I recently picked up a book on practice technique - this has probably been the most difficult thing for me as I learn the guitar. Anyways, the book is Power Practicing by Jack Grassel. There's a recommendation that in learning technical material from a drill/lesson book to go as quickly as possible. What he says is:
To improve technique at the fastest rate, you need to cover as much TECHNICAL MATERIAL (emphasis original) as possible in the shortest amount of time. How many times have you purchased a book and stayed on the first page to perfect it before moving on to the second page? After a month on the first page of a book many people usually discard it and never play any of the material in the rest of it. It is better to play the first page one or two times and then move on ahead. The second time through the book will take less time , and you will be a better player than if you had played the first page over and over for a month.
I've usually been somewhere in the middle working things for a week or two (sometimes more) before moving on. I've never moved so quickly through a drill book. Perhaps that's because I'm just starting to become an "intermediate" player and as a beginner needed more time to master things or deal with unfamiliar techniques? How do others work through drill/lesson books?
Pop music is about stealing pocket money from children. - Ian Anderson
Good question!
I recommend a mix of three different things for my students.
1. Plenty of review. Play something you did a month or two ago (or a year or two ago), and do 2-3 "old" pieces at every practice session. Review is really where the solidification comes from.... you didn't learn to read by picking up a new book every day; you learned by reading an old favorite hundreds of times. That constant review puts important stuff, like recognizing whole words at sight, on auto-pilot. Music is no different. It's through constant review that you develop the skills to do things without active thought - and that frees up your mind to concentrate on finer details in your performance.
2. Get through some new stuff. This doesn't need to be mastered, and it's a mistake to master everything before moving on. Method books are designed with a specific approach, and the goal of the book isn't going to be sequenced for everybody... sometimes it's not even sequenced for anybody! Case in point: Mel Bay's book 2 is 48 pages long - and the hardest piece to play is "Barcelona", which comes on page 9. The primary goal of the book is to teach reading, not how to play guitar... it's easier to read than the pieces that come later, but it involves bar chords, position shifts, and stretches beyond anything else in the book. Later pieces help you 'unlock' the performance of that piece... so if a student gets about 80% of new material down by the next lesson, I figure they're ready to move on, and we fill in the gaps later (I'll often surprise students by putting an earlier book on the stand to review just those things - has it all come together yet, or do we need a review?)
3. Perfect some recent stuff. The world has enough sloppy guitarists, so don't be another one. Combining new material with review is a sure recipe for improvement, but if you want to be your best, some pieces should be perfected. In addition to new material, I assign "study pieces" that a student should get performance-ready. Depending on the piece, that often takes 1-2 months or more.
But if you follow any of these three strategies to the exclusion of others, you're limiting yourself. A musician needs the discipline to play things right, but the ability to play lots of things. So you've sort of got to work on both ends at once for maximum results.
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I'm working on 'Blues You can Use' by John Ganapes. I'm going at a rate of about 2 lessons a month. Give or take. I agree with the review. I'm constantly going back to the previous book, 'Bluegrass Roots' and playing a songs out of that. That's on my own though, not in my lessons.
Good question!
I recommend a mix of three different things for my students.
1. Plenty of review. Play something you did a month or two ago (or a year or two ago), and do 2-3 "old" pieces at every practice session. Review is really where the solidification comes from.... you didn't learn to read by picking up a new book every day; you learned by reading an old favorite hundreds of times. That constant review puts important stuff, like recognizing whole words at sight, on auto-pilot. Music is no different. It's through constant review that you develop the skills to do things without active thought - and that frees up your mind to concentrate on finer details in your performance.
