I spend so much of my time in lessons teaching my students these ideas. Thanks for helping me focus my ideas and inspiring me to renew my goals to move my students in this direction! What a great article! Thank you for writing this so concisely:- , Ingrid. Would you suggest that these guidelines for practice are the same or similar for all variants of musical genres?
Classical, popular, jazz, folk? I play guitar, bass and piano but find it hard to practice on the bass because I am only practicing a part…yet when I play piano or guitar I play melody AND harmonic accompaniment and thus can hear and feel the entire form. So when I want to learn a piece, I do so by playing and practicing the piece on BOTH guitar and piano…then it seems to just fall in place on the bass.
Is that practicing with my head? Thanks for a thought-provoking presentation! One of my favorite books that addresses the topic of what it takes to achieve mastery is called, simply, Mastery , written by George Leonard.
Your idea of learning the other parts involved in the group, so as to have a better sense of where your bass part fits into the whole is a great idea. Classical musicians can benefit from this kind of approach as well, especially when it comes to orchestral excerpts, which, played in isolation out of context, often feel and sound more like etudes than great music.
I have found practicing with one of the computerized music practice programs with the bass helped me tremendously. Of course, already mentioned is recording one part so you can practice the other parts.
Years ago there was available, MMO for music minus one. An orchestral arrangement, complete except for your part. You might want to check and see if they are still available, and for the particular piece of music you are wanting. These are ideas all worth remembering. I find them most difficult to remember when I have an enormous work load to practice. The industrial psych literature indicates that people are more productive when they take breaks; I expect that this finding would be just as applicable to musicians in the practice room as well.
Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Learn the 1 thing that top practicers do differently, plus 7 other strategies for practice that sticks. If performances have been frustratingly inconsistent, try the 4-min Mental Skills Audit.
It won't tell you what Harry Potter character you are, but it will point you in the direction of some new practice hacks that could help you level up. Take the MSA. Popular Articles. Is Slow Practice Really Necessary? How much is enough? Is there such a thing as practicing too much? Is there an optimal number of hours that one should practice?
What Do Performers Say? Some of the great artists of the 20th century have shared their thoughts on these questions. Other great artists have expressed similar sentiments. Violinist Nathan Milstein is said to have once asked his teacher Leopold Auer how many hours a day he should be practicing. You know, this is not a bad idea — one of my own teachers, Donald Weilerstein , once suggested that I establish a hour period of time every week where I was not allowed to pick up my instrument.
What Do Psychologists Say? When it comes to understanding expertise and expert performance, psychologist Dr. Note that the real key here is not the amount of practice required as the exact number of hours is debatable but the type of practice required to attain an expert level of performance.
Mindless Practice Have you ever listened to someone practice? Have you ever listened to yourself practice, for that matter?
Tape yourself practicing for an hour, take a walk through the practice room area at school and eavesdrop on your fellow students, or ask your students to pretend they are at home and watch them practice during a lesson. What do you notice? There are three major problems with the mindless method of practicing. It is a waste of time Why?
For one, very little productive learning takes place when we practice this way. Even worse, you are actually digging yourself a hole by practicing this way, because what this model of practicing does do is strengthen undesirable habits and errors, literally making it more likely that you will screw up more consistently in the future.
This makes it more difficult to correct these habits in the future — so you are actually adding to the amount of future practice time you will need in order to eliminate these bad habits and tendencies. You may not be able to play it perfectly every time at first, but this is what repetition is for — to reinforce the correct habits until they are stronger than the bad habits. Instead of fighting a never-ending battle against the weeds, your time is better spent trying to cultivate the grass so that over time the grass crowds out the weeds.
We tend to practice unconsciously, and then end up trying to perform consciously — not a great formula for success. Recall from this article that you have a tendency to shift over into hyper-analytical left brain mode when you walk out on stage. It is tedious and boring Practicing mindlessly is a chore.
Music may be one of the only skill-based activities where practice goals are measured in units of time. Deliberate Practice So what is deliberate, or mindful practice? Deliberate practice is a systematic and highly structured activity, which is, for lack of a better word, scientific.
Watch this video. And if you're not a member of Fender Play yet, click here for a free trial. Skip to main content. How Much Should I Practice? By Dan Macy. Although guitar is a challenging instrument, you can reach your goals if they are reasonable , if you set the proper expectations for yourself and practice.
These are just a few examples of some goals that you may have—your goals may vary! One huge caveat : The guitar is a physically demanding instrument see here for another post I wrote that has some additional reasons why the guitar is hard. As a total beginner, you may find that you can only really practice for 5 minutes in one sitting—because your hands will not have the strength to do any more.
This is perfectly normal. The assumption is that you are practicing every day for the more time intensive categories, for the more casual goals this assumes at least 5 practice sessions a week. In real life your life circumstances will fluctuate and especially if you have a more casual interest in the guitar, these time frames could vary wildly.
