How much time in a day do you need to keep your hard earned skills

[BreckerFan]

It's a mental thing. If every time you pick up the guitar you warm up first, you mentally make yourself have to warm up. If every time you pick up the guitar you start by running a Parker head at speed, eventually you'll get used to pick up and go.

Maybe not when you're 70, but at 42 I can pick up the guitar and go.

There are certain things I can do without warmup. I was just busking in the park this morning with a sax player, so I had to comp, walk a baseline, and solo unaccompanied with no warmup and it was fine.

But accessing the upper limits of my technique requires warm up for sure. I've had too many 250 bpm plus tunes (Cherokee, Donna Lee, Minority, Rhythm changes, Lazy Bird, etc) called at jams to not thoroughly warm up before I go.

[pamosmusic]

We have all seen a nature video of the deer at the watering hole while the cheetah moves in the tall grass. The deer has been standing for a while occasionally drinking water. The cheetah has been almost motionless, moving in super slow motion toward the deer. Neither the deer nor the cheetah are in any sense "warmed up", yet what is about to happen is an immediate full sprint by both the deer and the cheetah.
One might take this example of nature to imagine that the idea of warming up might not be necessary.










In the video I watched, the deer took off with such exertion pressure that it fractured a rear ankle in the first instant (horrible, floppy visible) and became cheetah dinner.

In this analogy which jazzer eats which?

[pamosmusic]

A deer running and a human performing a mechanically complex and unnatural task that requires precise synchronization between two hands, while also improvising harmonically complex music, are not really comparable things.

Now hold on, I want to see this whole analogy play out

[Dave70]

I keep guitars near my desk and try to play at least something every day. A few minutes here and there is better than nothing!

Before 2020 I made most of my income from teaching and gigs. I had a lot of hands on guitar time. But now I have a life sucking full time job. It's tough to practice on the days I work. Off days usually I have stuff to do too but sometimes I get to keep the pjs on, get out a bunch of my guitars and have a good all-day practice day.

It seems that as long as I play, even a little, daily I don't lose too much physical skill but there are some "classical guitar" pieces that may get rusty if I don't go over them for a few weeks. It comes back pretty quick tho.

[BreckerFan]

Now hold on, I want to see this whole analogy play out

The deer is me at the jam hoping to play Misty.

The cheetah is the drummer at the jam who's gonna call giant steps at 400 bpm.

The broken ankle and eating is self explanatory

[Mick-7]

We have all seen a nature video of the deer at the watering hole while the cheetah moves in the tall grass. The deer has been standing for a while occasionally drinking water. The cheetah has been almost motionless, moving in super slow motion toward the deer. Neither the deer nor the cheetah are in any sense "warmed up", yet what is about to happen is an immediate full sprint by both the deer and the cheetah. One might take this example of nature to imagine that the idea of warming up might not be necessary.

A deer running and a human performing a mechanically complex and unnatural task that requires precise synchronization between two hands, while also improvising harmonically complex music, are not really comparable things.

The good news for us is that cheetahs and lions always prefer to find a deer rather than a human at the watering hole and in fact, like most animals (primates included), find jazz guitarists to be particularly unappetizing.

[princeplanet]

The good news for us is that cheetahs and lions always prefer to find a deer rather than a human at the watering hole and in fact, like most animals (primates included), find jazz guitarists to be particularly unappetizing.

... especially if they're not warmed up.

[princeplanet]

It's a mental thing. If every time you pick up the guitar you warm up first, you mentally make yourself have to warm up. If every time you pick up the guitar you start by running a Parker head at speed, eventually you'll get used to pick up and go.

Maybe not when you're 70, but at 42 I can pick up the guitar and go.

We obviously each have our unique physiologies... some days it takes me longer for both hands to get in sync than others. Its annoying.

[deacon Mark]

I subscribed to the Howard Roberts Protocall that to play faster and cleaner requires slow motion with no errors. Once the brain has gotten the fingering down you stop thinking and just perform. I too like to warm up before I play. I find that I can get by with single line stuff easier with less warm up. To play nice smooth and clean chord melody requires more technique in a sense or at least you cannot be sloppy. If I make an error in the line then chances are that if I don't correct it right then the mistake will keep happening.

Proper technique for me requires a good sitting position and comfort playing the guitar. The less I think about body constraints the more I can think about playing. This is all based on individualization. Each player has a way the is better for them to pick and make music. Much the same way as any runner or athlete in an event. They have their own style and form that allow the biggest gains.

[emanresu]

I subscribed to the Howard Roberts Protocall that to play faster and cleaner requires slow motion with no errors.

I used this method once or twice with classical guitar way back. I remember that the result was amazing. But just couldn't force myself doing it daily.

[Question]

I am probably an extreme case, so I will share my story for what it is worth.

I started playing Bass and Guitar in around 1974 and have been consistently involved making my living in music since 1980.
I went on the road for several months numerous times where I played almost exclusively Bass or Guitar. It always took me some time to re-acclimate to the neglected instrument physically, but since I was still involved with music the mental/ear part didn't seem to suffer that much.

Then in 2002 I took a 20 year detour into almost exclusively writing music for film. I went from playing about five times a week to five times a year, and that was mostly playing in the NDR radio Big-Band in Hamburg where I live. Intense reading/soloing but not playing standards from memory.

Since about 2022 I quit writing film music for various reasons and have been trying to get my playing back to where it was 22 years ago. I feel that I have passed that point this year and am now progressing forward.

My observation for myself is that the ability to navigate fast harmony and the hand timing issues took a year or so to regain, but I feel that my ear progressed a fair amount in the twenty years that I hardly played.

I think writing film music and scrutinizing every note to make it understandable upon the first (and only) listening helped focus my ear and had the side benefit of getting me to phrase much more melodically.

I don't know what the moral of this story is, but since my interests are not remotely instrument/style specific, I feel that everything that I did contributed in some way to how I play today.Good and bad.

In the short term, I definitely need a bit of time to get back physically to where I was after a week vacation, but it seems that the more important abilities stay.