Practicing can be: Tedious, monotonous, depressing, lonely, frustrating, maddening, of no use to your playing, the same thing over and over, and as boring as it gets.
But, it can, and should be: exciting and stimulating, something you can't wait to do, something you can't stand the thought of skipping, the road to make the currently impossible possible, and THE KEY to becoming the player you'd love to be, but never thought it would happen!
There's
one thing that's for sure about practicing:
If you want to improve as a musician, you'll practice! A lot! And then practice some more!!
There are no shortcuts, although there are many ways to make practicing more enjoyable, more rewarding, and utterly transformative. In this section, I'll outline some of the ways I've found to make practicing more exciting and productive, without falling into some of the pitfalls that can make the prospect of practicing seem daunting and useless.
I've been playing, practicing, and teaching guitar for over 45 years. I'm eternally grateful that, for whatever reason, I naturally took to intense practicing from the start. In fact, I still get a rush of anticipation when I settle down to a couple of hours' solitary practicing. Here are the factors which I've found can keep the life and excitement in your practice, regardless of how long you've been at it:
Get a great teacher!
Having a really good teacher, who is technically very accomplished, who "speaks your language", and whom you'd like to emulate, is worth a mint! A great teacher can literally cut years off of the time it would take you to reach a certain level of fluency, keep you going during frustrating times, build you up when you do well, give you the occasional kick in the butt when you need a little inspiration, and generally be invaluable to your progress!By the way, the "kick in the butt" reference is, for one example, to the tendency we all have to do the things that are easiest, while finding ways to avoid the harder ones. Let's say you're working on scales these days, and your assignment is to practice pentatonic, diminished, and minor scales. If you're like most people, you started learning solos by imitating blues solos, which are usually pentatonic, so you probably know that scale better than any other. Diminished scales, on the other hands, sound and or at least feel very weird, and you have to look at and pick every single note. Which scale are you going to want to practice? If you do the pentatonic, at the end of the practice session, how much will you have accomplished?
Figure out what practicing is and what it isn't
There are several ways to approach and define practicing, with some much better than others. First, a couple of definitions:
- Practicing is something you do alone, with a definite goal and a plan for getting there. It might be an arpeggio or two, several tricky licks with difficult fingering, a bunch of jazz turnarounds based on chord substitutions for a given standard chord sequence, devising a chord substitution scheme for a tune with only fundamental, straightforward chords availabnle in print, etc.
But it's all about working toward a specific, previously-defined goal (ideally, one which you have discussed and agreed to with your instructor) such that when you achieve it, you know it. You can think of it analogously to working toward solving a science problem (chemistry, physics, stc.). The goal must be so well defined and measureable that there can be no doubt when you've achieved it.
Specific examples of some goals I've used with past students are the following (remember, I work hard on these to be sure they're appropriatye to the level of the student - some might seem ridiculously easy, and some might appear totally impossible):
- Jamming is playing with other musicians (hopefully); its purpose is to stretch your ability to communicate with others via the medium of music. Very seldom is it completely goal-directed, although experienced bands will do this when learning new material - especially difficult passages or sections. However, most people get together to jam for the best reason of all for playing in the first place - it's a hell of a lot of fun!! It's also a great way to get to know new musicians, since jamming involves a level of intimacy you just don't find in discussions about the weather, your job, or sports.
The most important truism from above is this: WHEN YOU PRACTICE, DON'T EVEN TRY TO DO IT WITH SOMEONE ELSE!! Practicing is a solitary endeavor, and trying to do it with another person is impossibly distracting, keeps you from checking in with your own feelings about how something's going, and really serves no useful purpose. Of course, you should play with others as much as possible, especially with a variety of musicians, hopefully some of whom are better than you are. But this isn't practicing. This also isn't about practicing with your band, which has a totally different goal. Just remember what the focus is and what your practice goals are, and you'll do fine.
Structure your practice sessions into various types
Every practice session you do should have specific goals in mind, otherwise you won't be able to assess how you're progressing. Just noodling around for an hour or two can be a wonderful experience, especially when you're trying to sort out a problem unrelated to music. But it isn't practice. One thing I do and recommend is to set different short term goals, which might include diminished arpeggios, minor scales, chord substitution, improvising over a difficult progression, right hand technique, reading music, trying to master a technically difficult passage, etc. If you're more organized than I am, you might keep a log of your sessions, which I understand are a very nice way to look back and see how you've progressed as a player. But whether you keep written records or not, try focusing on specific, achievable goals for each practice session, and I'm sure your practicing will take on new life and vitality.
Rotate the practice medium
I have loads of books on technique, theory, transcriptions of jazz or other tunes; instructional DVDs by great guitarists; times when it's just me and an acoustic working on technique; sessions with another guitarist interested in working on the same issue, etc. The possibilities are endless - just keep rotating the type of practice and it'll remain fresh. Important: get recommendations on books, DVDs, etc. from people you trust. There are great ones out there, and there are monumental wastes of money. A good place to get good reviews of digital practice media is Amazon.com (as it is for books, e-books, etc.)
Use a metronome regularly
You'll be amazed at how hard it can be to adhere to a set timing when you're working on something difficult. While a student at Berklee (the famous Boston music college), Al DiMeola had legendary practice sessions, where he'd do a hard arpeggio from the bottom to the top of the neck, staying with a metronome. He'd then advance the timing by one notch and repeat the whole thing. It might take six hours to make it through all of the arpeggios in all of the positions in all the timings - which is why his technique today is virtually unsurpassed. If you've never tried to play with a metronome, don't judge what it's like until you do. I know you'll be surprised.Don't have a metronome and can't afford one? Fear not! Here are a few great online metronomes, and they're all free: Metronome Online, Free Interactive Online Metronome, WebMetronome.com.
