This… if you are stuck at a plateau that is the only way really.
However, I would hazard a guess that there is always 1 or 2 things that we spend a lot of time doing, whether we mean to or not. Often I use a lick as a test to see if things have generally improved. This is fine, but I can get sucked into playing it waaaay too much. If I’m lucky I will catch myself and make sure that I experiment with it rather than mindlessly repeat (as I have already done for eternity).
I’m not saying that if you obsessively do something you won’t make any progress, but I find that much of my progress in any one sitting is not retained for the next
I don’t think practicing just 1 thing is good for your soul - in fact it is very boring indeed and can be a form of procrastination.
That being said, why not put it to the test with one lick? Give it a sizable chunk of your time over the next month and have a few other things that you can do for some more randomized practice - mark your progress with both areas and see where you are at in a month. Makes for an interesting experiment. This isn’t a very scientific test seeing as one act might positively affect the outcome of the other, but If you get the results you want, then all is good!
I give an example of a friend of mine (of course it’s me):
At the moment I often practice crosspicking roll patterns in the evening in front of the tv.
I almost always start out with bouncy motions, tweak little setup things, try to make widerand flatter motions and after a while (maybe 30 minutes) I usually get it a lot smoother and faster.
Now: This might be the thing that @Troy describes as “clicking”. This click creates the urge to repeat that lick, pattern or whatever for at least an hour to burn it in.
Did you also do that? does this extra hour produce results? Or is “the click” itself already all you need to progress?
The thing is: The next evening I usually start bouncing again. I usually already know what to change to get better results, but it takes a while to wash away the bouncing. Probably it’s not string hopping but more of a 9 to 12 motion than a 9 to 2 motion.
To take the “does the extra hour produce results?” a little further - can the extra hour actually hurt your progress? Lets assume that after that extra hour your hands and mind are fatigued, you get a little sloppy/bouncy at the end and you finish. Have you left your body remembering that end point (where it was less than perfect) and not ‘the click’ itself? If you stopped at your very best version of the picking motion with no bounce, would that have burned in better and allow your body/unconcious learning to assimilate that perfect motion ready for next time.
In the moment yes - a lick…but its more micro…I’m more focused trouble shooting a move (e.g. changing strings after a downstroke on an adjacent higher string). So I might branch that out to multiple note choices on different strings and in different parts of the neck. I would never really just repeat a lick…although the smaller the phrase the more a ‘lick’ and a mechanic will sound the like the same thing (i.e. two notes descending followed by a string change).
Yes, me too, that’s why asked about the experiences of other players.
About your assumption:
As the motion is usually smooth after that initial phase, the extra hour is not really driven by “I have to repeat this a lot to remember it” but mostly because it’s fun and makes me happy that I found it. So I usually continue doing it cause it’s fun. As for the body fatigue, I sometimes get a feeling in the “extension muscle” the next day. It’s not pain in a bad way but more like the feeling you get, when you were working out and goes away rather quickly.
But the unanswered question if it makes sense to repeat the motion once you found it would really have an important effect on practice efficiency.
Funny enough what I described usually is true for specific combinations. Nailing the backward roll does not necessarily mean that I instantly can do the forward roll.
But: Are you saying (and I’m afraid I arleady know the answer) that directly after “nailing” the backward roll instead of enjoying the “flow” I should instantly try to transfer the setup and smoothness of the motion to the forward roll, other combinations or “The Sweet home alabama from hell”-Riff ?
There are ways to make repeating one thing over and over again not be like repeating one thing over and over again (let’s say, playing the Paul Gilbert lick all day, but in different positions, in different keys, with different dynamics, different phrasing).
There are ways to make repeating one thing over and over again carry over to other things (mindfully paying close attention to articulation, cleanness of fretting, similarity between sound achieved and sound desired).
Equally there are ways you could no doubt make repeating the same thing completely worthless (for example, choosing to repeat something you either can already do really well, or something you don’t know how to do at all).
My suggestion would be that you pick an exercise, and play it for 5 minutes every time you feel like making this thread again.
Right, that’s important. The one-thing-only approach doesn’t mean mindless repetition - the point of such singular focus is supposed to get you to make constant discoveries and adjustments. Very important point you’re making.
Good suggestion; I’m in the process of this now. It’s those nagging voices I hear, though - like you said, ‘this is so boring!’ - that I’m fighting against.
I.e. you put the lick under a microscope; you’re not just playing a ‘lick,’ but examining its small details. This really speaks to me. I’m working on a simply set of chord changes right now, but it’s not improving much. Then I realized… there are lots of little things wrong with it. The lick is the forest, and those little problems are the trees. I was too involved with the forest and missing the trees - and of course, thinking all the while that since it’s a “lick” that I’m working on, that I’m doing ‘trees.’ No, I wasn’t.
Excellent point; thanks for that.
I totally hear that - but I think you’re talking about something different there. That’s about discovering an efficient/correct mechanical motion. I’m talking about smoothing off rough edges in one’s playing. But I’m glad you made the point, because it’s important to know that if you try that discovering-mechanics approach on a smoothing-rough-edges problem, you are actually engaged in inefficient repetition.
If you’re into the one-thing-only approach (which I sorta think I am), this is another good point. To stave off insanity, as well as provide some necessary variety to your hands, move that lick around. I am doing that with Tommo’s 6s etude (easy to do, as it’s just a repeating pattern in multiple positions). So I hope to be able to report back on progress, with your point in mind.
