#1
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Self-Guided Practice Help
I've been playing now for just over 9 months. Things are improving, slowly. I try to practice an hour a night. It's mostly a self-guided practice that I follow from a couple of lesson books, Internet content and tips from magazines, guitar apps and forums like this.
It's feeling a little stale lately, however. I usually start with practicing scales and then the twenty or so open chords I know and the follow that with some practice sheets for common chord progressions for those. I do that for about a half hour. (A couple nights a week I practice Travis picking too.) For the second half hour I practice songs that I want to learn. These are songs [that i like the guitar playing on] and that I think give me a varying amount of difficulty/simplicity to practice. They are: AMARILLO BY MORNING (Strait), CITY OF NEW ORLEANS (Guthry), THE GAMBLER (Rogers), CAREFREE HIGHWAY (Lightfoot), SOUTHERN CROSS (Crosby Stills Nash) and KILLING ME SOFTLY (Flack). For the finger picking I've been working on LANDSLIDE (Fleetwood Mac), DUST IN THE WIND (Kansas) and THIS TOWN (Horan). I usually practice a song for a few days until I get a little bit better at it and then try a different one...and just rotate through those. This constitutes my practice hour. For about a month now this has been feeling a bit dry and while I'm improving, I feel like I'm not following the right kind of practice. IDK...one problem may be that I'm not getting feedback from a teacher, someone who can point out mistakes in technique that I don't see, etc. I hesitate about paying for instruction right now just simply because it's a little too expensive at the moment. Anyone have thoughts on this? Is my self-guided practice (as I described it) the right path? Anything I can add to keep it interesting? I'm not inpatient, I know the value in taking time and putting in the hours. I'm just worried about the quality of my practice routine. BTW, the guitar I practice on is a Seagul Excursion |
#2
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Your routine looks perfectly fine to me for what you're trying to accomplish.
The brain gets bored because it wants things exciting and new all the time. When I was doing a lot of teaching, it was very common for students to become most frustrated with their progress right when they were about to make a breakthrough. . |
#3
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First of all, I totally understand the reticence to get a teacher given the cost. It can also seem quite daunting to find the right teacher in the first place: just because someone's a good player doesn't mean they're a good teacher; just because someone's a good teacher doesn't mean they're good at teaching the stuff you want to learn; and even if they're good at that, maybe their teaching style isn't a good match for you. It's hard, and it'll cost you when you do find someone. But it's all worth it. A good teacher will help you avoid or unlearn bad habits that will make playing harder and are more difficult to unlearn later in life. A good teacher will help your practicing at home to be more effective and focused. A good teacher will listen to where you want to be, and identify the most effective way to get there. If you can possibly get a good teacher, I can't recommend it highly enough.
Second . . .you're doing a lot of stuff and practicing a lot of songs. I dont want to suggest that any of it is without use; it's all stuff that can be very useful. But before you practice anything, you should be able to answer two questions: 1. What do I want to be able to do/play? 2. How does practicing this get me closer to what I want to be able to do/play? The answer to the first one will change over time, as it should. But with respect to exercises or scales, if you can't answer the second question, or if your answer is something abstract and along the lines of "to be a better guitarist," then in my opinion you need to take a close look at whether that's a good way to spend your practice time. Everything you do in practice, you should have a good idea of how it gets you closer to where you want to be. Never do anything in practice that you dont know why you're doing. Making that demand will not only make your practicing more effective, but it will also make your practicing more fun, because it cuts out "why am I doing this?" feelings. Your list of songs that you're working on is very long, and I would consider cutting it back significantly and working on getting just a few into very good shape. From personal experience, when you spread yourself too thin amongst too many songs you're working on at once, often none of them will progress. Just some thoughts.
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I need more time to play music. |
#4
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Those are good thoughts. I do want to get in front of a teacher. Mostly to keep me from slipping into bad habits |
#5
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Keep a daily journal.
