Uh-oh - am I drinking the Kool-Aid?! (re: practicing)

Playing Technique
#41

It’s a good suggestion, but like @JB_Winnipeg says, I already have regarding USX. Right now I’m around 96 bpm with my left hand on a sixes etude, but only 78ish as I ascend the neck. The fingers actually move better when spread out (Scott Tenant, classical guitar guy, talks about this; he’s right), and from fret 10 or so on up the frets get a bit cramped.

My right hand trem is around 180 now, with better evenness than in the video. Not lightning speed, but good enough to play the sixes thing at my goal of 100 (Tommo recorded it at 120, but sixes at 100 is too fast for hopping, so it’s a decent goal for now). When the left is more consistent across positions, I’ll work on synch.

So you see - I do have a clue about the way forward with USX;)

It’s actually the most pleasing part of my practice, because I know where I’m trying to go and what to do (I think) to get there. But many - most, I’d say - aspects of guitar are not as cut-and-dried when it comes to improvement as single-escape is. (I said cut-and-dried, not easy. The Pickslanting Primer is hard work, but find a motion, find some speed and synch up is not exactly a process shrouded in mystery. Thanks to Troy.)

When it comes to lots of other things… That’s where the one-thing-only deal intrigues me. I’ll repeat: not because it’s repetitious, and I have some strange fascination with repetition. But because - thanks to some posts to this thread - I’m starting to see that that approach works because when you drill on a lick for hours on end, you’re forced to examine the minute details. And that may be where the progress is actually made.

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#42

Meant for me? You have the time to watch me play rhythm on Peace of Mind, just the way you would have heard your junior high band play it at a sock hop?:wink: (I have actually been to a sock hop. It was retro already in the '80s, but I say that counts.)

Anyway, Tommo, how do we change my avatar to Very Slow Hand…? (Then I can go on posting wild, highfalutin guitar theories a while longer before everyone here’s onto me…)

#43

@Yaakov meant for you in both ways: stream your own or jump into one of mine!

Edit: I’d watch it.

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#44

That’s a good point! Pratice strategies are better discussed with an actual practical example in mind. A livestream could be good for this because it allows for real time questions as well as the demonstration of actual musical examples and practice methods.

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#45

I’m willing to bet that more often than not, its the opposite. Can you you really maintain hyperfocus on the minute details of a lick that you have played for an hour or more? Its like a word that you say multiple times in short succession and then forget its meaning. I can’t see how you are forced to do anything - myself as an example, it creates a scenario where I’m less focused and experimental, often accepting a lesser quality in the hope that if I do enough, something will magically materialize later.

I’m not saying that it can’t be done, but the more I think of my progress made so far, most have come from a healthy/playful sense of experimentation and happened in a short, punctuated spaces of time.

#46

Yes if you feel motivated / alert / not tired.

I actually said this exact same thing in the last stream! The phrase started to “disassociate” with my playing, albeit this was about an hour and 30 minutes in.

#47

Interesting (genuinely). What are the things that you find at minute 45-60 that you don’t at minute 10 or 20? What is it that you can micromanage differently?

(Or am I missing the point here and you are intentionally playing the lick well everytime?)

#48

@Pepepicks66 says yes; that’s good enough for me;) But I take your point, and I wasn’t being clear enough.

Trying to say this… I sat down with the chord progressions that I’ve been playing so-so, and took notes. I realized that I don’t have “a” problem with the progressions - I have about 13. Literally. Not fingertip muting the E string; missing the E string with the pick (because I’m stopping the previous chord with my picking hand); poor chord change after a big position shift, etc., etc.

So I can one-thing-only focus on this song now, and in reality it will be each of these 13 things in some kind of rotation. That could take some time. But hopefully by the end, I’ll have a solid song to show for the work.

That’s what I think is meant by one-thing-only focus.

@Thegent seems to have drunk some of the same Kool-Aid… Do I have it somewhat right?

#49

@PickingApprentice I hate to keep plugging the stream but I literally started doing them to speak out loud the things that I find / change while practicing. Off the top of my head I wasn’t curling the last joint of my index finger as much as I normally do I think, and might have been holding the pick too far forward. I also only stopped because my wife needed me to be quiet for a meeting, but I could’ve probably kept going at it for at least another 30 minutes.

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#50

This is probably a joke but I’ve also said that everyone is different! Lol

#51

If ‘drinking the kool-aid’ means hammering away at the same lick for hours - no. As a former string hopper…yes…much kool-aid.

I will say there needs to be context here - it took a long time for me to work out the ‘sting hopping’ baggage I had earned…so in the novice stage (trying to find, then bake in a decent fast/smooth motion) yes - I hammered away at that for months…not only did I need to find a motion, I needed to figure out how to learn technique. The forum was helpful here…the same advice over and over is kinda…necessary in hindsight.

I know better now and wouldn’t teach/advise someone to hammer away at anything for hours and hours - particularly with technique development. I just needed a taste of success to trust the process.

#52

I was getting at the fact that we both seem to have imbibed some of this one-thing-only philosophy in the same cyber-place.

But no, not massive reps for discovering mechanical things like USX. That’s so pre-CTC.

