Jump to content
HAPPY NEW YEAR, TO ALL OUR HARMONY CENTRAL FORUMITES AND GUESTS!! ×

Any tips on improving muscle memory?


pmc100

Recommended Posts

  • Members
Posted

I've been playing for nearly 20 years now (albeit with a 8 year break). In all that time the biggest frustration for me has always been muscle memory. Mine is terrible. It takes ages for me to learn something because it takes forever to lay down the muscle memory. This frustration played a big part in me taking my 8 year break and I don't want to fall into that trap again. Whilst I have no intention of stopping again I am finding the sheer length of time it takes to learn something getting frustrating again.

 

Some things I know I should do:

 

    . However, even with this it still seems to take an age. I'll learn a riff thats well within my technical capability (in that its easier than other stuff I can play) and it takes weeks to get right. :idk:

     

    Once thing I've noticed is that I learn my own riffs much quicker. I guess I'm just playing some muscle memories that are already partly formed and just need some exercise.

     

    So, any one have any tips on improving muscle memory?

  • Members
Posted

I don't think I'm expecting it to be 'mindlessly automatic'. But you know how when you have something down, it pretty much plays itself. It takes me forever to get there.

Let me give an example. I've been learning the intro riff to Plug In Baby by Muse. Now, I would say its an intermediate level riff. A dozen or so notes, played reasonably fast. Remembering the notes isn't a problem, there are only a few. But playing it smoothly is taking ages to get right. Getting your fingers to make the necessary movements 'automatically' is what muscle memory is about and it just seems to take forever for me. I reckon most guitarists who are technically capable of playing this riff would pick it up in no time, yet it takes me weeks.

Here it is BTW

INTRO
Gtr.1(elec.) [F#]
e|----------------------||--------------------------|---------------------------|
B|----------------------||o-------------------------|-----------7h8p7-----------|
G|--w/adlib.eedback----||--------6--------6--7-----|--6--7--9---------9--7--6--|
D|----------------------||--8--9-----8--9--------9--|---------------------------|
A|----------------------||o-------------------------|---------------------------|
E|----------------------||--------------------------|---------------------------|


e|--------------------------|-----------------------------|--------------------------|
B|--------------------------|--------7--7h8p7------7------|--7-----------------7--9--|
G|-----6--7-----6--7--9--6-|--7--9------------10-----10--|-----7-----------7--------|
D|--9--------9--------------|-----------------------------|--------7-----7-----------|
A|--------------------------|-----------------------------|-----------9--------------|
E|--------------------------|-----------------------------|--------------------------|

B [F#]
e|---------------------------||--------------------------|---------------------------||
B|--9br----------------------||--------------------------|-----------7h8p7-----------||
G|----------10-----7--6--7---||--------6--------6--7-----|--6--7--9---------9--7--6--||
D|---------------------------||--8--9-----8--9--------9--|---------------------------||
A|--------------------------o||--------------------------|---------------------------||
E|---------------------------||--------------------------|---------------------------||

  • Members
Posted

I think you actually have to create tendon memory, since the fingers have no muscle. The fingers use the hand muscles and the forearm also I believe.

 

Forget the gimmick names. Muscle memory is a fad name from the 80's that means nothing more than repetitious practice.

 

Another term that's used is "second-nature" which means the same thing...do something enough times to make it possible to do without thinking...like walking, or blinking your eyes, etc...

 

That only thing you can do is kep repeating what you're doing.

 

For guitarists though, especially when using slow and fast metronome work, they tend to hold their pick and hands differently, and well as how they attack the string, between playing fast and playing slow. So the KEY IS...

 

practice with the same picking and hand movement/placement and attack that you do when you play fast.

 

So, many people NEVER get their "slow technique" up to speed because when they play fast, their "fast technique" is completely different. In this case your slow practice could be a waste of time because you drop it as soon as you play faster.

  • Members
Posted

 

I think you actually have to create tendon memory, since the fingers have no muscle. The fingers use the hand muscles and the forearm also I believe.


Forget the gimmick names. Muscle memory is a fad name from the 80's that means nothing more than repetitious practice.


