Practice routines, Technique, Muscle memory.

[Elder Gail]

]Just thinking how others ideas on these subjects importance in your playing are important. Over time do you reach a plateau with retention enough to keep the so called chops sharp. Wow this can lead down a strange thread.
Gail.

[Bob Womack]

Hi, Gail!

I find that what really keeps the chops sharp is regular practice. Back in the '70s, when I were a wee lad with limited commitments, I started playing an hour or two per day and pushing myself hard to develop. I ran into brick walls where I couldn't get any better. In the 1980s, after I got married and we had babies, I eventually wandered into a year or so where I had limited time and didn't get to play as much. Eventually my wife encouraged me to hit the grindstone again and I did. Daily practice, whatever I could afford.

Ever since then I'm reminded of Segovia's statement about practice. He said that after he missed a day of practice he could tell the difference. After two days of missed practice the audience could tell the difference. And after three days the critics could tell the difference. Hah!

And yes, eventually you develop memories that make some of playing fairly automatic. From there it is up to you to push the boundaries to continue developing. I've done some wacky stuff like transcribing classical violin tunes and tunes from other instruments such as flute, clarinet, oboe, and uilleann pipes to guitar, in part because they don't follow typical guitar patterns and require a stretch to execute reasonably well.

Something I've found vital is joy. I'm no Marie Kondo but I've found that to keep going and keep developing, I've needed to keep the fun of playing in the process. Unless I pursue my own enjoyment of playing I tend to get lost in the mechanics and fall off in diligence. As a result, I try to please myself in each and every practice by doing something I simply enjoy.

All the best as you play, develop, and enjoy.

Bob

[rmp]

A discussion on muscle memory brings 2 things that come to mind for me.

Things like scales, and rapid chord changes with tricky voicings, and those kind of tactical things that we all learn about.

Like starting slowly, focusing on accuracy, speeding up, repeat... after while, you're not even thinking about this stuff, it's just happening.

Then there's another side, like when doing solo guitar arrangements, pieces that are composed with alternate tunings and the like

Once you really learn these songs I find that if I revisit these songs after maybe not playing them for awhile, my hands will know where to go.

Yet, If I think about an upcoming part, instead of just letting the recall just do what it does, I'll probably blow it.

I play piano too, and it's the same there as well.

[Robin, Wales]

Originally Posted by rmp

Yet, If I think about an upcoming part, instead of just letting the recall just do what it does, I'll probably blow it.

I ran some coaching skills programmes for military fast jet flying instructors. They used to hate demonstrating flying skills to their students. The student would come back having failed a trip and complain that they did the skill just as good as the instructor. I had to work with both instructors and students to get the them to realise that the instructor was lifting the skills back into consciousness and so was not performing them naturally when doing a demonstration. However, when the instructors used that specific skill during a mission they were also doing 5 other unrelated things at the same time. Whereas all the students capacity was taken up with the discrete skill they were learning.

Same with guitar. Playing guitar is a physical skill performed in an environment of "musicality". The role of practice is to drive as much physicality as possible into the non-conscious with the kinaesthetic/audio (and some visual) feedback loop working out of cognitive awareness. This frees up cognitive capacity for "musicality". The more you practice the more capacity you free up to do other things with. Because playing guitar is so physical (you have to hit or pluck the strings to make a sound) and involves very precise intricate movements, then much of your repetitive hands-on practice should focus on getting physical skills into the non-conscious as quickly and effectively as possible. This will free up capacity for musicality, some of which can be honed away from the guitar.

I could go on.....the topic of "how we learn" fascinates me!

[TBman]

Practice - I have to play almost everyday to stay on top of it (I'm 66)

Technique - What is technique? To me it is playing with musical interpretation; letting notes breath, playing without finger noise and excessive squeaking.

Muscle memory - sort of out the window as I play finger style and no two tunes are alike, but if I practice one tune enough my fingers do their thing mostly on their own.

[rick-slo]

The better you play the more time you have to consistently play to keep it that way (let alone keeping up the breadth of your repertoire).

[gfirob]

This seems to be about mostly guitar technique, but I think if you are a singer, you really need to practice the singing part of the process too. The more of the song that you can internalize the better you can get the rest of it together too. I am always amazed at guys who are great guitarists, but who struggle singing, and usually because they are not practicing the singing part of the equation.

[Deliberate1]

Originally Posted by Robin, Wales

Playing guitar is a physical skill performed in an environment of "musicality". The role of practice is to drive as much physicality as possible into the non-conscious with the kinaesthetic/audio (and some visual) feedback loop working out of cognitive awareness. This frees up cognitive capacity for "musicality". The more you practice the more capacity you free up to do other things with. Because playing guitar is so physical (you have to hit or pluck the strings to make a sound) and involves very precise intricate movements, then much of your repetitive hands-on practice should focus on getting physical skills into the non-conscious as quickly and effectively as possible. This will free up capacity for musicality, some of which can be honed away from the guitar.

Robin, there are some jewels in there. I am going to spend some quality time with them.
David

[Doug Young]

There's a technique called "spaced repetition" that often shows up in discussions of memory and retention. Basically, the idea is that you need to practice something a lot at first to get it in your memory, then, as it moves into long term memory or unconscious memory - you might think of that as "muscle memory", it needs refreshed at diminishing intervals. If you discover after some time that you don't remember it, you go back to the first stage. There are apps that can help manage this, and prompt you when it's time to refresh. I have a friend who's done this a simple way - he has a deck of cards with his songs on each card. Every day he practices the top, say, 3 songs. If he can play the song well, it goes to the bottom of the desk. If he has trouble, it goes back on top, to be run thru again tomorrow. Eventually "learned" songs will come up in the deck again. Anyway, search on "spaced repetition" and you'll get all kinds of info about the concept.

To some extent, I think this applies even to technique. You can lose your muscle tone and so on, but the basic movements you need tend to stay with you - like remembering how to ride a bike essentially forever once you learn. I remember reading an interview with John Williams years ago where something really amazed me, and stuck with me. He said he was getting ready for a tour, and had to practice several hours a day. But not, he said, to be able to play the pieces, but rather to build up his endurance. He said he knew the pieces so well, and also "practiced" them in his head, so he never really had to practice them anymore to play them. But playing a several hour concert was physically demanding, which was a different thing.

There's a great book called "The Art of Brainjo", written by a banjo/neuroscientist that addresses lots of these issues, how to leverage how the brain works to play better. An easy, fun read that has lots of both food for thought and immediately applicable suggestions for practicing.

[Elder Gail]

Great information, not sure were it's going. Subscribed to your channel
Gail.

[Mandobart]

My musical development started at 10. I'm almost 60 now. I had a change in musical thinking about 20 years ago, from exercising learned patterns and songs to seeking a better understanding of music and my instruments.

I've been more focused on chord and melodic structure, and on really knowing the fretboard. The goal is to know where to go intuitively to get the sound I hear in my head without trial/mistrial or relying on notation.

Although I'm classically trained and still like to keep up my sight reading skills up, the majority of the new material I learn is by ear now.

I think of playing being (ideally) similar to conversation - you usually don't have to spend a lot of time practicing words or phrases in your native tongue. You open your mouth and words, phrases, sentences go straight from your brain to your mouth without your having to plan it out or perform any mental transposition.

[Pnewsom]

This video with Hal Gaspar comes at practising from a jazz perspective, but I feel it applies to any kind of musical study. It boils down to, if you can't hear it(in your head), you can't play it.

There are quite a few of his lectures available, and they are defiantly worth watching.