performance of a physical task, like playing a particular piece of guitar music, is understanding how the movement of the fingers produce the notes and how the notes are supposed to sound. In that reguard, outside of physical practice time, watching someone else perform the piece or listening to a recording of the piece can be very helpful. According the paper, understanding how the fingers move and how to the notes should sound can enhance the learning, but leaning to accurately produce the music requires considerable practice.

 

I play almost everyday, the length of time varies. Sometimes I'm noodling through stuff and sometimes play straight through pieces. If I come across a rough spot and I'll repeat it a couple times until I'm satisfied, and then move on.

 

As far as actually practicing, it's like what I've written above - a combination of listening to a recording and practicing sections in order to play them correctly. Then polishing the full play through. These practice sessions might last a hour or two. Of course, if it's a piece for one of the bands, there's rehearsal time too.

[FirstMeasure]

Well, right now we're learning Oingo Boingo's "Dead Mans Party" and Janet Jackson's "Black Cat" for a Halloween Gig, not tom mention Incubus "Wish You Were Here" so I'm putting in a couple extra hours a day ot get them all polished in time. I usually just play about an hour a day, but that's not really "Practice", just riffin' and funnin'.

 

Now, the Drums are a different matter. I've never had a kit to play on before, our new drummer lets me practice on his set. I've been practicing for at least an hour a day; basic rhythms, fills, trying to separate my left hand from my left foot. It's really a lot of fun.

[freak show]

I once heard a quote from a famous Classical musician, who said (more or less):

 

"If I skip practice for a day, I notice a difference in my playing.

If I skip practice for two or three days, the critics notice a difference.

And if I don't practice for four days, the audience starts to notice."

 

Classical musicians usually start playing roughly between the age of 4 and 7 and practice 8 hours or more a day for YEARS. Nevertheless, they never get to a point where they feel that constant practice is unnecessary.

 

I know, I know, some of you are probably saying: "What does that have to do with Rock n' Roll?". Well, supposedly Jimi Hendrix was the same way. I have read he even slept with his guitar, often playing immediately before and after he woke up.

 

IMO daily practice is important for everyone who wants to play well.

[milod]

As I said before, practice makes habit - at least if one is talking about playing an entire piece in a mode one wishes to perform it.

 

"Classical" music as perceived today requires a greater degree of performance consistency than a lotta Baroque composers had in mind, especially for smaller groups. So.... To achieve that performance consistency, one works to get that "muscle memory" of a given piece of music.

 

But... Although some sorts of performance virtually require a "rote memory" performance, I think music in which a degree of improvisation is expected probably require a different mental approach.

 

That means knowing the timing and chord progression and the basic "tune," for sure.

 

We talk about BB King and the "box" for example. BB has the muscle memory for doing his special kind of playing. So I'm guessing that "practice" largely has to do with application of that muscle memory into different "tunes."

 

I think many of us, however, find a need for different sorts of "practice" at different times. Even if you're in a band playing largely "covers," you may need to work on a given solo, you may need to catch up on a new tune, you may need to work on timing issues with another band member.

 

On guitar, I think too that unless you're doing only "classical" or "note for note" covers, on occasion it may actually do well to take an occasional break to get a different perspective on the very "muscle memory" things that you do well - and perhaps to change that "habit" or at least add something quite different.

 

A "I ain't gonna play for a week" isn't needed, but perhaps a change to play an entirely different type of guitar, for example from a Les to a classical guitar, a dreadnaught to an SG, from an SG perhaps to a OO acoustic... That can sometimes jog the head into different ways of playing that can offer many new pathways

 

m

[Twiz]

I really try to play every day. Lately, I've been kinda busy with other stuff, so it's dropped to a few days a week. My band doesn't get to practice nearly as much as I'd like. That's kind of irritating, but we only play out every month or so, so it's not that big of a deal.

[Artie Owl]

Repeated playing and studying of the cycle of fourths and major, and minor scales has definetly improved my understanding and comfort on the guitar, the rest is just time spent working on your own style, for me anyway. Of course if I'm working on covering a piece practice and listening are big factors there too.