Or call it a log, or a diary or just notes. Or whatever. I have one since almost day one 5+ years ago. Mine is very detailed, takes mere minutes per day and after all this time is only one inch thick. I think it was justinguitar suggested this? You can look back in awe at your progress. |
#6
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I like that idea. I will start one today |
#7
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Ok, so you are working on the following songs:
1. Amarillo By Morning 2. City of New Orleans 3. The Gambler 4. Carefree Highway 5. Southern Cross 6. Killing Me Softly 7. Landslide 8. Dust In The Wind 9. This Town That's a lot of songs for someone playing less than a year, and you are practicing scales and travis picking. I'm working on (finger style): 1. Elk Mountain Rag 2. Ragtime Ramble 3. Dadalada 4. Ragpickin 5. Maxwell's Silver Hammer 6. Bloozinay 7. Come on Boys 8. Black Cat Blues 9. Raggin The Blues 10. Ragtime Strut 11. East Coast Rag But I can't do them justice all in one week so I will rotate and some get more attention than others. Someone suggested and I also had the same thought that if you take the "sticky" parts from each song and just concentrate on that for a while, you will progress faster. Right now I will work a part(s) for what seems like hours and then play the whole song over and over at a pace where there is zero mistakes, which can take some trial and error finding. If my speed is slower than my ego likes, it can be a problem. I'm always having that inner battle, but usually patience wins. Playing something very slowly builds up muscle memory much faster for me, but my head is always playing the song back at tempo (from listening to the song a gazillion times) so its that battle again.. I've been primarily working on just one song this past week, about 2 hours a day, (Bloozinay) mostly because its a lot of fun and I want to memorize it. Today I'm giving it a bit of a rest and working on others in my list. One thing that may help is to record yourself playing and practicing. Just using your phone is fine for this if that is all the equipment you have. Listening to yourself playing from a listeners point of view is very helpful. Pick a song and ask yourself "Is this good enough to play in front of someone else or share here on the forum in Show and Tell? If not, review what you are doing with the song and work on to get it to that point.
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Barry Sad Moments {Marianne Vedral cover}: My SoundCloud page Some steel strings, some nylon. |
#8
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I'd say the first half-hour counts as warm-up - for finger flexibility and finger memory. The half-hour of songs is the "meat". That's the whole point of the first half-hour after all! If I was to suggest any change to your regime, I'd say 15 minutes for scale and chord practice and 45 for the songs. Normally songs give you all the technical exercise you really need. But the main thing is to enjoy whatever you're doing. If you feel you're getting benefit from that first half-hour, stick with it. But don't practice scales just because you think you're supposed to. The only problem is the one you identify yourself: not getting any feedback, particularly on whether you might be developing bad habits of technique. That's common in self-taught players. (I know, I was one myself. ) Of course, getting a teacher comes with its own problems. Aside from affording it, how do you find the right one? (Some teachers come with an agenda of their own.) Until you feel you can splash out on a teacher (and with a good one you might only need one lesson, to give you a new perspective or steer you in a better direction), I suggest you record your practice sessions. On a phone, or any software or tech you have handy. Listening back will reveal your weak points. It may be painful to begin with, but be balanced and detached about it: congratulate yourself on what you're getting right, and zero in on what's not working and work out why. Devote more time to that on your next session (or even this session). Additionally, if you don't currently work with a metronome, I suggest trying it out. Maybe not for everything - don't feel you have to tie yourself to it. Maybe just for strumming those basic sequences to begin with. It's a servant, not a master! The idea is to learn how to keep time - not to get faster, but to get steadier (at whatever speed). If there's one thing that marks out the amateur player, it's not lack of fancy technique, it's shaky time-keeping. A pro can play the simplest thing, but it will sound great because their time is solid.
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"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." - Leonard Cohen. Last edited by JonPR; 03-11-2018 at 11:14 AM. |
#9
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Yeah, I do that too. I'll spend a week on a song before I move on to one of the other songs for a few days. Some days I want to work on something specific and one of those songs is better for it than the others. |
#10
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someone else suggested playing with a metronome, i'll chime in a bit on that. It took me about 3 different attempts with a metronome, spread out over 18 months, before I was able to use one to good effect. At first it stopped all enjoyment in my practice. I kept going back to it till finally it improved my playing.
Recording yourself also helps, a cheap zoom recorder is worth considering if the quality of the recording on your phone disappoints. Playing with others and learning to sing while playing added a lot to my enjoyment and also it encouragement me to practice more. |
#11
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I've been trying to use the metronome more. I haven't quite gotten the hang of it yet. My timing/rhythm needs help. I'm trying to sing along with my playing too. Way harder than I thought it would be but I see the value in it. |
#12
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Look for an acoustic jam group. It can be very intimidating for a beginner but from my experience, it's the best thing you can do. They are the most welcoming people I could have ever met. One of the first things the leader of the group told me was that the best way to work on your timing is to play with others.
