Question for Troy on Practice Time

General Music Discussion
#62

By “the question” I take it you mean your question. It certainly wasn’t the question asked in the OP.

I don’t know you so I can’t answer your question. I can tell you that the people who have become “guitar heroes”, rock and jazz guitarists with state of the art technique who have become legends all put in that kind of time at some point in their development as guitarists.

Practice time is the subject of the thread. The OP has been so derailed at this point (60 replies into it) that I think it bears repeating:

“Troy, just curious since you’ve interviewed so many world class players. Have you interviewed anyone who has not put in 8+ hours a day practice at some point in their career? It seems that almost everyone I’ve researched with extraordinary technique has put in these type of hours at some point. Usually in their teen years. Just wondering if you’ve run into anyone who hasn’t. Thanks!”

What a roundabout way this thread has been to basically say “No.”

I strongly suggest watching this:

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#63

But motivation causes the time consideration to disappear, John McLaughlin said that his mother had to take the guitar out of his hands at night after he fell asleep and that his fingers would bleed he played so much. The time let’s say 8 hours is a byproduct of motivation not the cause of greatness. That is my point I mean aren’t we about creativity even in our dialogue about art itself. I am saying this not only to you one person but to those who might read this thread and perhaps taking it to much as the truth of what would cause mastery in itself for anyone famous or not. I will leave it at that.

#64

I think it is being taken too obviously for granted that everybody who wants to learn to play an instrument is interested in being “great”.

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#65

it is sort of implied that most of this crowd wants to take things to a high level. This is why we are here arguing over esoteric points lol. Most of us have that little yellow dot by our names which means we pay hard cash in the hopes of finding some small bits of information that will further unlock the mysteries to us

the crowd who doesnt want to be great at anything are those I see who play 5 hours of candy crush on their phone everyday

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#66

In my opinion, trying to calculate from first principles how much one should practice would have limited practical value, even if it was possible (I’m not even getting into the minefield of defining what practice is).

So I prepared a little flowchart to summarise my view:

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flowchart.001.jpeg1024×768 94.6 KB

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#67

I just try to be a bit better today than I was yesterday, that’s all.

#68

Do you have a Patreon I can donate to?

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#69

Touche’! I admit I may have been a bit smart-assy in the above post :sweat_smile:

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#70

Nah, I thought it was funny. We needed the comedic break in this thread lol.

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#71

I love this flow-chart! :rofl: That’s basically how I look at it too.

I guess what I’d be curious to know, if we had the time and ability to study this properly, is whether it’s the time spent, or the consistency, that makes hardcore practice regimes like these effective. In other words, is it the fact that you’re putting in say 4-8 hours a day the important part, or is it the fact that you’re playing every single day the part that really reaps dividends?

My gut-level guess, and literally this is no more than a guess, is that the extra time helps, but you’d going to get a sizable portion of the benefit if you just manage to get a solid one hour of practice a day, day after day after day. Essentially, that it’s allowing no more than 24 hours to go by before you go back to trying to burn a series of movements back into your muscle memory is the part that really helps you build ability. That’s no more than a guess, though, though it’s in part supported by the fact that I’ve made a lot of progress in the past 6 months where predominantly I haven’t had time for more than the occasional practice/playing session stretching more than 1-2 hours.

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#72

“Tommo is empowering guitar players…” :grin:

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#73

A lot of this discussion is ignoring the role of teaching/coaching. Whether the OP intended it or not, discussions of practice time often have a subtext of “if you aren’t getting results, it’s because you just aren’t putting in enough work”. I suspect there are many guitarists who fail to get the results they want despite putting in ridiculous amounts of work.

I think there are a lot of parallels between developing picking ability, and developing golf ability. Tiger Woods famously put in tons of hours of practice from an early age, but it wasn’t self directed. He’s had multiple coaches over the years (including his father), and importantly: he still uses coaches. As the revised saying goes: “It’s not ‘practice makes perfect’, it’s 'practice makes permanent”. There are thousands of amateur golfers who suck pretty badly despite putting in a whole lot of hours, and it’s largely because they refuse to pay for expert instruction. Maybe there have been a few “naturals” over the years, but as with guitar, it’s conceivable that some folks have the combination of athletic intuition and luck that will have them fall into solid technique by chance. In particular, I think many “self-directed” learners fall into the trap of narrowing their range of experimentation as a result of well-meaning but flawed advice, or naive attempts to mimic experts from observation, i.e. “George Benson holds the pick this way, so that’s the way I have to do it if I ever want to be able to play similar lines.”

Even if we accept that some form of intensive practice stage is necessary at some point in a guitarist’s development, anecdotal evidence from guys like Carl Miner suggest that that kind of effort doesn’t need to be sustained for 5 years or longer in order to make a breakthrough. Miner and several others have described periods of a year or two, or even a single summer, where they hunkered down and came out the other side with a technique that hasn’t changed much since then.