Another term that's used is "second-nature" which means the same thing...do something enough times to make it possible to do without thinking...like walking, or blinking your eyes, etc...


That only thing you can do is kep repeating what you're doing.


For guitarists though, especially when using slow and fast metronome work, they tend to hold their pick and hands differently, and well as how they attack the string, between playing fast and playing slow. So the KEY IS...


practice with the same picking and hand movement/placement and attack that you do when you play fast.


So, many people NEVER get their "slow technique" up to speed because when they play fast, their "fast technique" is completely different. In this case your slow practice could be a waste of time because you drop it as soon as you play faster.

 

 

By muscle memory I really mean the paths that are laid down in your brain. Thats how you play music, your fingers are just tools.

 

Thats interesting advice. I've never heard it put like that before. Thanks, I'll try and take that on board.

 

The other thing I've been trying to do is visualise playing the piece. Doing that whilst playing slowly and carefully could be helpful.

 

Anything else?

  • Members
Posted

The other question is whether you're only practicing the riffs you want to learn (songs, etc.) and whether you've put time into various exercises, scales, chord progressions, etc. Often doing the prep work on unrelated guitar stuff will make the thing you want to practice easier to learn...well, sometimes, anyway.

 

I've been playing pentatonics long enough that I can figure out what most blues guys are playing pretty quick or at least get it in the ballpark. Jazz guys...not quite so easy.

 

Pretty darn impossible, at times. :)

  • Members
Posted

Do you break down whatever you are practicing into little bits?
If you do, great, if you don't, give that a try ! It helps your hands memorizing the movements better since you only work on one small fragment at a time.
Applied to a pice of music that could mean working on each bar seperately, as if each bar was an exercise or piece by itself.

  • Members
Posted

I stumbled through it for a few minutes and found no real technical difficulties. Any proficient guitarist should be able to sight read those few bars comfortably. Perhaps you need to back up and do the reps on some prep work instead of struggling in the present. Picking and fingering the rhythms say. (?)

  • Members
Posted
I stumbled through it for a few minutes and found no real technical difficulties. Any proficient guitarist should be able to sight read those few bars comfortably. Perhaps you need to back up and do the reps on some prep work instead of struggling in the present. Picking and fingering the rhythms say. (?)



Exactly, its not that difficult. And yet I find it hard to get right. This is exactly my problem. Technically, I can play it. But it takes me forever to get something like that down.

BTW, here is whats its supposed to sound like if your interested

[YOUTUBE]65Gh0U0wkBs[/YOUTUBE]

Basically, I suck. I'm looking for ways to suck less ;)

  • Members
Posted

Try an alternate to trying to 'memorize' the exact notes, fret positions, etc. Learn the idea 'musically'.

For example: Memorize the note countour, rhythm, how the notes work functionally. Notice any unusual note choices - like how the melody is resolving. Break a melody into phrases (maybe each phrase will coincide w/ a chord change?). See if a phrase is associated w/ a certain scale and/or how each note of the melody relates to the harmony (root, 3rd, 9th etc?)

If you know 'the next phrase is a 4 note ascending sequence of 8ths starting on the 3rd' you can find the 3rd and play that sequence.

You don't have to remember each and every note...just the general idea and how it relates to the overall picture.

  • Members
Posted

i wouldn't worry about it. keep learning, diversify your style, practice a lot, until new pieces aren't so "new", but rather just logical continuations of music you can already play.

  • Members
Posted

When I was younger I played the clarinet - quite well in fact, much better than I've managed to become on the guitar. One thing I found over the years, thanks to one of my teachers, is that you can help your fingers learn particular patterns by playing them in a variety of ways. That is to say, when you're working on a passage, play the notes in the same order, but give it a different rhythm than what's written.

For instance, say you had a 12-note passage that happened to be written in even quarter notes. You could practice it by playing it as it was written over and over again, and eventually, you would get it down. One thing you could try, though, is to break the rhythm up into groups of three notes. Sustain the first of each three notes, and then play the next two notes quickly, repeating this long-short-short pattern throughout the entire passage. Then play it again with the first two notes fast and the third sustained, short-short-long. Then, short-long-short. You could also do it in groups of four notes, or six notes, etc. Musically, it won't be as appealing as hearing yourself play the song you want to learn, but for me, it was an extremely effective way of getting some complex passages down.

