Interleaving practice sessions for Guitar

[Soussherpa]

I’m really interested in doing more interleaving practice vs blocked practice sessions.

Does Troy or anyone here have a method or suggestions to make up a schedule for something like this?

I can make up one myself, but I would like feedback.

Sherp

[BlackInMind]

Do you mean the style of practice routine that Noa Kagayama from the Bulletproof Musician suggests? Easy: just practice what you normally would but shuffle what you’re working on around every 3-5 minutes or so, and then revisit those things again later on in the practice session. You can be more methodical about it if you want, like pick a few exercises and cycle through with a timer for each, or just kinda organically drift between what you’re working on. I think the idea is to “shuffle the deck” so to speak frequently so your brain is forced to remember more often.

[Soussherpa]

How about mixing leads with rhythms?

I get the BPM newsletter every week too BTW.

[Brendan]

I summarized a few of Noa Kageyama’s suggestions here a while back:

Learning methods on guitar?

Hey, great question! Here are a few tips on structuring practice, drawn from our notes on our interview with Noa Kageyama: There’s no universally optimal way to practice, as a lot depends on the individual and other variables. There are, however, several things you can try to help you optimize your practicing, including: Try structuring your practice as 3 sets of 3 (or 3 sets of 5) in a particular session, where each “unit” could be a chunk of just a few minutes on one particular passage or …

Depends on what you’re working on and may vary e.g. for working on technique vs. learning songs, but I like the general idea of thinking in terns of “sets” e.g. ~3 sets of ~5 different short practice tasks, with brief rest periods between rests.

Also, not specifically about interleaved practice, but lots of topics on the forum w/ players sharing & discussing practice routines, may find some useful stuff here:

https://forum.troygrady.com/search?q=practice%20routine

It’d be cool to see specific examples of different people’s interleaved practice routines, whether specific schedule or general outline of your approach. If anyone has something like this and would like to share please feel free!

[joshuaskaja]

anyone here have a method or suggestions to make up a schedule for something like this?

Doesn’t have to be super fancy. For example: Instead of playing the solo 10x in a row and thinking that you’ve got it, it’s helpful to then zoom out and practice it in the context of the whole song. From there it might make sense to zoom out further and come at it fresh—eg, after 20 minutes of unrelated stuff, can you still nail the trickiest bits of the song?

Unfortunately, there’s no good way to quantify or formalize this, particularly ahead of time. At least in my experience, it’s been more about monitoring my internal states, paying attention to when I’m hiding (repeating things I already have down simply because I enjoy playing them) and when I’m truly practicing (striving for things at the edge of my abilities).

I have reservations about the methodology of this recent study, but it suggests that the sweet spot for optimal learning is when you’re failing 15% of the time: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191105113457.htm

[Soussherpa]

Both of those are helpful, thanks.

Sherp