Ok, so you just started to play guitar, drums or any other instrument and you want to know how to make sure you got the most progress out of your practice time. Following these tips will make sure you won't waste your time practicing incorrectly and will make sure you get the most out of your practice routines.
If possible record yourself practicing!
In this day and age we all got all kind of chances to record our self practicing. It can be through a webcam, your phone or camera.Why should you do this?
A lot of people practice their routines and hear if it's OK. But it will make a world of difference if you can SEE if you are doing your practice routines correctly. If you can't get a certain technique down, maybe you're doing something wrong with your stand, your hands or timing. In these cases seeing what you're doing will make you observe these tiny mistakes and adjust before they become a part of your playing.
Practice slow before you go Sonic!
Although a lot of people want to be shredding or drumming just as fast as their favorite musicians, while practicing start slowly and then slowly progress to speeds slightly beyond your capabilities.When you practice your exercises you want to focus on clarity and not on speed. You want to make sure nothing sounds sloppy and everything is clear and defined. Therefore start slowly and only when it sounds as perfect as possible, then you can slowly progress to a faster tempo. This will make sure that mistakes or sloppiness will disappear instead of carry on when you're playing fast.
When you notice that you've reached a speed that is to fast to play, while playing it clear (for example 200 bpm), go back 3 steps in speed (around 160 bpm for example). Play this for a couple of minutes (which should go much easier now) and then slowly progress 6 steps faster (for example 225 BPM). This will probably sound sloppy then. Focus on what goes wrong but try to keep up with the speed.
After you did that go back to the original speed you couldn't play before (the 200 BPM). Now you've got a much higher change to play this clear and correct.This is because you just trained your muscle memory.
Always use a metronome to make sure you got a correct representation of time.
Practice what you can't do, don't practice the things you already know!
I had a video chat once with Steve Vai in which he told me something very important I want to share.
Practice what you can't do, don't practice the things you already know!While practicing, focus on things that challenge you and are difficult to you. Practice time is to become better and progress in the things you can't do. Otherwise your practice time will just be wasted. You won't become better but keep getting stuck on only that what you can do.
One way I like to challenge myself is choosing something I always wanted to learn (which is something I can't do at that moment) and then focus my practice time on learning that one particular thing. Don't choose 3 things for one session, but focus on 1 to get the most out of the challenge and to focus on getting the result you want.
Other way around, when you pick up your instrument for fun, on stage or with your mates (so while not practicing) focus on things you can do and how you want to use this in your way of playing. Fun time should stay fun time, so you can keep your focus while you're practicing.
Use your ears and make sure you eventually won't need your eyes
What I mean with this is that during your practice always use your ear as your main control for playing correctly. When it sounds good, usually it is good. You can watch at what you're playing in the beginning of the practice routine, but eventually you want to practice enough that you won't need to watch at your guitar while playing. That's the point you know your routine and you can take it to another level.
You want to get to the point that you don't need to think about your playing and it becomes a second instinct what you're playing.
Practicing blindfolded is a great way to do this, but make sure you can do it perfect without blocking your senses first!Small practice is better then substituting no practice!
I get it, we are all busy! Especially nowadays with all these distractions around us. We have things like school, work, kids or our favorite Netflix show. It's hard to schedule our time to practice the guitar.
And although you will probably progress faster the more time you spend practicing, I understand that a lot people don't have the 7 hours a day to spend practicing guitar the way Steve Vai did. I surely don't.But as long as you keep your practice routines focused and clear, a 15 minute practice every day will be much better then an hour practice one time in a week. Practicing short times everyday will train your muscle memory faster and will keep your muscle memory from 'forgetting' the routines.
Your progress will take much longer when you need to process huge chucks of data, which you will forget easier looking at it only once a week. Try to process small bite-sizes of data daily instead.
In this case practicing your instrument works the same as practicing for a test. Don't save it all for one night.
Hope you learned something today and if you follow these steps, you will definitely get the most out of your practice routines.
One last thing! Try to analyze your own playing during practice and keep progress of all your practice routines.
This way you will know what to improve and where your attention points lay. It will also make it much easier to determine the next thing you want to practice. Be honest to yourself but don't forget to have fun!
John from JVHteach
Everyone should be able to learn, anywhere!
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