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#53

yep - doing this right now for an Yngwie Alcatrazz lick. It is actually an approx. 53 note sequence.

It is a very, very difficult lick. I have been working on it for 6 months now. Just one lick. Most days I will try spend an hour or so on it. I have really enjoyed the challenge.

To make it interesting I record take after take in my DAW - then slow it down to see how close I am getting.

My goal is to record me playing the lick so closely that it syncs to the recording. And that it is so precise that if you slow it down it sounds as good as Yngwie 's slowed down.

By the way I have not heard anyone do this for this lick. That is why I am doing it - to see if it can be done.

Have I improved? Yep sure have. I wouldn’t say this is mindless repetition. Quite the opposite. It is forensically analysed repetition.

I couldn’t tell you how many reps I have done- if you average 200 takes a day over 6 months playing 25 days a month - probably in the vicinity of 30 000 (could be a lot higher up to 50000 I guess). But like I said - that is not that much - because I have been analysing a lot of the takes. If you just belted it out for 2 hours a day the rep count would be WAY higher.

If I get it to CTC forum standard I am happy with I will post a take. It is getting close.

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#54

Did you always record it? I.e do you have your 1st ever take on file? I would be very interested to hear the comparison to now… what the 6 months progress gave you.

What makes it a difficult lick? (beyond the obvious that its YJM lol)

Edit: forgot to add - have you experienced progress in other areas of you playing and other licks - ‘has the rising tide raised all ships?’ so to speak.

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#55

Awesome! This is exactly what I’m talking about. It’s reminiscent of Clapton - he talks about recording himself in the early going, trying hard to sound just like the recording he was trying to play. Can’t prove it, but I believe that he (& possibly many of the greats) was a one-thing-only guy.

Even if you’re not ready to post, if you could describe some detail about what’s changed between take #1 and take #30,000, I’d love to hear.

Great question. @Interestedoz, please, share with the class! :wink:

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#56

Very interested to know which lick this is? could you timestamp and post it?
I’m reworking Far beyond the sun, one of our CTC brothers transcribed it, the detail is astonishing, kudos to his work! But even more astonishing are the many details I got wrong in my first attempt early on in my CTC journey :joy:

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#57

This is a long thread and much has been discussed.

My journey has been much like @Interestedoz
Repeat till you nail it, even if it takes months. As he mentioned, each time you play the sequence, you use forensically analyse every detail and try to figure out what works for your situation to get it better. I think about it like a NASCAR race going around an oval 100s of times. At some point I figured the best improvements happed over 18 minute sets, two or three times a day of focused no nonsense stick to the routine practice. The next day there was always an improvement.

This was recorded after 7 months of grinding!

I’ll be honest and say I was very happy with the progress, though I will say it was 4 to 5 months of micro chunks starting to work, but nothing that I could string together. I also did go through a lot of pain in my picking arm, the only thing that kept me going was the pain would disappear while playing and back when I stopped, 3 months of pain, it started above my wrist in the fore arm, but moved up my arm and up to my shoulder and neck, but as it moved up the pain went away from the lower parts. I kept going. The pain suddenly vanished, and I could do sixes at 280 bpm effortlessly, I forget the exact number but my buddy was over, and made the observation that it sounded like a machine gun, promptly took out his metronome app to measure it.

I stopped learning more material on that track at the time, cause I had to seriously ramp up my two string 3 note arpeggios. It took me 3 months to get those 2 string arpeggios down, for some reason the 3 string or more arpeggios came much easier and earlier in my progress. Then 3 weeks to get it moving positions without repeating the pattern at pace. This was the Alcatraz live Bigfoot interlude section.

As others have said, be creative in your reps, switch the notes around, switch keys, have a suitable backing track looping a few bars for a single chord vamp. I remember using the Far Beyond Backing track for the first solo section, it’s actually where I had my first free flow improvised connect the dots in real time moment. This was the 7 month point. I was thrilled and was recording at the moment it happened. This is that little section, I had a grin ear to ear:

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#58

Heard your Far Beyond; that’s some neoclassical rockin’ going on there. Very inspiring - especially that you had the conviction to take it into the cave for 7 months!

Speaking of repetition - this remark seems to be getting repeated lately;) I’m really glad to hear this, because a) it’s working for people, b) the process rarely gets spelled out this clearly (including by music teachers) and c) I believe it explains what Clapton was doing with that tape recorder, and why Allman was jacking that tonearm up and down (i.e. it’s worked for some great players).

(not trying to make this monolithic, like there’s “one” way. obviously everyone tweaks their process. but like some of you, i’m fed up with ‘whatever works, maaaan!’)

BTW - how did you settle on 18-minute sessions??

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#59

& also btw…

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(since humor is usually garbled on the internet: i’m feeling that this investigation of mine is vindicated by at least three people here whose highly effective practice approach I wouldn’t have begun to understand without this mongo thread. not trying to spike the football; just saying that what’s obvious/intuitive to some is not nearly so to others, like me)

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#60

absolutely yes, nothing improved my ascending economy picking, single string descending and pull off descending like practicing the first lead line of Yngwie’s I Am a Viking solo 100 million times with a metronome with strict attention to form

one day it just kinda came together and I went up 40 clicks on the metronome that day alone

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