Breaking yourself out of what's familiar and forcing your fingers to do different things is what will help your hands all-around and make learning things a more efficient (and more enjoyable) process. It's worth a shot, hope it helps you out some!

  • Members
Posted

i wonder if it`s a rhythm problem, if you are not blessed with natural rhythm a built in metronome ,that could be causing the problem,i`ve noticed people with no rhythm find it hard to grasp anything that requires you to play anything musical rhythmicily and if that is your problem i don`t know what you could do, you have to be able to feel the pulse inside you and you can`t go to your local music shop and ask for a bag of rhythm.

 

http://www.myspace.com/catscurl

 

______________________________________________________________

Some seller from the free adds,

  • Members
Posted

Since it seems you learn your own riffs more easily, it may be a fact of remembering what to play when, when learning some else's riffs. Why don't you write out a riff with pen and paper first and speak it out loud several times until you get it down pat. See how that goes and then try another riff of the same difficulty doing it the way you are now and see if and how much of a difference there is. This may well tell you that you need to work on muscle memory or simply memorizing the piece more with your mind. Let us know how any of the suggestions work, will you. Regards, Flip.

  • Members
Posted

Thanks for the suggestions. A common theme seems to be to practise lots of different things (scales, styles etc...) so you have an armoury of technique to call upon when learning things. That way when you need to learn a new piece of music, it'll be similar to stuff you know so easier to pick up.

This makes sense. A good example is the Muse riff I posted. It's not based of the usual major/minor pentatonic scales (at least I don't think so) so for a pentatonic wanker like me its hard to get right.

So maybe rather than struggling with trying to learn pieces I should go back to basics and increase my scale and chord vocabulary.

I'll tell you what. Can anyone identify the scale that riff is based on? I'll then go and learn the scale straight and then try the riff again. Could be interesting experiment.

  • Members
Posted

Couple of things that helped me:

- Dont look at the paper, learn it chunk by chunk and commit it to memory. It is easy to develop a reliance on sheet music - whether tab or standard.

- Learn your major scale patterns all over the neck. This helps you understand the modal shapes a bit better to make patterns more logical. It eliminates a ton of the guessing. If it is an altered pattern it is STILL clear because the differences in the pattern stand out to you - making them easier to remember.

- Buy yourself a hand drum or a drum practice pad and sticks and practice your rhythm. Plus always make a portion of your practice with a metronome. IMO Rhythm is a vastly under-appreciated aspect of good players. They are all SOUNDLY in the pocket at all times. Good timing can make a good riff great. It takes time but SOLID timing can change your playing more drastically in the short term than any woodshedding.

- Learn as many songs as you can. The similarities in rock become quite obvious after time with good observation skills.

Hope any of that helps!

  • Members
Posted

Two words: repetition!

I've been playing music for 22 years. Starting young allowed me to learn quickly early on and internalize a lot of it, which has given me a great advantage in learning new things later down the road. The problem is...I HAD to learn a lot of things later down the road because I didn't work at it enough early on.

Just going to a lesson once a week or buying a DVD doesn't really teach you much. When I was a kid I would often go to my drum lessons, jam all week, practice the lesson stuff once the night before my next lesson and then repeat the process.

Now I'm learning that (semi)mindless repetition is your best friend. Just playing something like:

-----------12----------------12-13-15
--12-13-15---15-13-12-13-15---------
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------

over and over and over and over, literally hundreds of times is the key to muscle memory. The reason I say "(semi)mindless" is because you do want to be able to do it without thinking about it, but you need to listen enough to make sure it sounds clear and smooth.

It may not be the key for everyone, but as far as I can see, repetition is the be all and end all of muscle memory.

  • Members
Posted

In answer to my own question is looks like he's playing B Harmonic Minor, then briefly moves to G Major, then back to B Harmonic Minor. Now I find that little bit of G Major the easy bit so I'm going to learn the B Harmonic Minor scale in that position. Then come back and try the riff again.

 

I'll let you all know how I get on.

