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My God, my God, my God. What insight Youtube has given me on some highly technical players. In various conversations, I have heard how some have repeated a lick or scale fragment thousands of times in order to master it.
One fellow, Micheal Angelo Battio said (in a Troy Gray picking video) that when he was 14 years old, he did this. This guy is a machine, my friend, and the way he said he got there was trial and error thousands of times.
Have any of you ever done this to master a particular passage?
It seems to take away the excuse that you can't do it, unless you have also tried it thousands of times. Obviously for some, a few hundred times just won't do and it supports the idea of just how bad do you want it.
Of course, at age 14, most people have a hell of a lot more time on their hands and fewer responsibilities...
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05-27-2017 08:01 PM
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There are 2 aspects to understanding and mastering a particular phrase, passage, or lick on the guitar. The first is the physical dexterity needed to play the passage fluently which does require a certain amount of repetition in order for your fingers to be able to do what they are supposed to do.
The second aspect which I feel is even more important than the first is to be crystal clear in your mind's eye of just what the fingerings for both hands should be for each note of the passage. I think that the majority of the mistakes that guitarists make are mental errors that cause physical errors.
George Benson once remarked "If I can see where I'm going on the fretboard inside my head, I can usually get there".
This technique is called visualization/mental imagery.
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From what I've read and watched too, the case seems to be that the most technical(advanced) players are those that played and played about every waking hour when younger. They had the passion, but also that kind of drive and relentless motor that kept them going.
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A couple of years ago I took a couple of lessons from a really good player up in LA. He had been a student and friend of Jimmy Wyble's, and I had always been fascinated with that style. He showed a couple of Jimmy-type licks that he had put together. I was a little embarrassed at how many times it took me to play them until they flowed. When we got together the next time, I mentioned how I had played these things at least a hundred times. He told me that he had practiced these things a hundred times a day.
And to play lay these things under pressure with a band at various tempos and feels....that's a whole 'nuther more hundred I suppose.
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AlsoRan, you'll always find players that have their own take on what is necessary for mastery. From the many approaches, something will resonate with your own innate inner makeup.
The thousand times approach was right for someone, it may not be right for you. Do you want the balance of proficiency and imagination that that player has achieved? What is your goal? Don't be put off by practicing advice you get from others, it's their approach.
Some people like Jim Hall. Some people like Yngwie Malmsteen. They like very different things about the music they listen to.
Know yourself, and your learning style. If somebody else's "rules" don't work for what you want to do, remember that guitar requires mastery of the instrument, but music takes mastery of your self. The latter is a very individual thing.
Not to throw cold water on the romance of practice through suffering, but I've seen great players achieve a masterful style with more focus on exploration of options in musical ideas than hours on one lick. I've seen great player achieve a masterful style through focused study of individual passages. Different people, not mutually exclusive approaches.
Oh, and I've seen good players sidelined and damaged by thoughtless overpractice, because they thought that was necessary. Big mistake. This is the reality.
Find your own balance and find out what you need to achieve your ideal. Then stop letting the overwhelming task keep you from picking up the instrument and making music.
David
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I've never paid much attention to Jim Halls road to mastery, but Yngwie did put in the hours dragging his guitar with him to school practicing every free moment.
Originally Posted by TruthHertz
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If I had to repeat a lick 'hundreds of times' I wouldn't use it. Life's too short.
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With scales, the fingerings are essential, but also developing the hand/ear connection so we know intuitively where to find the sounds we hear in our head or heart.
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^^^^^^^^^ Originally Posted by boatheelmusic
I have a practice game I like to play for a few minutes every day: it's called "sing it/play it". It takes time, but if you do this faithfully every day, you will be able to play everything you imagined, instantly. I like to do this over various progressions, such as blues or rhythm changes. I also do this on piano (my secondary instrument).Last edited by smokinguit; 05-28-2017 at 09:40 AM.
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Haha. The first thing that I thought when I read the story on Micheal Angelo was "What kind of mind can does it take to do what he did?" But I am reminded of Eddie Van Halen, Pat Martino, Micheal Schenker, and others who did the same thing in their youth. While others were out playing, they were holed up in their room (or wherever) practicing hard. Originally Posted by TKO
I think you are on to something about these highly, highly technical players. Well, I guess I will never get there because I have other priorities. Still, I can see how a young person could get caught up in this. Most young kids are into something and wile away many hours on it, even if its just watching TV or playing video games. We adults have just don't have that luxury.
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I do this and it is a skill unto itself, which also takes time, as you and boatheel stated. Originally Posted by smokinguit
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Haha. I had to laugh about your statement about the romance of suffering. I was also thinking something similar. This "romance," takes on cult proportions. The way a monk dedicates himself to his beliefs, I feel like these guitarists (the highly, highly technical) did the same thing with guitar. Originally Posted by TruthHertz
I don't think most of us are wired to relentlessly apply ourselves like this to one simple repetitive idea. It is a special ability they have that can push them to great technical heights.