Another thing is that it will motivate you. I never worried about singing until I started with them. Now I'm working on singing almost as much as playing. I drive an hour and a half in traffic to play with them and 45 minutes to get home. It's way worth it! |
#13
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I can't critique someone who's got a lot more on the ball than I did when I taught myself. Your regimen is good. If your discipline is as you claim your gains will be across the spectrum of your practice.
I didn't have anything like yours. I knew that scales would come as a function of playing because they would find themselves in my ear, like it or not, as I focused on placing and fluidly shifting between chords, and the coloring I knew existed just from listening to the (recorded) songs. Finger picking from the start, I became adept at chord-melody quickly and have played that way ever since. I always thought of running through the scales first to be the back door approach to playing. Learning scales is not playing. Not sure the beginner should train his ear that way or by listening to the sound of the chords, which are the meat and potatoes of playing, and studied in the natural course of play. You just have to remain observant of the presence and role of scales in the chord progressions. I had two things I focused on: The sound of the chords and the dynamics of finger picking them. When I reached a level of competency that was jam worthy, my ear was well developed and I could accompany a session after listening to the progression on a run-through. Or, I knew how to color a known progression, in a genre-specific manner, and enhance the melody beneath the lyric line. That was right at 1 year. But, I spent probably 1-2 hours for every hour you practice and it was all finger picking chord melody. |
#14
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Sounds like you are doing great for someone who has less than a year under his belt! Something that you can do to make the most of your practice time: isolate the problem spots and practice them over and over, instead of going through the whole song every time. Forgive me if you're smarter than I am and have already figured this out, but it's a pretty common mistake. In most songs, it's certain spots that really give us trouble, maybe a certain chord change or tricky right hand fingering. Work on that, by itself, over and over. When it gets smooth add the preceding measure, then the following measure, you get the idea. As a beginner, you're likely encountering some troublesome chord changes that appear in several songs, so when you master these, it's going to pay off in all those songs. Pay close attention to your left hand fingering and find the easiest way to move from each chord to the next, then make sure you're doing it the same way each time. This kind of focused practice can feel tedious, but it will pay big dividends. For right hand practice, it's sometimes helpful to mute the strings with your left hand and just work on rhythm, for a strumming song. For fingerstyle, work on one chord and get it smooth before you transition to the next one. Hope this helps. Sure has worked for me.
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"Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans."-John Lennon 2015 Taylor 512ce 12 fret early 80's Ovation Ultra 1517 2011 Seagull Entourage Rustic 2011 Taylor Limited NS214ce 2010 Taylor 512c 2016 Ibanez AG75 2014 Taylor GS Mini Koa e 2018 Loar LH 301t 1998 Breedlove Fall Limited # 10 of 20 Redwood/Walnut |
#15
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Bobby -
We all have our own styles of learning, our own goals and our own progress sheets. Many times, when we start, we don't really know where we're going. And that was me 11 years ago, at age 53. I had a smattering of guitar playing (basically cowboy chords) about 30 years prior to that, but nothing of note. (That guitar stayed with and probably still remains, with an ex-girlfriend. She considered it a ‘settlement’ when we broke up. And she became a family lawyer soon after that). Over the last eleven years, I have explored (mainly on the internet, through books, with a little input from teachers and some very good friends) genres, instruments, techniques, etc. and after the fact, have looked back and figured out the path I took, and how it could have been more efficient. Here's a list of the most important facets of my learning framework:
Gradually, you'll find a genre that fits your tastes and your talents. For me, it has been fingerstyle blues and rags. There are a ton of techniques to learn and each song has its special recipe. I'd love to play some jazz, some classical, etc. but I am sticking with the blues. As I learned earlier in the journey, when you scatter your efforts into too many directions, you get nowhere fast. Good luck on the journey! Never underestimate the option of taking a few weeks off, because when you get back to work, you return with a hunger to play and then make a load of progress in a short time. best, Rick
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”Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet” Last edited by srick; 03-12-2018 at 05:14 AM. |