your practice routine?

[pos69sum]

can you guys briefly describe your daily practice routine?

 

i practice about 2-4 hrs a day on the weekdays, and anywhere from 5-10 hours a day on the weekends. it usually averages out to about 20-30 hours practice a week.

 

i'm currently using a practice routine based roughly on vai's 10 hour workout:

 

During the week (2 hour sessions)

 

15 min - Warm-up exercises

30 min - Work on this week's guitar lesson homework

30 min - Work on cover song for the month

45 min - Jamming

 

Weekends (10 hour sessions)

 

30 min - Warm-up Exercises

1 hr - Finger Exercises

2 hrs - Scales (related to principles in this week

[Li Shenron]

How long have you been following this schedule, so far?

[typedeaF]

http://acapella.harmony-central.com/forums/search.php?s=&action=showresults&searchid=768558&sortby=lastpost&sortorder=descending

[Slave_New_Wurld]

1-2 hours per day, but on weekends I don't have a strict time limitation.

-10 minutes warming up, chromatic exercises
-30 minutes scale/lead work
-just experiment until I get hungry or horny

[pos69sum]

Originally posted by Li Shenron How long have you been following this schedule, so far?

 

 

a few months. i can't guage how much it's helping because i just started a new job and practice was very sporadic during the months of jan and feb.

[Knottyhed]

Originally posted by typedeaF http://acapella.harmony-central.com/forums/search.php?s=&action=showresults&searchid=768558&sortby=lastpost&sortorder=descending

 

 

C'mon you expect people to wade through all that when what they really wanna read is this?

 

http://acapella.harmony-central.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=1117456&highlight=practice+regim%2A

[Knottyhed]

Originally posted by pos69sum can you guys briefly describe your daily practice routine? i practice about 2-4 hrs a day on the weekdays, and anywhere from 5-10 hours a day on the weekends. it usually averages out to about 20-30 hours practice a week. i'm currently using a practice routine based roughly on vai's 10 hour workout: During the week (2 hour sessions) 15 min - Warm-up exercises 30 min - Work on this week's guitar lesson homework 30 min - Work on cover song for the month 45 min - Jamming Weekends (10 hour sessions) 30 min - Warm-up Exercises 1 hr - Finger Exercises 2 hrs - Scales (related to principles in this week

[Li Shenron]

My practice routine is quite loose indeed.

Usually I have something between half an hour and 2 hours, probably averaging 1.5 hour. Not every day tho, between work/SO/social life/other hobbies, I typically end up playing every other day. That probably makes a total of about 8 hours per week, but it fluctuates over time.

When I have 2 full hours for practice, more or less this is a typical schedule of mine (notice how loose ).

10mins of warm-up: usually either stretching exercises + fingering exercises on the electric, or otherwise playing a couple of challenging instrumental on the classical

The rest of the time goes spent in one of the following types of practice.

1) Fundamentals, i.e. standard technique exercises at low speed (or no tempo) to analyze my flaws and work out a solution

2) Training, i.e. fairly traditional exercises with metronome, to get used to a technique at different speeds and train precision & cohordination (includes scales and modes)

3) Development/Style, usually by browsing music scores & tabs and picking certain parts (anything rhythmic or phrases, from as small as a bar to as long as a full solo) and then practice on them until I feel comfortable and I can start varying the interpretation

4) Repertoire, or complete songs

How I choose to spend the time with these 4 depends entirely on the mood, which depends entirely on my perception of what is currently wrong with me and needs improvement. For example, I currently feel little interest in improvisation, so you won't hear me spending any time at all in that for the moment.

To give you a concrete example, last time I practiced was 3 nights ago (I had a long working day on Tuesday, and a movie night yesterday).
The mood was that I needed to improve two things: reduce my mistakes or bad sounds when picking across strings, and expand legatos to be more varied (because I can be quite fast, but I always end up doing similar runs). I played for definitely more than two hours and very approximately it was like this:

5mins - stretching by holding down some awkward chords
10mins - warmup chromatic alternate picking with different finger patterns
5mins - very slow alt.pick. exercises across adjacent strings, to improve control
30mins - all basic alt.pick. exercises focused on string-crossing from Speed Mechanics for Lead Guitar (Stetina), at moving speed
10mins - very slow and very basic hammer-on pull-off fundamentals (again from Stetina's)
20mins - focus on legato runs from Satriani's "Rubina" and "Always with me always with you", from very slow to as fast as I could
10 mins - play "Rubina" twice as a whole (I can never resist!)
30mins - studying Vai's "Die to Live" different parts, and play the whole of it a couple of times (even if it's early for that...)
20mins - lost in vane attempt at figuring out Dream Theater's "Erotomania" central run (failed even with the tabs
)
10mins - practice a few times the harmonics/whammy passage in Vai's "Frank"

I think the times should be quite accurate actually. For me that was a good day of practice anyway, since often I don't even have half the time.