  • Members
Posted

Great posts here-good advice above!-

But I believe the key in this thing is to make an attempt at "Chunking", which is not a musical but a neurological and cognitive psychology term. That is, having relegated a few simple repeating patterns to the part of the brain that stores controlled movement (Don

  • Members
Posted

a couple points that worked for me,,and my playing improved tremendously

 

1. first anyone one who has ever taken a typing class or course or keyboard class will remember their teacher emphasizing this really important rule."DONT LOOK AT THE KEY WHEN U TYPE OR YOU WONT GET FASTER"...and that applys to musical instruments too..

 

by not looking at the fret board you will force your mind to concentrate harder on the material, and it will force your memory to work harder,,,and as a side benefit your hearing and recognition of the sound of the notes will also improve....I remember the tale of one of the great classical composers not sure if it was Mozart or Beethoven , when he was a child his father put a bed sheet over the keyboard so he could not cheat and look at the keys.it forced him to play by feel and memory...

 

alot of us play more by using our eyes and we loose track of the listening part and the touch and finger sensitivity part of playing an instrument..our eyes , visions is a very powerful sense and it will over rule all other senses if you let it..just watch some of the great players and notice how few times they have to look down at the neck, they see it all in their mind and and know when they make a mistake by hearing it ..

 

funny thing, i started playin guitar and kept playin for years with a death grip on the guitar, i always had calloused fingers, and applyed an excessively strong grip on the strings...but when i changed the way i played and leaned to loosened up my death grip on the neck, not only did my speed and the pain and callouses go away but i slowly noticed a great improvement in the flexibility of may fingers as well. I began to be able to reach notes on the neck that i had trouble reaching before when my hands were always squeezing the neck too hard.....hmmm i guess its kinda hard to be flexible when your hand muscles are all tensed up and stiff..;)

 

 

2 . second the pain factor , our bodys will naturally want to avoid pain..and if something hurts us we will subconsciously pull away from it..if your pressing your hands into the strings and fret board so hard that your finger tips an joints are in pain. then you could be damaging the sensitivity in your finger tips and ruining your joints. and who knows your mind might have a hard time acepting this sort of memory as anything other than pain and may try to reject this sort of external pain stimulus in some way, and maybe that could manifest as a subconscious mental block towards playing certain painful chord shapes or note runs ..?.

 

it really only takes gentle pressure to press a string down till it touches a fret and sounds properly on a guitar with a good straight neck..so try and be aware of how hard you press the strings down, your speed will increase and you will find you can play or practice much longer with out getting muscle or finger fatigue.....

 

BB king the man with that wild vibrato and that heavy string Gibson said in an interview that he dont get callouses on his fingers, which surprised me when i heard it..but he then said the only time he does get calloused finger tips is when he hasnt played for a while..which of course made sense cause he lost his sensitive feel or touch and was squeezing too hard on the neck..he had to take a bit of time to get comfortable on the neck again and learn to relax his grip again.....

 

try this, close your eyes and slowly touch the top of the string, now very gently start to press down the string till it touches the fret and then gently add a bit more pressure till the note starts to ring out clear, while at the same time making note of how little pressure its actually taking you to move the string down and make it ring...if you can repeat that gentle sensitive pressure with every note you play then you might end up callous free like BB....

Ok now i want you to walk across a sheet of rice paper with out tearing it and then snatch a pebble form my hand grasshopper....:lol:(sorry, couldnt resist that last one liner lol )

 

3. third - Chet Atkins said something very important that maybe of help too..he said something like practice your material slowly. Too many young people try to practise everything fast, and then they make mistakes, and so all they end up doing is practising and embedding a bunch of mistakes into their mind...slow it down so you can play it perfectly with no mistakes with out looking...then begin to pick up the pace. if your playing and making alot of mistakes then you might be playin too fast, so slower down and do it right....that will really reinforce and embed the piece into your memory ...dont practise making mistakes at 100 mile per hour..or you'll just get good and fast at making mistakes..hey our brains aint very smart they will just remember what we tell them too, and if we keep showin them mistakes then mistakes is what they'll give us back....lol :lol:

 

 

1. dont look at the fret board, force your memory and ears to do the work not your eyes.

