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practice - breaking up the monotony and tightening structure?


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how do you guys structure your practice?

major scales 6 places on the neck

min7b5 arpgeggios

blues in C#

dorian licks

new song - Dmin to Bbmaj7

yngwie malmsteen licks

michael landau licks

robben ford videos

pentatonic scales

chords with 3, 5, and 7th in bass up the neck

 

As you can see, I am all over the place. Can someone help me tighten the structure of my practice? Or should it really be like this? Any advice?

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I think you're practicing too much scale stuff. Honestly, If you wanna do that much it might make more sense to group stuff better: instead of

 

major scales 6 places on the neck

min7b5 arpgeggios

blues in C#

dorian licks

 

Do:

Dorian scales 6 places on the neck

min7 arpgeggios

blues in C#

dorian licks

 

So it's more related.

 

Where's the ear training and transcription? If it was me, I would spend some time singing the scales and then not really worry too much about practicing them and spend the bulk of my time learning tunes and transcribing stuff by ear. If you're getting results from your current routine and you don't hate it, then I wouldn't worry too much about it, but learning just one lick or stupid melody by ear everyday is a good way to spend your time.

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Hey gawdrawk,

 

I remember reading somewhere about how John Petrucci organized his practice session that I really liked and starting doing too.

 

First, look at how much time you plan to practice.  Let's say you've got an hour.

Then pick several "areas" to work on.  These areas could be anything you want to improve on.  Let's say, scales, new chord shapes, songwriting, transcribing.

To organize your practice session, just divide the time you've got to practce evenly by the different areas you want to work on.  In this case...

1 hour total:

15 minutes - scales

15 minutes - new chord shapes

15 minutes - songwriting

15 minutes - transcribing

 

You could even use a timer for each 15 minute mini-section to help you stay focused.  Also, Petrucci would keep files with practice material for all sorts of things.  If he wanted to practice tapping, he'd just go pull out the "tapping" file and work on something in there for the alotted time.

I think another great idea is keeping a practice journal.  Just writing down your goals for that practice session, and then what you ended up working on and for how long.  That way the next time you practice, you can just pick up where you left off.

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