Now about that graphic, @guitarenthusiast - what I see is that the most light is shooting out of that last guy’s head - so he must be doing it right! Right?
…I know it’s hard to see this, but I actually am making useful discoveries for my practicing through the kind of back-and-forth you see in this thread. It has something to do with the Socratic method holding sway in my community… hard to explain, but if it tires anyone out, I’m of course not offended by you just ignoring the thread altogether. If you’re not - thanks for your contributions. They really are helpful to me.
No, I think also for the purposes of “consolidation”, some form of variation is good.
Again, you will keep some variable constant (e.g., single escape) and play around with the others (triplets / 16ths, scales/arpeggios, riffs / solos etc.)
Edit: In particular it was not my intention to imply the sentence below - I’m not sure i fully understand what you mean. But if you are saying: repeat a lot of the same thing to smooth out the rough edges - I’d say again no, still add variety wherever possible.
Not sure if you’re referring to me by using “he”, but neither did I create this thread nor am I sure that the question if the initial discovery of a functional motion is already enough for learning or if further repetition, be it with variation or not, helps with consolidation of that motion is fully understood.
Yes, I usually visit this forum when taking a break from my work and yes, my discussion might sound theoretical. That’s pretty much what you would expect from an engineer
Nevertheless I wouldn’t bring that topic up if I weren’t interested in how to best consolidate successful attempts at an efficient motion. Afterall that’s what forums are made for.
I take your point, @tommo . Even if one subscribes to this one-thing-only approach (for lack of a better term), some degree of variety is helpful and maybe even necessary.
I would add, though, that if you understand the nature of this approach, you have to be careful that you add variety without compromising the laser-focus on singularity. It’s a balancing act. Again - if you subscribe. One-thing-only isn’t everyone’s cup of tea.
I was responding to this, albeit poorly:
Finding an effective motion (viz. USX or DSX) is often instantaneous (though its perfection is the ‘long- tail’). That’s an important idea, and a worthwhile conversation. But what I wanted to get at with this thread is something that’s not instantaneous, nor related to the ‘a-ha’ motion discovery - namely, how do you take a mediocre skill and make it excellent?
And regarding analysis-paralysis… Yeah, I know I look like the poster boy for that. But to be honest, at this point I should have just given up. I’m sure the vast majority of people who get as little satisfaction from their playing as I do, and whose skill level is as stuck as mine, just throw in the towel. I’m not going to change my avatar here to Very Slow Hand. I’ll quit guitar first;)
What stands between me and walking away, at this point, is the dogged determination to figure out not why I’m so mediocre - but why my practicing is so mediocre.
(If I were good at practicing - my playing would improve! That’s the assumption I’m working with. So if I’m stuck, it’s either a patience thing and/or a bad practicing thing. That’s the mission I’m on - to figure that out. It’s either that, or the old Squier Strat staying put on the wall, a painful reminder of how I used to be into guitar.)
Just to redirect a little, and taking into consideration @Thegent’s point: read the above, “one-thing-almost-only.” Of course you didn’t play nothing at all but ‘the lick’ for 3 months. I’m asking, did anyone spend a major chunk of practice time daily (ideally most of it) on that ‘one’ thing? [Sounds so far like a few of you might have.]
Why not post some videos showing where you are at?I’m sure that would shed light on things. If you are as bad at practicing as you say, you aren’t going to acheive by practicing a little or a lot. In many of your posts, as intersting as they are, you are seeking to quantify everything and that doesn’t really help - its a fools errand. You poll 100 guitarist, you will get at least 10 different anecdotal answers- none of which will get you focusing on the things that you need to fix. Its probably something that needs fixing regardless of whether its in all licks, not just 1, 2 or more.
We need videos to tell you that. No amount of ‘wall of texting’ is going to solve any of this. You need first hand analysis of something.
What’s ‘mediocre/bad’ for you? ‘my practicing is mediocre’ could mean a million different things. Post the video. That’s where everyone should start. That’s your literal homework assignment now!
What is your endgoal? Learning a fast motion? Playing Boogie Shred? Pitch perfect bends from the Comfortably Numb solo? Learning all the notes on the neck? Like, without an end goal… practicing is just flogging a bunch of indifferent horses. Sure you might get somewhere but, why would you want to do that?
EDIT - I did some homework
I see you posted a critique thread already. Checked into the videos. Dr. JB (definitely not a doctor or even a particularly good player) would suggest that you’ve not yet discovered a fast or efficient motion. The tremolo picking you’ve done is not fully locked in yet. So the minute you try and go for fast, you’re basically throwing a multitude of things up in the air and hoping you’re able to catch them all on a serving tray ready to plate, you know?
@Tom0711 I think it helps retain it in your memory (my pinky does this, I focus on this shape then X, pick this one part extra hard, etc), but I don’t think it necessarily makes the quality of your playing better? I’ve gotten hard riffs down in the past, then stop playing them. If I try to play them again I need to work out the “kinks” I had originally found (an example is @tommo putting me on the spot in a livestream practice to do Universal Mind, but I hadn’t played that riff since I posted a video here last year, was a trainwreck).
I think it can start “burning in” “bad technique” that might creep in if you keep going past a point of technique deterioration (tired, not focused, whatever). This is also why I advocate to not push your guitar playing if you’re not feeling it.
@Prlgmnr@guitarenthusiast I’ve told @Yaakov before that he’s getting into his head about preparing the perfect practice (alliteration points) instead of just going for it and trying to make small victories.
