Practice Routine Organization Poll

Playing Technique
#1

Just curious about a simple issue and this group, 3 question poll:

  1. Roughly how much time per day or week do you spend actively practicing guitar? That is - intentionally trying to work on some type of skill, as opposed to just noodling around for fun, or jamming with others, etc.

  2. Of that time, how much of it is spent on speed/technique related work? Or just anything involving playing something at a faster tempo.

  3. Of the time that’s not spent on #2, what are the other musical activities?

Thanks

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Looking for help to develop a practice routine
Daily Practice Routine For Technique
Practice Schedule
#2

  1. For picking… the max would be 30 minute per day. For me, it starts to get very tedious spending more time than that on a skill… and I feel like there are diminishing returns.

  2. At the moment, I’m spending very little time trying to play fast… or speeding up an existing skill. I am just trying to clean up my picking technique at slower speeds (16th notes at 110 - 150 bpm).

  3. Picking things that are traditionally very tough. Awkward string-hopping, odd-note rolls, ascending 3’s with caged patterns, double-string-hopping, etc.

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#3

Thanks Hamsterman, interesting. So nothing for ear training, chords, transcription, rhythm, etc?

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#4

oh, I thought you were just talking about picking. Yes, I do other types of practicing… same as others. But I tend to focus on one thing at a time. So maybe I’ll just work on legato for a few weeks… and then go back to picking. Or maybe i’ll just play through random songs for a while… or maybe I will just focus on theory for a period of time.

It’s not the best way to learn… but I am just not very good at multi-tasking anymore

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#5

I have musical goals, things that I want to improve, learn or develop. I then set out to practice/build the required skills for the goals I wish to reach. Going back to the foundation first if the foundation needs repair (any bad habits?) For example, I noticed my legato was a little sloppy, so instead of working on legato, I figured out what it was that was making it sloppy. then spent 30 minutes each day working on right hand hybrid picking and left hand hammer/pull on/offs (each). For speed, I realized my right hand picking technique had limitations, and upon finding this site, I started with the Primer, and worked each section in order (now going into the TWPS section), I spend at appx. 1 hr per day on DWPS, UWPS and now into the TWPS, with at least 15 minutes on each type, using the pdf files from the lessons. Chordal work, I currently am studying Three Note Voicings and Beyond by Randy Vincent. I work on material from that in the mornings as I’m up at 5:30 a.m. and don’t have to be anywhere until 8 a.m. I’ll spend at least 30 minutes on that. I’m also working on Tim Millers Creative Arpeggio Design program. This allows me to practice the hybrid picking I worked on earlier in the year. as well as the intended purpose of his program. Other skills/techniques I work on may vary depending on what I’m wanting to brush up on, such as tapping, sweeping or just having fun playing, this I’ll spend 30 minutes plus on. So overall, I’ll put in about 2 hours each day, sometimes a little more, sometimes less. Practice is specfic. My work schedule is spread out throughout the day, and I’m working about 60 hrs/week running an international online and local classroom education service. I keep the material I want to practice or learn available on my computer screen as well as on my portable hard drive, as well as keeping a guitar by my desk. If I have a 30 minute slot available, often I’ll use it to practice. The book Getting Things Done, by David Allen, as well as having studying Richard Koch and Perry Marshall’s writings on the 80/20 Principle/Pareto Principle and applying that to my practice has allowed me plenty of time to practice each day, even though my work days are sometimes long. Regarding speed of picking, I use a metronome but not 100% of the time. It’s more to ensure accuracy, speed being a byproduct of accuracy.

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#6

I practice guitar 4 days a week since I have two jobs as well as train and (assistant) coach a competitive boxing team. Each practice session lasts about 2-3 hours. These practice sessions focus mostly on technique. Each one focuses mostly on one aspect: sweeping, tapping arpeggios, economy picking or more recently, 2WPS. I practice song passages that focus on these techniques. My main sources for these exercises are Paul Wardingham’s instrumental song tabs as well as his two tutorials (20 metal licks + 20 epic licks, JTC website). Occasionally, for example when I’m in a rut, I will randomly switch one of these sessions to focus on “ear training”, e.g. learning a Per Nilsson solo by ear.