 

2. be mindful of the amount of finger pressure your using, hands that are clinched way too tightly are really not gonna give you very much fluid flexible motion.

 

3. if your playing so fast that you keep makin mistakes, then slow it down..(like man if chet says it, it must be so)

 

 

I know what i said above dont sound like much just a bunch of rinky dink tips but i really cant over emphasis the importance of being aware of those three factors..

 

 

the guitar is not a picture, stop looking at it and start listening to it.:thu:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOs1HC29zh4

 

just that gentle touch will do, even if he does got a weird way of touching it :eek:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjXN3OLgoqs

 

even the biggest heaviest of strings will succumb to the gentlest of touches.(Tal Wilkenfeld, a pixie tickling the tones out of a giant )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIFFRHBCPzA&feature=related

 

I think this certified guitar player might be onto something.

 

 

 

Some Ideas on Practise and study that some people have.

 

its interesting to see how slowly the great violinist Jascha Heifetz starts off his training regime and gradually works up to performance standards after a couple of months...this video is a must see for anyone who wonders how a legend practises..

 

 

the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin sad he liked to practice then take little cat naps throughout the day in between practising ....

And some say when you study for exams at night that you should go over your material again when you wake up in the morning to help retain it better...so many ways people have to try and improve the effectiveness of studying, practice , and learning ...i find it all a very interesting and thought provoking topic...ummm,,, sorry, i forget, what exactly was the topic of this thread again ...lol :lol:

 

anyway it wont do you know harm to give some of the above tips a try for two or three weeks and see what happens..i got to say playin without looking is real hard at first, especially the more complex chord changes, but it will come slowly...just ask anyone taking a basic typing class 101 .. lol

:)

  • Members
Posted

yep what others have said.

practice slowly, with closed eyes and open ears, feel it with your fingers

chunk it, don't think about single notes but as movement of patterns and relationships

play in the dark

After you know it...try to play without mind...mindlessly...or feel the movement...or play intutitively, i.e., when jamming or playing with a cd (preferably with some music you have not heard before) try to anticipate where to go and end up there at the same time or at the counterpoint. The result is that in the end you discover you can trust your body/ear/brain/neuro muscular memory...it knows what to do without thinking about it...you just got to get out of the way.

and if recalled correctly it takes something like 25,000 repetitions to become automatic, like a reflex without thought.

  • Members
Posted

Thanks for the excellent posts guys. I think this all fits in with what I've been thinking myself.

 

The idea of chunking it is very similar to what I was talking about when I said I need to build my armoury of scales and licks. I carried out my experiment of learning the B Harmonic Minor in that position. Now that was easy, learning a scale isn't difficult. I then just improvised with that scale for a while, to get used to always going to the right notes. This has the pleasing side effect of giving me greater variety in my improvising. Finally I tried the riff again. I have noticed that I can play it better. My fingers 'know' were to go. So even if I'm about to make a mistake and hit a bum note, my fingers know that its not part of the scale so instead move to the correct note. This all happens very fast but is noticable. Unfortunately I've not had a huge amount of time to practise it but hopefully I will over the next few days.

 

Over time, I should be able to build a greater range of scales and licks that are 'built in'. The next part of my experiment is to find another riff based on the Harmonic Minor scale and see how I get on learning that.

 

This is just another way of saying 'learn your scales'. However rather than simply learning loads of scales for the sake of it, I'm instead going to try and incorporate a musical approach to learning pieces, i.e. analyze the piece and work out what its doing musically, and if necessary learn that first.

 

The advice on not looking at the fretboard and relaxing the hands is always great. I do try to play relaxed. In fact just recently I sat down one day and made a real effort to play with as little finger force as possible. I noticed an immediate improvement. I try to keep this is mind every day and hopefully it will become second nature. I'll add making a real effort not to look at the fretboard too.

 

I completely agree about the comments on sleep. This fits in with what I've being doing myself. I found this excellent article that I've posted here before. It talks about how brain research helps in understanding the learning of a complex physical activity like playing an instrument. One of the primary findings is the importance of sleep whilst learning. Here it is http://www.newenglandconservatory.edu/studentLife/documents/PracticingandCurrentBrainResearchbyGebrian.pdf

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...