Practice Suggestions?

[cabphoto]

So I've been playing a couple of years now. I manage to practice 2+ hours per day. I have learned some pretty tough songs through sheer repetition.

My head tells me that you get better at something by doing it directly but I'm sure there are other approaches, after all, what I am best at is being wrong.

So 2 songs that I have been playing steadily for almost 2 years are The MTV unplugged version of Layla and this
Dan C Holloway version of Little wing. https://youtu.be/pUBX1tsv0IA

I guess these songs can be considered tough for a beginner but I have played them both over 1000 times. Some days I can make them sound really adequate but never totally perfect.

So my question is.

Do I just need to play them 1000 more times or are there exercises you would suggest. I hope no one says Justin Guitar or one of those guys. For some reason I am instantly turned off by those types of lessons. But if someone here thinks one of those lessons will unlock the next level of ability then I will try to be open to it.

Working on this now but don't have it memorized yet. Any suggestions on this would help too. https://youtu.be/56LyGkeMVD0?list=RD56LyGkeMVD0

Thank you!

[cmd612]

Originally Posted by cabphoto

. . . My head tells me that you get better at something by doing it directly but I'm sure there are other approaches, after all, what I am best at is being wrong.
. . .
I guess these songs can be considered tough for a beginner but I have played them both over 1000 times. Some days I can make them sound really adequate but never totally perfect.

So my question is. . . .
Do I just need to play them 1000 more times[?]

The answer is "no, not exactly."

If you are playing a song over and over and making mistakes in it, your brain and your hands are learning to make those mistakes.

You need to break the song down into small pieces and work on one piece at a time, very slowly.

Start with the first few bars of the song, and slow it down. Slow it down as much as you need to to be able to play that section perfectly. Not adequately, but perfectly. Play it over and over at that slow speed. Don't even think about speeding it up until you've played that section ten or twenty times in a row perfectly.

Then speed it up - just a little! - and repeat. Play it over and over and over at that speed, perfectly.

Don't speed it up (just a little) again until you've played it many times in a row with no mistakes.

Then do the same for the next few bars of the song, and so on. Treat each little bit of the song as a separate thing to learn to play, and treat each note within those bits as something you have to be sure you're doing right.

If you practice mistakes, you just get better at making mistakes.

[Greg Ballantyne]

Sometimes to progress you need to look at the instrument. Is it holding you back? Would a good set up or a better quality instrument let you grow as a guitar player? Could be lots of variables....

[Looburst]

Move on to other things now. You're great enough in the early going to progress to more complicated pieces now. You have the makings of becoming a great player someday. So keep moving forward and learn new ways of playing. Try anything and everything to find your niche.

[TBman]

Practice at the tempo that you make zero mistakes no matter how slow it may be. This builds the correct muscle memory. Going too fast just teaches fast mistakes.

It takes a lot of patience. I'm always fighting with myself over this.

[rct]

Practice while walking around and singing. You'll develop the confidence to play it without thinking about it, which you need to do if you ever get in front of an audience.

rct

[cabphoto]

Thank you for all of your suggestions. It's hard to slow down but I guess thats why practice is called practice and not playing.

[backdoc]

I have the same problem and cmd612 nailed the answer. I just need to pull my head out and follow his advice as well.
My kids marching band director said it all the time. "Practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect."

[LSemmens]

My thinking is, practise the same thing over and over again, and, yes, you will learn it, but, you will also learn the same mistakes, too. So, yes, practise until you are familiar, then move onto another piece, and come back to the original after getting the next piece down to where you were at the last piece before you "put it on the shelf" for a while.

Also play with other musos, too, it's amazing what you can pick up in a live situation.

[KFP55]

I've been struggling with the same question. My instructor insists on continuing to work on scales every day no matter what for 20 min but they're just so boring to me and it's so much more enjoyable to work on learning new songs..

I've recently started using the Yousician app to force me to practice in some linear fashion but find it less pleasant as well. I get it, practice isn't always fun, but since I've got a career already I figure it's ok to just enjoy the time I get to have with a guitar in my hands but....I would like to get better...

[TBman]

I play finger style, so it may not apply to everyone, but when I'm learning a song I go through it over and over and way much much slower than the performance speed. I'm not one of your most talented players so I have to go so slow at times it is just notes, not music. I'm actually doing "scales" and chord fragments, but within the scope of the song.

It's easy to get the idea that you should be able just pick up any song and play it and that may be true with strumming songs, (even then you better have great timing), but this isn't television when everything happens after the commercial and no one uses a rest room.

Reality is that you have to put time into playing. Getting better means the finished product sounds more musical to yourself and others.

[Wyllys]

You have to ask yourself what you're trying to do...learn a specific arrangement (robotic emulation) or understand the music/song on an essential level and allow for personal touches and arrangement. IOW, find a way to make it your own instead of a copy.