Another analogy is performing memorization feats. Someone can spend 8 hours a day for a year trying to “brute force” their way into getting good at memorizing 50 digit numbers, but their performance will be inferior to someone who spends 15 minutes per day practicing the “mnemonic major system” for memorizing sequences of numbers (either because they heard/read about it, or had the good fortune to re-invent a similar system for themselves). Maybe a small percentage of “brute force practicers” would stumble into re-inventing the mnemonic major system somewhere along the way, but that falls more into the “intuitive genius who stumbles into the solution” category rather than the “putting in big hours is the only way forward” category.

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#74

And yet there’s still no reason to believe that 8-hour practice sessions are the cause of this sort of ability, since a mutual cause of the two is completely plausible (that is to say, if you love guitar enough you’re probably going to lose track of time while playing, and teenagers often have a lot of free time on their hands anyway). No amount of vociferous longposting will demonstrate conclusively that the causal relationship works the way you want it to.

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#75

This actually held me up as a kid a lot. I read somewhere that in order to alternate pick fast you had to hold your pick like SO and only pick with wrist deviation, etc., etc., and put in 8-hour marathon metronome sessions for months trying to make this work. It sorta-kinda did, but… it hurt and it didn’t sound good, nor did it work particularly well for rhythm lines.

Contrast this to this past month of me doing unfocused exploration (often while watching TV) when I have time and making significant, noticeable gains without really trying all that hard.

#76

Thanks, @Acecrusher. This thread has definitely gone its own direction. :joy: I do appreciate all the responses, though.

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#77

Glad to see that I’m not the only one here who thinks too much :rofl:

#78

this is actually the crux of the matter and this is a valid point but it DOESNT diminish the importance of overall time spent

2hr > 1hr

1hr in a morning session + 1hr in an evening session > 2hrs at once

1hr 2x per day > 30min 2x per day

It has been amply proven in sports training that multiple sessions are better than one big session. But again that doesnt take away from TOTAL time having an effect

its not hard to picture young Eddie and young Yngwie days as kids and teens. Play a while, go play football, play more, go play soccer, play a while, eat dinner, play more etc

Its all about leaving “traces” on the central nervous system.

Easy way to implement this on guitar, even with only a little time? Easy. Do your playing at night. Next morning upon waking (set clock back 15-20 minutes if needed) pick that one pattern you are focusing on and do it for about 10 minutes. IMO this is a good time to do it slow and perfectly, since u will only be half awake anyway hehe

but you get the idea. instead of your “consistent once every 24 hr” imprint, make that once every 12 hrs of at least SOME playing

its like pumping up a tire. dont let it go all the way flat before putting some air back in

#79

Yeah, but that’s exactly the question here, for me. If 2 1-hour sessions in one day is better than 1 2-hour session… Then at what point does that become an equivalency? is it 2.5 hours? 3 hours? And is that relationship linear? I.e - for those of us crunched for time, is four 15 minute sessions spread out across the day more effective thann one 2 hour session, even though it’s only half the total time? Or are 4 15 minute sessions better than 1.5 hours unbroken, but not 2?

This is what I basically have to do by necessity - practice at night after work before or after dinner, andf then pick up the guitar for a couple minutes before I leave for work. :smiley:

Overthinking is one of my favorite past-times! :smiley:

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#80

I can definitely spend 10+ hours a day practicing (not playing) guitar. But only maybe 2 - 2.5 hours would be pure technique, diminished returns mostly due to mental and physical tiredness.

I can do 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the evening, but there is rarely need for this - and time :slight_smile:

#81

This is probably what I seem to do. Generally I spend ~2 hours on average practicing about 4-6x per week. That’s not all picking technique (obviously) but also includes Chords, Comping over tunes, reading lead sheets, on top of the scale/arpeggio practice and then some random noodling throughout.

Recently I’ve been working more on using passing diminished chords for comping and then trying to create movement within each chord during the progression ala Barry Harris.

Edit: also I think worrying about the total amount of practice time you’re spending is a bit of paralysis by analysis. Just practice- if you end up spending 3 hours doing 1 thing but if you were entirely focused, having fun, and lost track of time then I say that is practice well spent. Music is also about enjoying what you play (and this includes the process that you go through). If you only practiced 15 minutes and can’t seem to get your head into it then move onto something else and come back later (possibly a later day).

Can you play what you want to play?
Is it a theoretical issue? then learn the theory: be able to analyze the chord progression, know what Scales go over the Progression (what a major/harmonic minor/melodic Minor scale do I need), what are the notes and the arpeggios of those scales, how do those notes and arpeggios relate to the chord and which ones would make sense to use in order to outline the changes.

Is it a technical issue? keep practicing and see if you can figure it out. If you still can’t get it then record your technique and post a clip to see if something is wrong. Experiment with grip, arm position and picking mechanics until something clicks. Once it clicks can you consistently recreate that feeling?

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