Sidenote: I don’t dedicate time to practice my legato, mostly because my legato skills are at the level I need them to be, which is probably due to practicing Joe Satriani and Alex Skolnick licks like crazy during the 1990s.

My takeways: take frequent short breaks to maintain concentration, academic exercises don’t motivate me for long, therefore I focus on playing technical instrumental pieces that I like. Switching things up helps getting out of a rut. For example, instead of doing a technical practice session, I sometimes like to improvise on a backing track, record it, and listen for stuff that I could re-use later in compositions. Taking the time to go see a show also helped me in the past. Case in point, I was in a rut at the beginning of the summer; I decided to go see Plini in concert. The energy and the fact that I met fellow guitarists helped rejuvenate my playing/motivation.

Excluding these 4 technical sessions, I also try to do a 2-3 hours composition/recording session every 2 weeks.

Additionally, for the past 2 months, I’ve decided to stop wasting my mornings and some work breaks checking my phone. I’ve replaced that by reading on music theory. Since my theory knowledge has been patchwork, I’m restarting from the basics with the books “Fretboard Theory (vol 1-2)” and “Guitar theory for dummies”. When I’m sufficiently far into theory, I’ll complement it with “Modern recording techniques”.

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#7

Wow, boxing :open_mouth: !

Are you not afraid for your precious guitar hands?

Thanks for the Wardingham suggestions by the way, it sounds like the kind of thing I’d enjoy practicing :+1:

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#8

Hehe :slight_smile: Weirdly enough my only hand injuries were the result of moving furniture or basketball.

My pleasure for the Wardingham suggestion. Besides being fun to listen to, his stuff is the right combination of fun to play and challenging, for my tastes anyhow.

I’m currently working on the solo (at around 3:00) from “The End is the Beginning”.

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#9
  • Roughly how much time per day or week do you spend actively practicing guitar? That is - intentionally trying to work on some type of skill, as opposed to just noodling around for fun, or jamming with others, etc.

Bare minimum 2-4 hours a day as a regular thing and up to 8 hours (legitimate, not bullshit) on more extreme days. This is with having a full-time job and dating a girl and exercising. No exceptions, so if I have to wake up at 5:30 AM or go to bed super late then so be it. I am somewhat skeptical of guys like Rick Graham and others who claimed 10 hours a day at their peak. I managed to do 3 days of 8 hours-ish in a row and wanted to die. I do not think it is possible to sustain that focused concentration for weeks, let alone months or years. Probably a starry-eyed romantic exaggeration on their part. But whatever, it gets them views and makes them seem super hardcore, which I would argue is a large part of actively viewing a lot of these virtuosos on YouTube instead of practicing. It’s very vicarious.

  • Of that time, how much of it is spent on speed/technique related work? Or just anything involving playing something at a faster tempo.

Right now? Nearly 100%. I drilled one-string tremolo picking for a year straight and saw insane results. During that time I learned metal riffs as a “treat” every week to keep my sanity. I wanted to make sure I permanently buried the problem.

I am currently wrapping up The Pop Tarts Lick which I managed to get at 220-230 BPM yesterday, but it’s more reliable around 200-210 BPM clean and with no timing errors. I would like to do the Pepsi Lick next but it sounds pretty vanilla so ideally I’d like something more useful in an impro or band setting. All I care about now is technique and it’s been that way for a long while.

  • Of the time that’s not spent on #2, what are the other musical activities?

I don’t know if this counts because metal is so technique-focused that its more or less inextricably bound to what most would consider technical practice.

Writing death metal and black metal riffs and learning songs by the black metal band Emperor based on their Scattered Ashes tab book. I’ve learned the song below in its entirety note-for-note which really is a true test of tremolo picking endurance. I am deciding where to go next. I wish CtC had more metal focused stuff.

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