[pos69sum]

Originally posted by Li Shenron My practice routine is quite loose indeed. Usually I have something between half an hour and 2 hours, probably averaging 1.5 hour. Not every day tho, between work/SO/social life/other hobbies, I typically end up playing every other day. That probably makes a total of about 8 hours per week, but it fluctuates over time. When I have 2 full hours for practice, more or less this is a typical schedule of mine (notice how loose ). 10mins of warm-up: usually either stretching exercises + fingering exercises on the electric, or otherwise playing a couple of challenging instrumental on the classical The rest of the time goes spent in one of the following types of practice. 1) Fundamentals, i.e. standard technique exercises at low speed (or no tempo) to analyze my flaws and work out a solution 2) Training, i.e. fairly traditional exercises with metronome, to get used to a technique at different speeds and train precision & cohordination (includes scales and modes) 3) Development/Style, usually by browsing music scores & tabs and picking certain parts (anything rhythmic or phrases, from as small as a bar to as long as a full solo) and then practice on them until I feel comfortable and I can start varying the interpretation 4) Repertoire, or complete songs How I choose to spend the time with these 4 depends entirely on the mood, which depends entirely on my perception of what is currently wrong with me and needs improvement. For example, I currently feel little interest in improvisation, so you won't hear me spending any time at all in that for the moment. To give you a concrete example, last time I practiced was 3 nights ago (I had a long working day on Tuesday, and a movie night yesterday). The mood was that I needed to improve two things: reduce my mistakes or bad sounds when picking across strings, and expand legatos to be more varied (because I can be quite fast, but I always end up doing similar runs). I played for definitely more than two hours and very approximately it was like this: 5mins - stretching by holding down some awkward chords 10mins - warmup chromatic alternate picking with different finger patterns 5mins - very slow alt.pick. exercises across adjacent strings, to improve control 30mins - all basic alt.pick. exercises focused on string-crossing from Speed Mechanics for Lead Guitar (Stetina), at moving speed 10mins - very slow and very basic hammer-on pull-off fundamentals (again from Stetina's) 20mins - focus on legato runs from Satriani's "Rubina" and "Always with me always with you", from very slow to as fast as I could 10 mins - play "Rubina" twice as a whole (I can never resist!) 30mins - studying Vai's "Die to Live" different parts, and play the whole of it a couple of times (even if it's early for that...) 20mins - lost in vane attempt at figuring out Dream Theater's "Erotomania" central run (failed even with the tabs ) 10mins - practice a few times the harmonics/whammy passage in Vai's "Frank" I think the times should be quite accurate actually. For me that was a good day of practice anyway, since often I don't even have half the time.

i'm starting to use books this year, in addition to my regular lessons. the first book i picked up was speed mechanics by stetina.

how do you find that book? can you recommend any others? i have (but haven't started yet on) all the stetina books and the advancing guitarist. i've been taking lessons for years, and have no experience with teaching myself using books.

i read the stetina introduction - he says this is a book you will always come back to. my question: say i'm working on exercises 2-6. when do you know that you're 'done' with them, and can move onto the next exercises? have you worked up to playing 'flight of the bumblebee' in its entirety yet?

[lagunabeach]

I start to practice usually when i wake up. just 10-15 of warm up runs and scales. then i either jam write or practice a few songs. depending on how much work i have to get done that day depends on my practice schedual. If i have a show i will practice a few hours on and off at home or at the studio. my band plays out or rehearses every night anywhere from 3-6 hours.

[Li Shenron]

Originally posted by pos69sum how do you find that book?

 

 

I think it's very good for alternate picking, but only basic to legato and sweeping.

 

The exercises for alternate are very good because they are a lot, and treat the technique from many different angles. Each group of exercises focus on some aspect, so whenever you feel like you need improvement in something specific (like I mentioned in my case, improving the smoothness in crossing strings), you can find a set of exercises for that, not just one example.

 

I would prefer a different organization to the book however. "The art of practising" should have been at the beginning, it's very basic and very important (but also something you need to read only once). I do not like the rhythmic chapter because it's too limited. It should belong to a different book of rhythmic guitar.

 

 

Originally posted by pos69sum can you recommend any others?

 

 

Not really. I could recommend the Berkley series for a more theoretical/classical approach, and the Gilbert & Marlis guitar soloing books for improvisation. But these do very different things than technique. All other technique books I've seen so far are not nearly as good as the Stetina one [or otherwise they are good, but also very specific on one technique]

 

 

Originally posted by pos69sum when do you know that you're 'done' with them, and can move onto the next exercises?

 

 

You're never done. If you keep playing the same exercise before moving to the next you'll be stuck forever.

 

I think you should rather consider a week-based schedule. Decide that this week you're playing exercise #3, #17 and #44 for 10min every day, then move on with others for the next week. Every now and then go back to the old ones and check if you can play them better or worse.

 

 

Originally posted by pos69sum have you worked up to playing 'flight of the bumblebee' in its entirety yet?

 

 

No. I was never interested in that, tho I think I remember to have checked it out when I had just got the book, just because.

 

But the purpose of that song is only to be a benchmark to try out Stetina's general practicing suggestions (in case the reader didn't have any other score to study). You can use any song in the world for that, so anyone who has the tabs of a song he'd like to learn, should better apply Stetina's method to that one instead.