I find that the music/hands/instrument aggregation produces unanticipated variations when working up a piece. If you're trying to copy or emulate someone elses version, you might think of these as mistakes but they may well be variations.

Open yourself to being played by the music rather than the other way 'round. Play it another 1,000 times, but accept what comes, feel free to work out a change of your own and don't fault yourself for not playing exactly like someone else.

Music is not just playing all the right notes in the right order.

[SunnyDee]

Originally Posted by cmd612

The answer is "no, not exactly."

If you are playing a song over and over and making mistakes in it, your brain and your hands are learning to make those mistakes.

You need to break the song down into small pieces and work on one piece at a time, very slowly.

Start with the first few bars of the song, and slow it down. Slow it down as much as you need to to be able to play that section perfectly. Not adequately, but perfectly. Play it over and over at that slow speed. Don't even think about speeding it up until you've played that section ten or twenty times in a row perfectly.

Then speed it up - just a little! - and repeat. Play it over and over and over at that speed, perfectly.

Don't speed it up (just a little) again until you've played it many times in a row with no mistakes.

Then do the same for the next few bars of the song, and so on. Treat each little bit of the song as a separate thing to learn to play, and treat each note within those bits as something you have to be sure you're doing right.

If you practice mistakes, you just get better at making mistakes.

I absolutely agree that you should not practice something 1000 times incorrectly, but my understanding and use of "slow down" is a bit different than this.

This type of practice, I think, may come from traditional classical/competitive type playing, bar by bar, over and over, etc. but there's another way...

Slow down the part where you make a mistake to slow motion, "bullet time" from the movies, so incredibly slowly that you are barely moving so you can identify the tiniest micro-motion where you make the mistake. It may be as tiny as shifting the weight of your finger to lift it off a string just a bit too early or slightly rolling your finger away from the fret when you reach with a different finger. These tiny movements are where the mistakes live and it only takes a few minutes to slow down enough to find them. Once I find them, in my experience, I may only need to practice doing it correctly, slowly, maybe 10 times or so to fix the larger problem, then my fingers can do it at a reasonable tempo. However, if a motion is particularly difficult, like it's a big stretch or something, I might need to come back to it 10 times a day or so everyday for a few days, but, in the end, I fix the mistake with relatively few repetitions and with very little painful practice. Because I've had the experience of this process helping me fix things so quickly, I'm no longer tempted (too much) to repeat something wrong without stopping to slow down and fix it.

A related idea that has been VERY helpful to me is this... as you are playing anything you are having trouble with, don't focus on the action of DOING the playing, rather focus on the feedback that you are getting, the feel of the strings pushing up against your finger, the vibration you can feel in the neck, the sound of the string being played. This is very effective in helping you make small adjustments, find problems, etc.

These are ways of practicing from other fields, like sports, that are extremely effective and take a lot less than 1000 repetitions for improvement - sort of a "practice smarter, not harder" approach.

Obviously, it may also help you to get some good feedback from a teacher or more experienced player.

Good luck.

[s0cks]

Dan C Holloway version of Little wing. https://youtu.be/pUBX1tsv0IA

Is this considered beginner? Wow, I need to catch up.

For what it's worth though, I agree with SunnyDee. That same methodology has really improved my flow and accuracy for songs I already know.

[Pitar]

Originally Posted by cabphoto

So I've been playing a couple of years now. I manage to practice 2+ hours per day. I have learned some pretty tough songs through sheer repetition.

My head tells me that you get better at something by doing it directly but I'm sure there are other approaches, after all, what I am best at is being wrong.

So 2 songs that I have been playing steadily for almost 2 years are The MTV unplugged version of Layla and this
Dan C Holloway version of Little wing. https://youtu.be/pUBX1tsv0IA

I guess these songs can be considered tough for a beginner but I have played them both over 1000 times. Some days I can make them sound really adequate but never totally perfect.

So my question is.

Do I just need to play them 1000 more times or are there exercises you would suggest. I hope no one says Justin Guitar or one of those guys. For some reason I am instantly turned off by those types of lessons. But if someone here thinks one of those lessons will unlock the next level of ability then I will try to be open to it.

Working on this now but don't have it memorized yet. Any suggestions on this would help too. https://youtu.be/56LyGkeMVD0?list=RD56LyGkeMVD0

Thank you!

Growing as a player is not to seek the end run around the time it naturally takes to achieve but rather to seek the richness of the music only the time spent playing it can offer. Time is what it takes and your first statement about gaining ground through repetition is self-evident that time cannot be compromised.

In time you will also find the passion music imparts as the final installment of learning. When you can play with that leading the music instead of the learner's rote mechanical process leading you through you will know you've arrived.

Until then, repetition and skills development are either your joy or your drudgery but there's no short-cutting them.