I understand the premise of your original post…
At mimimum, imo, it’s 2-3 hrs of focused technical practice, proper warm up, metronome…
I can swing that on the weekends. … more like 90m a night for me.
I like to rotate my practice materials, regimen so I don’t get stale…
yeah its all good. Its just sort of moot. Once you are born you are born lol. People learn at different paces etc
im not famous but I wouldnt want to trade with Eddie or Yngwie or Jimi or Jimmy. I havent had to sell my soul or make shady compromises either.
Back to the subject. I think the old USSR stuff I studied is very relevant because it dealt with repeated patterns. They only did TWO lifts in competition (after 1972 as u know). So they actually were quite concerned with grooving those patterns and how each exercise left “traces” on the central nervous system etc. They had varying ideas about how certain exercises could adversely affect the main ones. In general they dropped a lot of exercises coming into a competition
some similar ideas (interference etc) are spoken of in the interview Troy did with P Mazzoni.
some ideas I had, though I only thought about it for like 2 minutes so far lol:
group similar ideas together in one session. for example if u r going to work on sweeping licks also work on economy picking scales in that same session, since its a similar motion. Let those similar motions amplify the effect on the CNS. This would come into play especially when learning new stuff
when learning new licks, isolate that practice session to a degree. Play the lick or whatever for that session. Take a break. maybe play it more on a second session a bit later as opposed to playing 50 other things. Give that pattern a good strong chance to make some impression on the CNS
use a separate session for just jamming and exploring. since this will just put a million different confusing “traces” onto the CNS, isolate this type of session to itself. Learn the new ideas then drill them later on their own session
Nice post, JonJon. As we get older and can’t practice as many hours a week without incurring tendinitis or other injuries, it becomes more important than ever to practice intelligently - to make the most of our practice time. If something isn’t working, I’d advise to take some time to think about “What could I be doing differently” to master a certain technique or lick.
EDIT; I’m listening to a seminar where Arthur Jones was quoted as saying “It is only rational to use that which exists in limited supply as economically as possible.” So, we have to find ways to maximize the quality of our relatively limited practice hours!
that and also we need to be sort of hyper aware of stuff like hand and finger tension. I have been doing a lot of practicing lately and if im not careful I have a tendency to grip too tight and I feel the thumb muscles getting tired. Also when i improvise I tend to start getting too tight when going to stuff and it just gets sloppy. so lately I have been really working on relaxing at speed etc. Look how relaxed RG and Yngwie are.
one hour of knuckle busting and cramping or 3 hours of smooth easy playing?? not a hard choice lol
maybe some good stuff here. Dude also has the interview here at CTC
https://bulletproofmusician.com/about/
https://bulletproofmusician.com/how-many-hours-a-day-should-you-practice/
Sweden was socialist and there was no hard rock or heavy metal music on the radio there. It was a unfortunate place for an aspiring rock musician to be.
This isn’t relevant to the conversation at hand but it’s kind of funny how this has turned around. Sweden’s become a hotbed of heavy metal and guitar skill and the system in place over there actually supports music and the arts in big way. Bands have told me that they get paid government stipends and grants for rehearsal and touring. Most of the leaders in newer heavy metal/hard rock are Swedish these days.
That’s very cool!
Do you think Yngwie was a big inspiration for the kids there, like a national hero?
I’m curious as to how they went from not even having rock on the radio, or at least not stuff like Deep Purple to now being a hotbed of heavy metal. Is the government in Sweden just as socialist as it was in the 1970s?
There is a very interesting although short interview with Yngwie where he describes what Sweden was like when he was growing up and what the mentality of the people was. If you don’t mind, would you watch this short interview and then tell me how much it has changed from that very socialist mindset of that time? Thank you!
The set of talents that lead someone to untuitively or explicitly develop a system for overcoming mechanic hurdles is verydifferent from those required for following and applying instructional material. I’m saying that almost anyone can learn this stuff and successfully apply it to making music, not that everyone can spontaneously figure it out for themselves. After learning the system, it’s also pretty straightforward to modify it to your liking (i.e. innovate).
I can drive, even if I can’t design a car from the ground up, and I can modify a vehicle without inventing the automobile. The history of innovation on Earth is very often a system for making the abilities of geniuses available to everyone.
I’m also not saying there are not huge variations in ability, aptitude, interest, attitude, etc. across people. There certainly are. I’m saying that the distribution of those variations are not written in stone by genetics, even if they do have a genetic component. We can learn how to do things that don’t come naturally to us. That’s the whole idea behind education. Nobody is born with engineering skills. If you don’t pick them up intuitively, you can always learn them in school.
Finally, I don’t think ‘not wanting it bad enough’ is the reason people don’t advance technically (at least not always). I personally didn’t stick with an instrument that I sucked at for 30 years because of a lack of interest.
Obviously there are differences between natural ability. They’re just not that necessary. A lot of this guitar stuff just isn’t that hard, and you don’t need world-champion video game level hand-eye coordination to do it. Lots and lots of people can play the Yngwie six-note pattern at 200bpm perfectly cleanly, while moving across the strings. The difference is that Yngwie figured out how to do it on his own, and also wrote all this great music, and that’s what makes him the natural.