2. Get through some new stuff. This doesn't need to be mastered, and it's a mistake to master everything before moving on. Method books are designed with a specific approach, and the goal of the book isn't going to be sequenced for everybody... sometimes it's not even sequenced for anybody! Case in point: Mel Bay's book 2 is 48 pages long - and the hardest piece to play is "Barcelona", which comes on page 9. The primary goal of the book is to teach reading, not how to play guitar... it's easier to read than the pieces that come later, but it involves bar chords, position shifts, and stretches beyond anything else in the book. Later pieces help you 'unlock' the performance of that piece... so if a student gets about 80% of new material down by the next lesson, I figure they're ready to move on, and we fill in the gaps later (I'll often surprise students by putting an earlier book on the stand to review just those things - has it all come together yet, or do we need a review?)
3. Perfect some recent stuff. The world has enough sloppy guitarists, so don't be another one. Combining new material with review is a sure recipe for improvement, but if you want to be your best, some pieces should be perfected. In addition to new material, I assign "study pieces" that a student should get performance-ready. Depending on the piece, that often takes 1-2 months or more.
But if you follow any of these three strategies to the exclusion of others, you're limiting yourself. A musician needs the discipline to play things right, but the ability to play lots of things. So you've sort of got to work on both ends at once for maximum results.
Great advice. I really like that thing about perfecting a few recent songs. Takes away the pressure of perfecting EVERY new song you learn, but eventually you'll become a better player. Thanks!
NoteBoat,
Thank you for your reply. It is helpful to have some more input to my practice routine. As I said in the first post this has been one of the most difficult things for me to get a handle on.
I think I'm mostly following something like you list. What you said is good confirmation that I'm heading in the right direction. My practice follows a pattern like this:
1) Drills
- picking, scales, ear training, etc.
- 2-5 of these depending on time
2) Work on my Long Term Polishing
- a song that I'm working on for 2-3 months that I already know and am "polishing"
3) Short Term
- work on 1 or 2 songs, solos, etc.
- these remain in the schedule for a week or so
4) Review
- review a song, solo, etc. that I've worked on before
- these are just done for that practice session and new ones will be picked the next day
- 0-4 of these each practice depending on time
- if I'm working with a lesson book (e.g. Blues You Can Use) it replaces number 2 and maybe some other sections get cut a little shorter.
I guess the thing that struck me about the book's recommendation was the 1 or 2 days on a drill and then move on. So, for example, in my picking drills I'm working through a book that has a lot of combinations of picking patterns and if I followed that recommendation I'd do a new one each day. This seems kind of fast but is it? What I'm trying to do now is to work on 4 to 5 of those drills (~2 minutes each) every day and add a new one and discard the oldest one each time.
Pop music is about stealing pocket money from children. - Ian Anderson
noteboat - i always seem to learn from your posts and this is no exception. however, i would have to say that i like the term "performance-ready" more than "perfect" regarding learning a piece of music. my idea of what perfect was for a piece 6 months ago has changed considerably in that short span of time as my playing has improved. before, just getting the notes in time would have been enough to make me (and my instructor) pleased. now i look at tone and sustain and find that these are concepts that will probably require a great many months and maybe even years of work to improve to a sense of satisfaction, and even then i would wonder if the improvement would constitute playing a song "perfectly". i'm just not sure when a piece would be considered perfect, and neither does my instructor. i used to use that word all the time in my lessons and he would try to get me to stop using it.
i remember reading an article (it was either by chet atkins or was an interview with him) in which he talked about playing through his mistakes while practicing so that he would get in the habit of doing that when a mistake would inevitably happen during a performance (rather than doing what many people do - including me - which is stop playing and go back over the part to get it right). while no one would indicate that he is a sloppy player, he certainly was not perfect in playing his pieces, even though most, if not 99.99% of people would never notice it.
my instructor (for the past year), won our provincial award for best acoustic song that he wrote and performed. after performing it, the judges came up to him and congratulated him for a great performance. meanwhile, he told me afterwards that he was embarrassed by the applause from the judges b/c he played the song so poorly with many mistakes. the song was "performance-ready" (even if he didn't like the performance) but it was far from perfect - and he wrote the song!
i don't mean to pick on a small part of your post which was, btw, very helpful to me (again). i've only been playing for less than 1.5 years and have (of course) never taught anyone so maybe my viewpoint isn't that valid, but i thought i would share it anyway.
paul
Ah, text. By "perfect" I didn't mean the adjective - i.e. "that's perfect!", I mean the verb - to perfect. It's more of a process.
