Productive Practice 01/22/2010
Every person has their own reasons why they want to play music, and their own motivation to get results. Some folks find their muse at an early age and pursue the very pinnacles of musical proficiency. Other people grab momentary joy from a good old fashioned jam session, or a solitary sing-along. some people come late in age to the instrument, and strive to make up for lost time. Whatever your situation is, you have your goals and your available time. The art of practicing is to use what time you have as efficiently as possible to develop your skill to play the music you enjoy most. Good practice is fundamentally composed of 3 simple things-- time, focus and material. Time Time flies like an arrow, and a guitar student needs firstly to understand how much time they will dedicate to practice. There is no right or wrong amount of time-- some people can put in an 8 hour day and still feel as if they should have done more, whereas another person can log a solid 20 minutes every day and get pleasing results. But you have to figure out what your goal is in terms of time, and strive to meet that goal consistently. Practicing guitar is like exercise-- Major results are not immediate. You make small developments with every passing moment. You need to practice consistently to get results. Focus Practice time has to be focused on specific exercises, drills or songs. Absent-minded practice is wasted time. Focus means, you choose a skill you want to develop, and single-mindedly practice that skill for a given duration. Material Material is the actual stuff you practice. You need to pull many things together to achieve basic musicianship. There are a gazillion different specific materials you can focus on, each of which demand some investigation and which will yield tangible results. Consider your left hand-- Slurs, hammer-ons, pull-offs, bends, slides, arpeggios. Or your right hand-- alternate picking, sweep picking, finger picking, rhythmic practice, palm muting, pinch harmonics. There materials that are purely in your brain-- sight reading, memorizing chord charts and melodies, studying music theory. There's just a gazillion different things you can practice, whether you have 20 minutes or 2 hours. You need to know which materials to practice at any given time. Formulate some good strategies to help preserve these 3 crucial elements of productive practice. Here's a few strategies I have come across. Match your mood with the material If you are bored of sight-reading, then work on something else that is more appealing If you are super excited on a new sweep picking exercise, then keep at it, and put off other things for the moment. When you have drilled something sufficiently, move on to some other material. Whatever your mood, there is always some material to practice. And regardless what your mood is, you are still need to practice. Every day, you need to practice for some amount of time. But, you are going to carefully select something that is most likely to inspire you to remain focused as you practice it. Joy is in the journey, not just the destination-- strive to enjoy your practice time. Keep a Log Write down what material you practiced, for how long you practiced it, and the date. Its a simple but powerful habit that keeps you focused on consistent progress. Make a Session Plan Each practice session can be divided and conquered. Let's say you decide you want to practice for 40 minutes every day. You can divide each session into 3 parts-- For example, one person might do 20 minutes scales, 20 minutes on mastering a tune, 20 minutes on reading music. Sing what you play This helps crank up your focus, especially for guitarists. Sing the actual notes you play. Guitarists commonly learn to rely on finger patterns and become negligent of the sounds they produce. This adds a new dynamic to finger-centric woodshedding. It is also good vocal practice, for those of you who want to sing and play simultaneously. Find a teacher This is a time honored tradition for all endeavors, from music to sports to Jedi training: A good teacher will guide you to the right materials and inspire you to practice. A good teacher keeps you challenged and motivated at the same time. These days, you can find teachers at local schools, music stores, via craigslist, or even in the comfort of your own home via Skype. You're welcome to try lessons with me! Get Sweet Gear Gear is important, to get the sound that your style demands. And, the toy factor is a powerful motivator. It is easy to get lost in gear, though, so be aware of your practice to dollar ratio. Listen Listening to music is of paramount importance. Try an online streaming service for unlimited listening opportunity-- Rhapsody, Mog, Pandora, Last.Fm, etc. Jam Playing with other people helps in many ways. It forces two hugely important skills-- rhythm, and awareness of where you are in a tune. Music is a wonderous thing-- it is both intimately personal and publicly shared at the same time. You can choose the music you want to play. But, musical development happens the same for all people-- through practice. I believe all people benefit from studiously accounting for the three fundamentals of productive practice-- time, focus and material. Guitar Tabs 09/30/2009
Learning guitar these days pretty much always involves reading tab. If you are just starting and don't know what tab is, it's simple: It's a 6 lines, and each line represents a guitar string. The numbers written on the line indicates playing that fret, on that string. The bottom line is the low E string, the top line is the high E string. Here's an A minor bar chord: ----5---- ----5---- ----5---- ----7---- ----7---- ----5---- The internet offers a huge repository of tabs, for pretty much any song you can imagine. In my teaching, I provide tabs of whatever we are studying. There is something to be said for traditional music notation. It is a denser, more information-rich means of conveying musical data. Each note can display its pitch, its duration, and its relation to the notes around it-- it is very difficult to perceive intervals from guitar tab, but it can become second nature to perceive intervals in traditional notation. Sght reading music is itself a discipline, and I only teach it when the student feels the need. Of course, I encourage it. But, tab is more expedient in terms of showing guitar riffs and licks, and you use your ear to determine the rhythmic intricacies. A great program to get is Guitar Pro. It is the standard for getting tab on the computer. There are many websites that offer lot's of tabs. Here's a nice one: G Tabs The Guitar Pro website has a page listing many more of these tab sites. Shred Lesson 09/18/2009
Here's a pretty sweet shred lesson from a guitarist from Children of Bodom. He points out some real, standard shred techniques. Try to critically observe his fingers-- this isn't the best example of effortless playing. But he gets the job done, and if you like his band, then you will be especially excited. Chess and Music 09/14/2009