Their ability to improvise and use those skills to create "great" music is probably another conversation.Last edited by AlsoRan; 05-28-2017 at 04:33 PM. Reason: Went off on tangent
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Cool. If you can just point me to 10 players you have taught recently that can play like George Benson, then, yeah, by all means, sign me up!! Originally Posted by Steven Herron
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I don't know about thousands of times, but there are things I'm sure I practiced hundreds of times.
I was able to master some of those things, but not others - even though other guitarists could play them.
In at least one case, I gave myself some tendon/ligament problems that are still lingering.
My experience with incorporating licks into my playing is that I'd probably be better off singing them hundreds of times than playing them hundreds of times. That's because I find it very difficult to get fast, hard-to-play licks into my actual playing, even if I can execute them in practice. But, the ones that I can sing, I can execute, at least if I'm not trying to play at the extremes of my ability with regard to speed.
What works best for me, is a lick I can sing, finding the interval of the chord that the first note of the lick starts on, and finding a fingering that seems effortless. That doesn't require hundreds of repetitions.
Where something is hard enough to require hundreds of repetitions, it's usually too hard for me to execute when soloing with a group. Just my experience - obviously, others have been very successful.
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A friend who play fast lines says that he sings them, but he does not really concentrate on every note. He has certain target notes, normally where the line changes direction, that he hits hard (accents) and that he envisions, the rest are almost just fillers to him. It does seem to work well, especially with extended sequences. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
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Two things come to mind that Howard Roberts taught in the early days of GIT. Also hear people still today bring it up.
To learn to learn to play something fast you have to learn it slow. Which also ties into another HR thing that Emily Remler mentions on her video. If you make mistakes practicing, you're practicing make mistakes. Then listened to video of an old drummer that worked with Monk and others. To keep is short Monk was criticizing him for always wanting to play fast. Monk said if you can't play it slow, you'll never be able to play it fast.
Another thing HR taught more on another topic but similar was learning when to stop working on something. That you need to stop at some point and let the subconscious sort things out for awhile, then come back to it later. HR had a lot more to say on these topics, but I'll leave it here for now.
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Another factor that drives one to mastery, aside from the romantic sufferer, is the reward of continued improvement. The more your understanding deepens the more you will push yourself. This is another factor that drives great people to their artistic maturity, and push them to the highest possible heights.
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Certainly repetition helps, but I find I also have to increasingly "escalate" I use it for it to really enter my playing. By that I mean different tempos, obviously different keys and positions, but probably more than anything that means applying it to tunes.
I also find that alternating between two or three licks when trying to engrain them is very powerful - once I have a lick down pretty good, then I get more out of alternating it with other ideas then just playing it over and over.
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Boiling it down to two words... Dedication and Discipline. Originally Posted by smokinguit
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The reward of achievement, and the instant gratification it gives, can be like a carrot that drives one on to great heights, as you have said, depending on the carrot they are chasing(i.e.) technical skill, improvisational skill, etc.. Originally Posted by smokinguit
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The reason I started this thread was to see what you folks thought of a mind that can endless practice on something as simple as a scale for thousands of repetitions. I would go insane. What type of mind, short of a computer, could do this? And how does this apply to me, who naively came in thinking I could reach that same high level of technicality merely by practicing an hour a day?
So I want to say that I am no longer a believer that one can casually learn to rip off lines at saxophone speeds on a guitar without endless hours of maddening repetition. Hours that I do not have available, and also hours that I am incapable of applying myself continually.
I know many of you don't think much of fast lines and speed, but it is a spice that all of my favorite guitarists have used to make their songs interesting and cause a momentary thrill in me. I now can truly appreciate how they got there and how rarified the air is to be in that company.
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There is a caveat to be added about playing things slowly in order to eventually play them fast.
It's this. At low tempo, lots of different fingerings may work well. But, as the tempo rises, some of those fingerings aren't going to work well. Typically, the problems are in the right hand. For example, you may have to play upstrokes on three strings in a row, moving towards the ceiling. Great sweep pickers can do it at high speed and have the notes sound crisp, but not everybody. Warren Nunes taught left hand re-fingering to allow for use of pull-offs on a single string (often with stretches or position movement) to accommodate the needs of the pick at high tempi.
So, practicing a fingering slowly and then expecting it to scale up to any speed can break down in some situations. Usually, there's another way -- what Warren Nunes called "speed technique applied". Sometimes, you just can't get it -- your nervous system doesn't necessarily work like somebody else's.
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I agree smokinguit. I find I spend too much time focusing on what scale or feet pattern I'm in than actually playing.
Too much thinking.
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Make that "fret pattern" lol
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Whatever it is that we practice and the subsequent number of repetitions we perform,
practicing creativity and staying mindful is of importance to an improvising musician.
These aspects will probably be easier for most to accomplish with a less limited stash of content.
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