Recently, I decided to spend 30 days of focused practice on the guitar—instead of just playing songs I liked I actually tried to focus on the fundamentals and technique. I was pretty astounded at what focused practice can do. The 1 best thing you can do to improve your practice is to get a good teacher who can help coach you through your practice. To begin with you will sound terrible and feel totally uncoordinated.
Your finger tips will suffer daily pain until you develop callouses. After countless hours of practice you will feel like you are not getting anywhere. Although your family may encourage you on the first day, their words may not be so complimentary after a week or so of daily practice. Wonderful advice! Once I stopped trying to be a good guitar player, and just started feeling the music, I really started enjoying playing guitar, and my skills began to excel without that being the focus of playing.
I used to actually dread guitar practice, because it just felt like work, but now I look forward to it all day! I wish more beginners understood this! Thanks Adam for your advice! You are right, When ever I make my own music and try to make a video of it I think about how awesome It would sound and how badly I want to share it with people rather than just enjoying the music, and I always fail to play something accurately no matter how hard I try.
And like you said all body gets sweaty and tense! I gonna try to change change whats going on in my head during practise sessions and also make a practise schedule. My advice is reduce what you play until it is so easy that you never make a mistake — keep searching for comfortable fingerings, make it easy easy easy on yourself.
That will make perfomances better. Sorry for the late reply…All the best — AR. These are great tips. Apparently the brain needs spaced repetition, not just repetition.
Thanks fro the reminder! Do you have any books you can recommend on mindsets and goal setting for guitar. I know the key is to take action, but I would love some guides on taking the correct action.
Hi Adam, Great blog! I got left-index tendinitis from overpracticing in Stopped playing for 3 years but now am back on track. I warm up for 3 minutes with putty, then slowly do scales. I cannot play more than 45 minutes on one given session, and not more than two days in a row. Then putting in another 30 minutes?
Once I get warmed up I go nonstop, sensing that if I cool down too much the finger will injure. Also , have you heard if acupuncture is any good? Thanks in advance for all your great advice. Claude sorry for my late reply. I am not a hand specialist, but I had one tell me that alost everything will heal in time. What is your current state with your finger?
I looked for your lesson on fretting hand wrist position keeping a straight wrist but could not find it. Can you direct me to this lesson? You should check it out. I think it would really compliment a lot of the stuff you are talking about here in your blog and you might even be able to use it as a link resource in your blog or while you are teaching to help motivate students and keep them on track.
Now I have left hand pain that is chronic and they cant figure out what is causing it. I passed this along to my 15 year old son who is following in my footsteps.. Adam, I was browsing for information on a practice routine, and surprise there you were.
I just watched you in Columbus Ohio couple weeks ago, remember the sunset upstaging you the last song? Thanks for the tips practicing. So, it comes down to a practice routine, the there seems to be nothing else. Guy sent me an article about chess masters, the master just is aware of more choices than the novice, and he practices applying them. Hey Adam how are you doing? Thanks for sharing this valuable piece of material.
I am 72 feel like 50 and just started learning to play the guitar. Loving every minute of it, but, as you can imagine, a certain sense of urgency to get good quickly. So, the practice techniques you listed make perfect sense for me, and helps a lot in how I approach each practice session now. I really like your tip about examining your hand position when it comes to playing the guitar. I have been thinking about getting lessons for a while now and I think that these tips will be really helpful.
My husband has played a little bit so maybe I can get some tips from him as well, thanks for sharing! Hi Adam. Thanks so much for the 10 tips to practicing.
Sometimes i get a bit stressed trying to improve.. Love the way you play Charles. I really like your fourth tip about establishing a stretching routine when it comes to practicing the guitar.
I used to play when I was younger and being able to stretch my fingers to land those difficult chords was a must. My son found my old guitar when we were cleaning out the attic a few weeks ago and wants to start taking lessons.
Especially tip two was an eye opener. Playing without hardly any tension really improves the touch. Great advice! Many beginning guitarists try to learn how to play the guitar independently. I have a question. Is it better to study at special courses or individually with a teacher?
Since a teacher can help create the right learning process. I will be grateful for the help. The great thing about learning music is that a good post like this stays relevant forever. Your point about a stretching routine is noted. The first things that a person should be looking at when practicing their guitar lessons is to look at the position of their fingers on the guitar itself along with the way that they are sitting their posture. The better their finger positions and their posture the much easier that they will find it when it comes to playing the guitar.
Thank you for your tips Adam. From my own experience I find that a lot of mentioned points are actually very important. Personally for me, the biggest issue is posture. I have tilted forward posture in general, and it gets worse when I play guitar. Guitar is just a tool, but what really makes awesome music is actually…music.
Hello Adam, Thank you for sharing this wonderful information. I also want to share my information through your article. The guitar is one of the best instruments to play for everyone, If anyone is looking at a top musical instrument shop, then I will suggest you visit the International House of Music — IHOMI.
Here you can get a huge selection of Musical Instruments like Guitar. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Skip to primary navigation Skip to main content.
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