Knowing What to Work OnPeople often ask "What should I practice?", to which I dubiously respond, "Practice what you play." Not exactly what they are looking for, but the truth nonetheless. I also ALWAYS get the heartbreaking "Why can't I improvise?" to which I sympathetically respond "You can't play what you don't practice." A very important mantra - YOU CAN NOT PLAY WHAT YOU DON'T PRACTICE, AND YOU SHOULD PRACTICE WHAT YOU PLAY. Let's define some important actions you must take when learning guitar, and then we'll talk a little more about what you should be practicing. Learn: verb - To gain knowledge, comprehension or mastery of through experience or study. Analyze: verb - To make an analysis - analysis - noun - an examination of a thing to determine its parts or elements Memorize: verb - to commit to memory. Practice: verb - Proficiency gained through repeated exercise. Play: verb - (music) to perform on (an instrument), to perform (a piece). Now, I would like to take a second to point out that those were all verbs. Verbs are actions. That means you have to actually DO something. Keep that in mind. Now, I probably don't even have to say this, but you study, you memorize, you repeat the idea over and over, and then you actually play it, or to LEARN you ANALYZE - MEMORIZE - PRACTICE - PLAY. Most people do this backwards and then wonder why they aren't getting anywhere. Let's go over what each of these mean. Analyze: Go over the material you are working on. Scan through the tab or through the text, look over the charts. Look for things that don't immediately make sense, or that look like they will be challenging. When looking at tabs pay attention to the position you will be in on the fretboard, obvious fingerings, recognizable chords, techniques, obvious places to break the tab into sections, sections that are repeating, patterns that you recognize, basically just analyze what you are about to work on. Then you start playing it, all the way through at first, then one section at a time. Get comfortable with what you will be doing, get your fingers assigned, make sure your technique is correct, work through difficult sections slowly, just get a general idea of what you will be doing. Don't worry about getting it perfect, or fast, or memorized. Just get familiar. If you are working on a theory this is where you just scan through the text or charts that you are working with, think about what you have been told or what you have read, pay attention to the examples that are being given, this is a good indication of what you will use the theory for later, make sure you understand how the charts are laid out even if you aren't sure what they are telling you (recognizing that all this new information is on a neck chart for example), look for things you already understand, and make sure you already know the concepts that are talked about but not explained. Then go back to the beginning, and go slowly through the concepts making sure each part makes sense, not to the point that you can use it, just to the point that you can follow along and not get confused. Analyzing is the first basic step, if you skip this it will take you a lot longer to get to performance level. This process could be very quick and take only a few minutes, or it could be very long and take several weeks. It depends on how much material you are taking in and how difficult the material is related to your playing level. Memorize: Go through section by section and repeat until you remember. Link each section back to the previous section so that you remember them in order. With theory, start memorizing the terms and definitions. This is all about repetition. That being said, you shouldn't just be sitting there staring at the terms trying to remember them, but you should be using the terms while you look at charts or play examples on your guitar. For example, when you are learning the names of the modes, you should be saying the name of the mode in your head or aloud when you play. When learning intervals, play them on your guitar and say their name. Things like that. You have to use the information to remember it. That being said, whether with playing or with theory, you aren't going to really memorize quite yet, this is a two part process, because when you repeat something over and over it's actually: Practice: Ah, here we are, back to the point. Let's read the definition again: Proficiency gained through repeated exercise. Practice is the last part of the memorization process, and memorization is the first part of the practicing process. They are separate but inseparable. The main difference between the first steps of memorizing and the first step of practice: When you are memorizing you are going very slow and inside of the sections you are working on you may end up with even smaller sections, just getting familiar with what you are working on. When it's memorized enough that you can start playing the sections to a metronome you are in the practice phase. When you have it memorized but you have to look back at the music every once in a while because you forget a note or two, or you forget what order the sections go in, that is practice. Repeat over and over, play it again and again, read and reread, analyze and reanalyze. Section by section first and then all the way through. This is where we start to polish what we've been working on. Get the timing perfect, get the fingering perfect, get the speed perfect. Practice