You're right, it's going to mean different things at different times in your development. Heck, yesterday I spent about 5 minutes in my practicing just fingerpicking open strings - trying to "perfect" the tones I got with different nail attacks. Not something I do everyday, but everyday I do something - getting better as a musician is all about the journey, really :)
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I've been playing for about 5 months now, and i have a Lesson book and lesson videos that i watch on my computer, and i just mix it up. Some days i do nothing but old stuff and don't go further forward until i make zero mistakes, other days i try a bunch of new stuff, some days i look on the lessons here and try and play something. I can't play a whole song yet from start to finish yet, but i can notice a huge difference in my chord changes, accuracy and speed. More importantly, i want to play every day, don't boggle yourself down with a schedule, just practice playing anything, as much as you can and it will all come together.
And I'm just fine with all my time
To live until I die~B.C.
Perfection is a scale and a process, not a destination.
"Perfection" for a student that has been playing for a few weeks may be nothing more than playing the right notes close to in-time so that it sounds some what musical.
That same piece for an advanced student might include exceptional dynamics, tasteful embellishments, re-harmonization, using inversions to create moving bass lines, etc.
I disagree that covering technical material as fast as possible is a good way to do anything. You may well think you are improving, you may well appear to the untrained eye to be "better" and more advanced than one's peers. But you will invariably have some nasty habits that will haunt you for years doing that. You will have failed to master basics, and you will have only a cursory understanding of what you're doing.
Music is an arena where slow and steady wins the race.
Noteboat's example about reading is a perfect analogy. Did you learn to be a good reader by racing from "See Jane run" To James Joyce as quick as you could go? Or did you spend years in a slow, often halting progression?
Music is a language, and few people master a language by going through texts as fast as they can. Sure you can toss in a Pimsleur tape and be able to ask for breakfast and where the toilet is in a few days. But will you be able to have a conversation about anything meaningful? Will you be able to discuss politics or the details of the latest soccer match or talk about why you like your favorite guitarist? Nope. But that person who spent years in a slow steady progression learning nuances and perfecting their vocabulary and conversational skills will be able to do those things.
Music is exactly the same. You can race ahead, but you won't really get anywhere, even if you think you're making great progress.
"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." -- HST
Music is a language, and few people master a language by going through texts as fast as they can. Sure you can toss in a Pimsleur tape and be able to ask for breakfast and where the toilet is in a few days. But will you be able to have a conversation about anything meaningful? Will you be able to discuss politics or the details of the latest soccer match or talk about why you like your favorite guitarist? Nope. But that person who spent years in a slow steady progression learning nuances and perfecting their vocabulary and conversational skills will be able to do those things.
+1
I think you put it perfectly. In fact, it was learning guitar that gave me the confidence to start learning Spanish (something I have wanted to do for years) It is the slow and steady, patient approach that guitar requires which taught me how to tackle learning language. I have taken beginning spanish three times (and more advance stuff in between) because it re-enforces my foundation.
Didnt mean to take it off topic but slow and steady in guitar is a winning strategy.
Jim
“The hardest thing in life is to know which bridge to cross and which to burn” - David Russell (Scottish classical Guitarist. b.1942)
I totally agree with the slow and steady sentiment. I think that's one of the biggest challenges for many begginers, like myself, especially when you feel as though you've hit a plateau in your progress. It's like hitting a slow spot while you're reading a really good book, sometimes you just want to be able to jump to the final chapter to see how it ends, but if you do that, you'll just end up being totally lost while missing all the good stuff in between.
