Help with How to Practice

Feel free to get outside the box here.
jimcjimc
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Sat Dec 11, 2010 6:05 pm

It's been just about a year for me since I found this site and joined the Target program. I have really enjoyed going through various bits of the Acoustic Genius series and target lessons and trying to keep up with the forum and other features. And of course recently, the amount of new content is pretty overwhelming!

I still am trying to work on some basic skills, such as, finger picking, barre chords, playing with a pick, ...

I know I don't play/practice enough and my practice always seems haphazard. Some weeks, for example, I plan to really work on some skill, but get distracted by the latest new target song lessons.

Anyway, what I would like to see, is a lesson, or series of lessons, or web category on "How to Practice" or "How to Design a Practice Regimen".

Thanks. If this has been covered somewhere in a previous forum thread or in a TGLive session, please pass on the pointer.


ffsooo3
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Sun Dec 12, 2010 7:14 am

Hi Jim, I don't believe there is a "one size fits all" sort of thing when it comes to practicing. I think it all depends on what your goals, desires, and expectations are. And it's easy to get distracted here at TG. My 2 cents is....be distracted, try everything, and choose ONE thing to always play/practice whenever you pick up the guitar (even if you practice that ONE thing for only a minute each time you pick up the guitar) eventually that one thing will just "click". Then it will be time to move on to the NEXT thing......


willem
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Sun Dec 12, 2010 7:40 am

Hello Jim,,i think we at a thread on this,,but practicing is al about which songs you wanna play whole through,,we all have the problem to be distracked by all new stuff and do bits of this,,nothing wrong with that,,if you want make a list with 5 songs you want to manege and of course the number one is the most practiced,but work also on the others and after a while you can scrap one from your list and add a new one,,work one strumming,,fingerpickin,,scale stuff,,litlle riffs,,,,if you have scrap one of your list try this song so now and then to keep in shape...so that said i must do that too.. B) :laugh:


Ps look also to the target reviews from Neil to us and learn from a other student's upload and Neil's comment and tips

goodluck


jayswett
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Sun Dec 12, 2010 8:33 am

I often have good practice intensions as well, but get sidetracked by one of the latest songs posted by Neil and Matt. At this point, given limited time, I just try to do what I enjoy, and I've accepted that for now a structured practice schedule is something for which to strive, and eventually I will get there.


leeson
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Sun Dec 12, 2010 12:01 pm

Jim,
I think this could be a good thread.
I will tell you what I do.
I try to have a theory lesson or series I am working through at all times and do some every day. Right now it is the Blues series.
I have songs that I am trying to learn, usually 2-3 at a time at different stages of development. I play those every day.
I have songs that I have pretty much down but still need polishing which I play every day.
I have songs that I have down and want to keep active and play those every other day.
Finally, I have songs that are either so ingrained or that I don't mind letting them slip a bit that I play as time allows.
There are, of course, songs that I get sick of or don't fit what I want to be doing anymore that I let go.
I try to practice around an hour a day. I love when I can play 2 hours. Sometimes I don't play at all (I hate those days)
If I only have a short time I try to get to the daily stuff I mentioned above.

If there is a technique I am trying to learn, I try to find a song that has it in it and work on that song or I adapt that technique into a song I already know. An example of that for me is playing an F chord by wrapping my thumb around the top of the neck. It is driving me crazy because it is so slow in coming around, but I am using it in the Freight Train lesson which I am working through and have put it into Mr. Bojangles in which I was playing the full bar F-chord (the B string often comes out muted when I do that but that's a different story).

I try to remind myself that I can't learn everything all at once and to try to just be content making progress in the small area I have chosen at the time. It is an amazing experience to look back and see your progress. I look back a year and not a week or two. I am resigned to the fact that I will never play like Jerry Garcia but by the same token I am never going to stop playing and maybe some day..... :unsure:

The other thing I would say that makes it more fun for me but with which others might disagree is that I don't set artificial "goals" for myself and just allow myself to progress as my natural talent (or lack thereof) and constant playing allow. That way I am not disappointed in my progress. You WILL get better if you keep playing.

Lastly, I never "practice". I just play the guitar. "Practice" sounds so tedious.

Oh, one more thing. Some days will be hard and you will feel like you want to put the guitar down and never pick it up again. Don't worry about it. Occasionally, you will get days that feel so good you can't believe it. Hold on to those days and keep playing if you have time. Stay up late and cherish those moments. That's what keeps you coming back.

