Friday 12 April 2019

“Everything, All The Time” - Or, Bad Practice Habits and How To Get Out Of Them.


Time. Contrary to the Rolling Stones' classic song, in the real world it's never on your side. Or certainly never seems to be- there's always something demanding your attention. Certainly, it's a rare lesson that doesn't begin with a student apologising because they've not had much time to practoce – pressures of work, education, family etc. all combine to make it difficult to find half an hour a day to put in to playing guitar at all, let alone practicing and concentrating on new stuff.

I have actually done a video and article on “pitstop practicing”  - short but intense bursts where you focus in n just one thing, whether that's a new lick, a chord change that's been giving you trouble or whatever – but this month I want to focus on something that more experienced players often fall foul of.

As your skills improve, and you're able to do more things, that of course means you have more stuff you need to practice to simply maintain those skills, let alone learn any new ones. So a practice session can seem like a mountain to climb, working through all the stuff you know before you can start on something new- a perfect example of this was a student of mine a few years ago, who was struggling to combine his Grade 5 with the demands of a regularly gigging band. Although he was diligently setting a couple of hours a day aside for practice, he would play through the band's entire set before trying anything new. Every time, This meant that over ¾ of his practice session was running over the same things, keeping them fresh – or so his thinking was. To be fair, I can completely understand where he was coming from, as when I joined my first semi pro band back in (gasp) the 90s, I thought and did exactly the same thing.

Problem is, by the time you come to try anything new, your concentration is shot, and if you've been playing for over an hour you probably want a bit of a break – cup of tea, check your emails – and that further eats into the tiny bit of time you've left yourself for learning anything new. So this way, things very quickly become stale. Add to this the pressure of an exam and it's quite natural to start thinking “Sod it, I'm going to play something I want to play, not something I'm supposed to play”. Of course, the problem for me as a teacher is I'm trying to get this student through their Grade 5, as that's what they've told me their goal for the year is. It doesn't take a genius to see how this can potentially lead to friction, despite the student in question being talented, diligent and hard working. And of course at that point, the whole thing is going to nose dive.

However, as I have made virtually every mistake it is possible to make on my journey learning the guitar- although I'm sure there's a few out there I'm yet to discover – I recognised where he was coming from, and we sat down to talk about practice habits and came up with a plan. If you have an hour a day, five days a week (because you're off gigging at weekends) as an example, and you're trying to balance a set and a grade exam, try this approach:

5 minutes – technical exercises from grade book. 1-2 scales, 1-2 arpeggios, 1-2 chords, style study. Rotate the scales/ arpeggios/ chords – eg Monday, major scale & major pentatonic, Tuesday natural minor scale and minor pentatonic.

5 minutes – sight reading/ improv & interpretation/ melodic recall/ harmonic recall/ general musicianship. Pick a different one each day.

20 minutes – grade repertoire. MAXIMUM two tracks – play through, look for mistakes. Spend a minute on each mistake, then play through the track again. Rotate so that every track is played over the week.

Remaining 30 minutes – band repertoire. A good trick here is to put all the songs into an iTunes (or equivalent – I've now switched to Music Bee) playlist, hit shuffle, and see what it throws at you. But, here's a twist – if the song has a solo, or a particularly noticeable guitar part (for instance, the Sweet Child O'Mine intro), before you play along with the whole song, play that part on your own as slowly as you possibly can. Yes, you read that right – the challenge is to really control the notes, the string noise, the vibrato. Take everything out of the instinctive 90% of your brain and back into the conscious 10% so you can look for bad habits and work your way out of them.

Result? You're spending less time but achieving a great deal more progress than simply being stuck in a rut and thinking that you've got to practice everything you know every time you pick up the guitar for a practice session. Practice therefore becomes much less of a slog and much more enjoyable – with the result that you do more of it and engage with it a lot more, leading to more progress!

So that's this month's thought, hope it helps some of you out there who feel a little overwhelmed or frustrated. Drop a comment to let me know your thoughts, and happy practicing!