How much do you practice?

[BillSoTex]

Hey boboki,

You said: it takes me about 3 to 4 hours just to get through my rep! But, if I don't run through everything I know I tend to forget and have to relearn stuff that I used to know. Very frustrating! Anyone else out there with this problem? How do you deal with this? There's only so much disk space on my hard drive!

Howdy Merle,

I think my hard drive is probably defective, but yeah, I experience the same as you describe (above). My instructor tells me to stay with it and trust my ear, and that one day the forgetting will be over. He say that you'll learn to improvise and at that time you've arrived! One simply trusts that he knows what it all about. He's a pretty good player and in my opinion a good teacher. He's my third in 2 1/2 yrs. and I'm sticking with him, at least for now.

As far as how much do I practice. If I don't get in an hour I'm disappointed, but sometimes the interest rate is low. I too have experienced that laying off a day or so helps. The first time I notice that was after two days away without my guitar; not my choice.

I like to get in about 2 hrs. a day now days. I didn't do that the first two yrs. I always do patterns to warm-up. I just enjoy these and usually spend about 15 min. on them. Then I go to finger exercises and work these pretty good, maybe 15 min. but I don't strain or fatique them. Then I play a few pieces I know. The I sight read something totally new: one day standard notation, the next in tab. Then I do to full bar chords. I still don't do these well. I spend about 10 min. on them just stumming four beats of I, two beats of III and two beats of V. The I work the fretboard from the nutt to the twelth and back playing all of one note and at random; if I started with A notes the last session I'll start with C or D, etc. It took about three weeks to get the fretboard down and I do it everyday without fail. I'm still to slow - I "play and say" every note when I do this. Next I run the first positon as fast as I can from E on the sixth to G on the first and back. I do this about 10 to 15 times. Then I "play and say" them one time. Then I run each string from the nutt to the 12th and back as fast as I can. Then I do this one time methodically "playing and saying." Then I go back and work on some of my favorites and simply enjoy strumming and pickin' around til I'm done or the cows come home.... Probably more than y'all wanted to know, right?

I curious what some of y'all do if you wanna share. Regardless, I'm havin' fun.

talk later,

Bill

[Mark E]

Not enough. I have three young children, though. They have something going on almost constantly. But when I do get to play, I should do more practicing, instead of just playing the normal songs. I have been practicing on more fingerstyle pieces.

[tulefog]

not nearly enough..that's why I keep my day job.

[Stixx]

I practice as often as I can which can be a LOT . Other times it is nonting . I just started playing in 1998 seriously and got a teacher and really started to need practice . I found that because I was so much older and most of my buddies had been playing thirty years that for me to feel ok about playing with them I had to learn a lot , fast. So it was not at all unusual for me to practice four hours a day and double that one weekends.

I don't reccomend this it makes your wife really sick of your playing . Once I got a band going , it was practice only two nights a week and the rest of the time I was busy with band stuff and after a while you get really stale. In the studio now and the number of takes it requires to get songs down clean is amazing. YOu really practice in this way for long hours and that is where I am now . When my business gets a slow mode I go in and write songs and record them and if that counts as practice , I will do it for eight hours or more. Not straight of course I stop to check in here anc other forums related to recording and call a few clients to see how its going but really I played on a previous album for three or four weeks straight almost without stopping only to eat and wish I could sing better.

So with me it seems its all or nothing lately.

[WannaBe TT!]

I've been playing guitar for 5 years now (it really is hard to believe it's been that long). When i first started playing... i was pretty zealotous... putting in maybe 7-8 hours a day on average for about a year. Then i went a couple years playing 'very little' guitar (maybe 3-4 hours total a week), and now i'm playing a solid 2-3 hours a day again. However, most of my time playing guitar now is actually time spent practicing my singing. I hate my voice .