Have fun.

Bill


beaker
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Sun Dec 12, 2010 1:21 pm

Jim, these are good comments that you are getting. I especially like Bill's insight.

My 2 cents..... The bottom line.... if you keep playing you will get better. Playing is practicing and practicing is playing. But for improving i don't feel like I am going to improve if I just strum songs and play chords that are already well within my skills. there is a lot of value in playing campfire type songs. Strumming them is critical for developing timing, and chord changes and for learning new chords. But.... I also need to have 2-3 challenge songs on the go like Bill said. this means trying songs that I can't do or seem really hard at first but if I try every day, eventually they become doable. But also there is what I consider pure practice, for me this includes.... Playing scales up and down, playing scale patterns up and down and learning to put them together like puzzle pieces, playing chromatic scales up and down ..... and all of this can (should be done) with a metronome for maximum effectiveness, although I am guilty of not using my metronome enough even though I know it is the best thing to do. I am trying to learn fingerpicking so I like to play the fingerpicking stuff with the metronome. things come together for me when I do this.

I often shoot to do a bit of everything including pure practice, but... admittedly often times I just end up strumming through some of my favourite songs!!!!

Recently Tommy Emannuel said in his conversations with Neil and Matt, that when he practices he just plays songs that are hard for him and sometimes he trys to run through them over and over really fast. songs

Hope this helps a bit, have fun Jim, Beaker.


sws626
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Sun Dec 12, 2010 7:10 pm

Hi Jim,

This is a great topic for discussion. Even though, as others have said, there's probably no prescription that works for everyone, the art, physiology and psychology of practice are really complex and interesting subjects worthy of some dedicated space of their own on the site.

Here's my subjective take on it:

Practice is different from just playing. I only get better by playing things that challenge me in ways that build knowledge and good technique, not by casually messing around with songs well within my comfort range.

Playing scales and working through music theory are iimportant, but difficult to devote sufficient time on to be valuable if not exercised in some concrete context. A little bit of theory and scale work interspersed with a lot of trying to figure things out that require taking a deeper step into understanding and internalizing a mental map of the fretboard is more effective for me than starting the day warming up with every scale in every mode. Maybe I'm just revealing my own weakness here, but there are only two contexts in which I play scales. Either while I'm working on a song in the key of the scale I'm practicing or when I'm resorting to a mechanical exercise to fend off the depression that I haven't been able to find the next challenging piece of music to work on trying to master.

Having too many songs on my plate at the same time is the best way to make no progress at all. It's just too easy to spend a little bit of time with a song and then set it aside in favor of something new and interesting. The biggest change in my guitar playing since I returned to music and discovered this site 12 months ago is the discipline to work a single song (okay, maybe sometimes two or three songs in parallel) to death. I've learned most from this process of going from just being able to strum through the chords, to creating something recognizably musical, to following lessons or examples of others into more complex techniques, to discovering variations of your own that work. And, since this never fails to be applicable to learning other songs later, there's nothing lost by ignoring the distractions of all the things I might be playing.

Having an audience for the results of your practice is an incredibly strong motivator. I didn't expect to upload videos to the internet when I joined this site. And I still haven't shared very many. But just knowing that one potential outcome of devoting a lot of attention to turning a song into a performance is that I can share it with a community of people struggling with all the same issues can be a great help in sticking with it and working through the rough patches.

The absolute hardest part of maintaining momentum is the point where I've just uploaded a video but not yet selected the next challenging piece. This generates a lot of post partum anxiety for me which results in flitting about from one thing to another until I can get my bearings again on the right next piece to learn. So a longer-term roadmap of things I should be working on would probably save a lot of floundering in between.

-Stuart


ffsooo3
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Mon Dec 13, 2010 9:07 am

Hi Jim,

Some excellent comments and advise has been given above.

Take a closer look at Guitar Pro as a practice and learning tool. Neil now includes a Guitar Pro file with virtually all of the lessons. With GP you can slow everything down to a manageable tempo. In addition, you can isolate or limit what you practice in bite size pieces of information, even if that is one single bar of music at a time by looping it so it repeats just that one section of music. Once you get it down piecemeal like that, you can ramp up the speed or tempo a little bit at a time. This is very powerful technology. Combined with Neil's videos and charts you have a wealth of tools to move you along.

Wally


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