Utilize the Free (or very cheap) Utilities Available On-Line
There are many useful programs available on-line at little or no cost, which can dramatically aid your development as a musician. An excellent aid to playing fast and picking correctly is called Guitar Speed Trainer. It measures your current speed, then sets target speeds for you to play along with. It's truly excellent!There are two great accessories which let you load sets of tunes (as mp3 files), which they can play with excellent fidelity. You can then choose a certain interval whose speed you want to vary (like a fast lick that's hard to analyze at full speed). It will then play that interval over and over, and you can slow it down as much as you like. The great thing is that the pitch of the notes doesn't change at all - just their speed! Audiotran is cheaper than Song Surgeon; whether it's as good is a matter of taste. Personally, I like and use Audiotran.
A little more expensive, but worth every penny, is GuitarPro, now on version 5. There are thousands of GuitarPro-formatted tabs available on-line, or you can enter your own, just by pointing with the mouse to the positions on the keyboard that each note is played. It writes both the tab and music, and prints them beautifully; it will also play the tune via a midi-linked audio. A real treasure.
Band in a Box
Speaking of treasures, there is a suite of programs which, together, form the most sophisticated, versatile, and widely-applicable music software package anyone's ever seen. It's called Band-in-a-Box (BiaB), and must be experienced to be appreciated. All things considered, it's not particularly expensive; the basic set pf programs goes for $129. There are a number of packages which feature additional goodies; you can check out a nice comparison chart here. The publisher of BiaB, PG Music, also offers a bunch of great packages that use the BiaB program, including many jazz guitar (or other instrument) lessons, "Master Classes", a four-volume "Master Jazz Guitar Solos" set, and more. Oh, they have equivalent offerings in rock, blues, and classical guitar as well, and many additional features in piano, saxophone, and voice! You can really appreciate the sheer diversity of their offerings by checking out a site map of the PG Music site.There are many ways to use BiaB; in one, you give it a chord progression and select a music style from the many dozens available. It will then play that progression via a combo that features a keyboardist, bass player, and drummer. These aren't tinny-sounding MIDI, either; they're actual recording of studio musicians. Having trouble improvising over the progression? Just ask BiaB to, on whatever instrument you like, and it'll come up with a really good improvised solo. How does it do all this? I have no idea, I'm not a computer programmer. I'm just glad someone did, because the finished product is, I believe, the single best investment you could make in your musical growth.
Learning to Read Music?
By "reading music" we're referring almost exclusively to single note phrases, solos, etc. All guitarists MUST be able to be able to read a chord chart with appropriate timing, phrasing, etc., or you'll be out of the game before you even start it. Here we're talking about the one note at a time reading of the melody; the treble clef if you're familiar with scoring notation.First of all, learning to read (single notes) is a very good idea. Not everything is available in tablature, and music is the language of our art. In fact, generally, the more difficult (and cooler) the guitar piece or solo, the less likely it is to be available in tablature. One of the best teaching DVD sets available right now is from John McLaughlin, and there's not a tab to be found anywhere! McLaughlin, when asked about this, unapologetically explains that if you're going to be good musician, you must know the language of your discipline.
A great way to augment whatever book you're using is to write out a solo you know - this gives you a look at written music from the other side, and will speed up your comprehension dramatically. It changes your feel for the music that's hard to describe. The super Aussie fusion player Frank Gambale put it well: "It'd be like knowing how to hear and speak English without being able to read or write!" However, at the bottom line, reading is not necessary to know how to play music, so don't let some jazz elitist tell you you'll never succeed if you can't read music! Wes Montgomery was known as a poor reader, as were several other famous jazz musicians (such as Joe Pass). Nevertheless, knowing how to read will make you a more complete musician, and you won't have a heart attack if you go to jam with a new musician, who then pulls out a dozen charts and hands them to you! My view is that if you want to learn, I think t's a great idea. But if you have no desire to, don't worry about it.
Jam to Unfamiliar Chord Progressions
A great source of these is visionmusic.com, Mark Stefani's excellent site for the learning guitarist. A wonderful feature is called "jamtracks", where over 100 tunes are offered with a backing combo (keyboard, bass, drums), along with a chart showing the chords. It's very much like Karaoke for guitarists, except the the music isn't so gakky. Familiar to most of us, the tunes are divided into blues, rock, and jazz.
Use Online Teaching Resources
There are many of these; some of the best are listed below.
Be Disciplined About Practicing
Just like you can't skip several days of studying in school and expect to make it up on the weekend, you can't skip practicing for several days, thinking that a marathon six hour session will make up for it. All studying requires assimilation time, and guitar playing is no exception. Set aside a time each day when nothing will interfere with your practice work; you should try for at least an hour a day. And, when planning the subject of your study, if a certain area you need to work on turns you off and you really don't feel like practicing it - it's almost certainly the one you most need to work on!
By the way, experimental psychologists have determined that, regardless of the material being studied, retention is worst if you study in the morning, then gets progressively better throughout the day, so that the best retention occurs when you study in the evening. After about 10pm, it then drops off sharply. Assimilation of new facts, or the way it feels to play a certain lick a certain way or at a certain speed, is a biochemical process which takes time to complete, and the best time for that to happen without distraction is while you're asleep. The message is extremely clear - try to do your serious guitar studying in the evening. It's a nice, mellow way to end your day, and you'll remember what you've learned much more efficiently the next day.
Be diligent, be serious, don't goof off during practice time, and soon it'll be paying off in spades! Also, your self-image as a serious musician will continue to grow, which will feed your self-confidence and ability to play in front of crowds with much less nervousness!