is the process of perfecting. This is where you take the theory you have been working on and start applying it to what you already know, figuring out how you will use it in your playing, and how other people use it in their playing. WE LEARN THROUGH APPLICATION. With theory you have to APPLY it. Play: When you are practicing and you notice that you aren't having to fix anything, the speed is right, and you aren't thinking about what you are doing anymore, you're just doing it, you are playing. Theory at this stage isn't so much playing as it is using. When you are working on something and you notice, Oh, this sounds bad because it's a minor second, then you have learned the theory and can incorporate it. Now that should give you an idea of what you should be working on because, for example, you sit down to learn intervals, and you realize you don't understand notes very well. Ok, work on notes. You sit down to learn a song and there's an arpeggio section and you don't know what that is or how to do it, ok, work on that. Learning an instrument is a basic process of FINDING PROBLEMS AND FIXING THEM, and you find problems by working on things that are a challenge step by step. Or, you work on a song and you find yourself thinking I wonder why they chose the chords they chose. Ok, try to find information about chord progressions. Step by step. There are two basic qualities that you must have to learn: you must be CURIOUS and you must be PLAYFUL. Wondering why something works the way it works, figuring it out, and then using those concepts to turn what you learned into your own thing. It really is that basic. It's one of those concepts that is so basic that we don't figure it out on our own sometimes. Learning is a slow progression in which you reveal new problems, and through solving them you realize that there are more problems. And when you get to a point where you can't find any problems, try to find something new to learn. A new song, a new artist, and new style, a new book, a new instrument. I guarantee you'll find more problems to solve. The key to getting better is to never be good enough. No matter how good people tell you that you are, you should have an inner sense of sucking righteously and wanting to improve. When you sit there and say I'm great is when the rest of the world keeps getting better without you and all of a sudden what you are capable of doing is no longer good enough. Always have the desire to get better. I've been fortunate in my life to know some amazing musicians, in fact, I was blessed to be friends with one of the greatest guitarists to ever live. Shawn Lane. And he didn't think twice about telling everyone he sucked. That's why he was great. The constant drive and desire to improve, to learn new things, to experiment with new ideas and concepts even if they are outside of what you normally do. Everything you try to do will make you that much better. The one quality that the greatest musicians all share is being HUMBLE. Humble - adj - modest and unassuming in attitude and behavior. Another is DETERMINATION. Determination - n - firmness of purpose, will, or intention. Now, we've learned so far that one thing you should work on is fixing problems that you find when you try new things. And that's a big part of it. Try new things and when something is hard or doesn't make sense, work on that until it becomes second nature. But another thing that you should work on that EVERYONE neglects every now and again is everything you already know. You will get rusty. The biggest mistake my students make is when we do something new they stop working on the old stuff. Just because you did something good enough to try something harder doesn't mean that you can't get better at what was easier. Try to own peoples faces off with stuff. I tell my students "Ok, we're going to get this up to 120 with sixteenths before we move on." And they get it and we move on. And they stop working on it. My students that really excel come back to me a few weeks later and say "I got that exercise up to 180 but I'm stuck, can we look at it?" GOING ABOVE AND BEYOND WHAT IS REQUIRED OF YOU WILL MAKE YOU EXCEL MORE QUICKLY THAN ANYTHING ELSE. I always work on songs 20 to 40 bpm higher than it should be, the actual tempo will be easy and I won't make mistakes. I go through everything I know and try to play it faster, or cleaner. I try to think of different ways I can apply theories to things. Making what you already know perfect should be a big part of what you work on. Take a long, hard look at where you want to be with your playing, outline your goals. Then start a list of the things you need to know, things you need to be able to do in order to reach your goals. Keep adding to the list, and work on everything on that list as often as possible. Look at what you can and cannot do, then research how to do those things. Getting lessons is always a good idea, but if that isn't an option look at websites, magazines, videos, tabs, talk to other musicians, start finding things you can't do, find explanations for them. It is better in this case to know more than you need to know. I don't use everything I know, some of it just doesn't apply to what I do. But the more I know about music the more comfortable and confident I am with my playing and the easier it is to switch between instruments and styles, and to work with different kinds of musicians. Krystel Becker revised 02.20.09 |