In music, the distance between any 2 notes is called an 'interval'. There is a helpful way to memorize intervals, and here's an example. If we are in the key of C, then C is 1, C = 1, D = 2, E = 3, F = 4, G = 5, A = 6, B = 7, C = 8. The interval between C and A is a 6th. Now, let's invert-- what is the interval between A and C? A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, D = 4, E = 5, F = 6, G = 7, A = 8 The interval between A and C is a 3rd. The interesting trick here, is that these 2 intervals (C to A, A to C) are inverse of each other, and the sum of the intervals is 9. 6 + 3 = 9 This works for all these intervals. Here's another example: What is the interval between C and F? a 4th What is the interval between F and C? Well, 4 + x = 9, 9 - 4 = 5 The interval between F and C is a 5th. I'll let you figure out the rest of the intervals-- in all keys, too! Refer to the circle of Fifths to learn how to spell all the scales you need. I had a profound realization recently, when I was studying chess moves. (This should indicate the magnitude of my nerdiness, if nothing else does.) In chess, the board looks like this:  Notice, going from the White king to the Black king, there are 8 rows (or ranks). Just like in music-- The first row is 1, and the 8th row is the octave. Like in music, when you inverse an octave, it's just like a mirror image-- high C to low C. In chess, when you inverse the octave, and you make the Black king your own, and the 8th row becomes your back rank. Look at Whites 2nd rank. All his pawns are there. Look at Blacks pawns-- where are they? All on the 7th rank. In chess, the inversion of the 2nd rank is the 7th-- White becomes black, but its weirdly the same. Notice= 2+7=9 Just like in music. In chess, the center of the board is crucially important, and for black and white both, there is a center line. When you cross this line, you enter the enemies turf. For White, that is the 4th row. For black, its the inverse-- the 5th. 4+5=9 The same principle applies going side to side. The columns, or 'files' go from a to h-- think of 'h' as the octave of 'a'. The inverse of file 'a' is 'h'. The inverse of file 'd' is 'e'. I love the symmetry here, amongst the numbers, and amongst two wildly different yet venerable pastimes. Some people say that music is the emotional expression of math. And others say that chess, despite its rigid rules and logic, is ultimately an artistic expression. It's almost as if they are inverse of each other. Insight into the art of teaching guitar 09/09/2009
Great article here, describing how to discern a good teacher from not so good. Happily, I have been using similar terms to describe my own aim in teaching. As the author says, the goal is to empower the student to achieve their own musical development. I really like how he pegged that essential quality of good teachers. In my own life, I have been fortunate enough to study with some great teachers, but I also appreciate those who have been not-so-great. Those bitter experiences I have had are just as valuable for my own teaching, and have taught me the importance of listening and trying to help, without involving my own ego. Anyways, it's a nice article. If you are seeking an instructor, give this a quick read and then ponder the instructors available to you. "The True Teacher" by Jamie Andreas www.guitarnoise.com/lesson/the-true-teacher/ Cool Fretboard Tool-- Fretboard Warrior 09/08/2009
Found a great little online trainer for locating notes on the fretboard. Practice a little with something like this, every so often, and you will see your skill increase. Then, send your thanks to the programmer is, and try it on your instrument. Fretboard Warrior  iPhone Apps for Guitarists 09/08/2009
If you are an iphone or ipod touch owner, then there are a few useful apps available for musical training. I'll list a couple I use regularly: Karajan Ear Trainer This is far and away the most bestest, most usefullest iphone apps I have found for any purpose. It is also one of the most pricey, at $15, but I find it to be worth the money. It plays not only simple intervals, but also chords (triads and 7th and more), scales, single pitches and even BPM. It has a a few different sounds, a nice layout that has an actual keyboard in landscape mode, and a report on your progress. You can customize the program in many ways, very easily. Highly recommended for both beginners and advanced players. www.karajan-eartrainer.com/en/ iReadMusic This app is a really solid tool to help learn to sight read traditional notation on the guitar neck. It has several modes, I use 'Play that Note!' In this mode, notes on a treble (or bass) clef are displayed on top, and the fretboard is displayed on bottom. The frets are a bit tiny, but it's actually precise enough to go through entire scales. The program has a lot of customization available, including other instruments (piano, bass and banjo), sounds, and types of drills. It's only $2, so I think it's worth the investment. www.glpsoftware.com/ Metronomes and Tuners There are dozens of metronomes and tuners out there. I found two for free (my usual pricepoint) that work well. iTick Guitar Tuner Tuna Pitch is a $2 tuner that seems to do the job. GigBabyFree! How is it that my wallet-sized phone can house an entire four-track recording studio? People over the age of 30 may understand my wonder. In any case, here is a free recording app that has 4 tracks and some bells and whistles to boot. Really fun, and others like this get to be more expensive. www.iometics.net/GigBaby!/ Awesome lecture-- What is Music For? 09/08/2009
 This lecture transcript has been floating around now for a while, I thank a friend for forwarding it, one of those 'inspiring email forwards', but for musicians, and actually inspring. Karl Paulnack is on faculty at the Boston Conservatory, and he gave a commencement speech to the new students of 2004. He likens the role of a musician to more of a therapist and medical professional than entertainer. Although he is speaking to future professional musicians, I think the message is also relevant to anyone who struggles to learn to play. The act of playing your instrument, even alone, is a powerful means of experiencing music. all the benefits of music can come through even the most basic of practice regimens (if you make sure to keep you practicing fun!) Here's a link to the article where I read it: http://greenroom.fromthetop.org/2009/03/11/karl-paulnack-to-the-boston-conservatory-freshman-class/ It's usually good to broaden your horizons whenever possible. Try listening to something new, like a great classical guitarist. Amazing introduction to Classical Music 11/01/2008
Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, has an infectious love for music. I have rarely encountered speakers as lively and entertaining, as well as profound, as this guy. Presented here is a talk he gave for the famous TED lecture series. |
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