It takes Isaac Newton (and Liebniz!) to figure out calculus. It takes a smart high school student to pass a test on it.
tldr;
you have to practice about 25-26 hours a day… which means that Earth with its 24hrs day doesn’t fit for a guitarist. Which leads to a conclusion that Yngwie and Batio are aliens actually. I knew it!
Well, one thing about Yngwie that’s not mentioned is his love of Uli Jon Roth. Roth was doing Yngwie’s whole trip in the early - mid 70’s.
One listen to Sails of Charon, released in 1977, and you can see where Yngwie got pretty much his entire style from, so I think it’s disingenuous to suggest he created his approach to the instrument with no serious external influence beyond a Deep Purple record.
Then there’s Uli’s soloing on Catch Your Train, released in 1976, where he’s pretty much doing the same thing. So for sure, Yngwie had plenty of inspiration and straight up copping licks from Uli Jon Roth.
That said, this is a great discussion. There’s so much that goes into the things that you guys are talking about, but I think the conversation is straying away from its original intent. Not only did some of these players have innate abilities to progress faster on the instrument, but they were also in the right place at the right time to create everything from an incredible image, new recording techniques, changes in gear that facilitated the ability to play fast and clean (guitars that were better designed with lower action, advances in amplifier technology and the ability to produce smooth gain, etc.) EVH being a prime example of someone who brought in a completely new style of guitar that combined a Fender strat with the sonic capabilities of a Les Paul and getting the much-touted brown sound, which made for a smoother, cleaner distortion.
But the ability to reach the heights technically or even melodically as our favorite players, does not mean that you are going to be a spark plug for an entirely new style of playing, image and songwriting.
And in general, most of the players we’re talking about here did spend a tremendous amount of time with a guitar in their hands. People like Paul Gilbert, Jason Becker, Vinnie Moore and of course Rhoads, Van Halen and Yngwie, all had a formative period where they practiced a good 8 to 10 hours a day.
and who showed him how to pick it all??? lol
Uli is great but Yngwie kind of tripled or quadrupled Uli’s technique
Of course, he had to figure it out for himself exactly how to play it, but my point is that he did not exist in a vacuum.
I do agree he certainly took Uli’s technique further, but if you listen to Uli, it’s really not that much further. Uli was pretty fully formed long before Yngwie came out.
I am decidedly a post-EVH guitar player. I started playing in 1982 when I was 14 and my favorite players and inspirations were Van Halen and Rhoads.
Due to my age at the time, I was not really into the earlier Scorpions stuff, although I did really dig Love Drive which is mostly Michael Schenker. I was more into the post Blackout Scorpions with Matthias Jabs. And of course I was totally into Yngwie when he came out. But years later when I finally went back to the earlier Scorpions stuff and heard Sails of Charon, I was kind of blown away by how it was pretty much Yngwie’s entire bag of tricks in a single song, more or less.
agree to disagree. Thats kind of like saying EVH didnt take Claptons style that much further
Well, I don’t think those two are comparable. Clapton inspired Eddie Van Halen, but EVH sounds absolutely nothing like Clapton. Yngwie sounds a lot like Uli Jon Roth. But certainly I don’t actually disagree with that. He did take it considerably further of course, I’m just saying I myself was pretty surprised at how good Uli really sounded for 1976.
Not to mention my point is less about their exact technical abilities, it’s more about the entire sound and style. The harmonic minor scales, the phrygian dominant, the arpeggios, the dark, classical influence. Now if you wanted to take Blackmore and say that Yngwie quadrupled him, that I would definitely agree with. But just to be clear I’m not really in disagreement with you. Yes Yngwie took Uli’s style considerably further, but if you go back and listen to Uli, he was incredibly technically-advanced for his time, also considering the gear that he was using.
I thinks Sails of Charon is great and I can see the connection, but it’s an exaggeration to say that it has Yngwie’s entire bag of tricks for my money. It definitely points to what he would do but substantially different in phrasing, technique and context. That’s just me though…
yeah, Blackmore was like a Neanderthal compared to Yngwie (and I love Rainbow and D.P. btw)
I just cringe when I see “bag of tricks” applied to Yngwie. uggh. Dude was a master musician. unfortunate choice of words I guess
Thank u. My thoughts exactly.
Oh dude definitely. I absolutely love Yngwie, think he’s one of the greatest guitarists of all time. He’s one of my guitar gods for sure. I’m sure we would be in agreement on most everything about him. Not to mention it’s a little difficult to have this conversation writing back and forth, the medium is limited. I’m sure if we sat down and had an actual face-to-face talk about this we could go on for hours and find ourselves mostly in agreement.
That said I don’t necessarily find the term bag of tricks to be demeaning. Every guitar player has their vocabulary, their licks, their tricks, their abilities. That’s all I meant. But I could see how you might feel it suggests some sort of charlatan, but that was not my intention.
And yes when I said that there was a bit of hyperbole in there for sure.
yeah i remember when i first actually heard the early Scorpions stuff. i was like “wtf?”…all those fast clean scales back when people were considering Clapton to be a god lol
Well Uli was way ahead of his time for sure. Its odd how many people say Yngwie ripped off Ritchie lol. Uli was so far ahead of Ritchie its not even funny.
I have seen Ritchies comments on Yngwie, it would be interesting to see what Uli has had to say about Yngwie