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I'm curious as to how others here are divvying up their practice time! What level are you at and what are you focusing on right now? How many hours a day do you practice and how much time do you devote to each area of study?
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02-23-2011 09:18 PM
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Last year was devoted primarily to songwriting. This year is about getting my playing back together. (Songwriting is the quickest way to learn you can spend hours a day with a guitar in your hand and get *worse.* You don't *necessarily* get worse, but it can easily happen.)
Originally Posted by Jazzpunk
I'm working in five main areas:
1) learning tunes ("This Can't Be Love" today; I've been listening to Ella's "The Rodgers and Hart Song Book" and I want to learn several of those great tunes)
2) arpeggio studies of standards (-some I find in books or online, others I make up) and Bert Ligon's "outline" studies over standard progressions (-blues, rhythm, ATTYA, Stella)
3) comping / chord voicings
4) technique (-I've dusted off my ancient copy of Mel Bay's "Technic") and
5) solos (Parker's "Now's The Time" just now, with Kenny Burrell's "Back at the Chicken Shack" and "Chitlins Con Carne" on deck), which also means playing (and playing and playing) lines from Herb Ellis books.
Lately I'm playing at least three hours a day (-spread over several sessions). I have a terrible habit of taking on too much at once.
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Excellent! I'm averaging about two hours a day right now but I'm finding it's not nearly enough. Originally Posted by markerhodes
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I get put of bed around lunchtime, drink about 6 cups of coffee and smoke 20 cigarettes while noodling on tunes. I almost never do any exercises or book learnin', just tunes. It could be anything. Today it's Lazy River, the intro to Little Charmer by Gambale, probably have another crack at Bright Size Life and I'm also working a bit on Wonderful Slippery Thing by Guthrie Govan.
Then I log on to a couple of guitar sites and read the questions about theory and tunes. I pick up the axe and try to work out the answers. This usually ends up with me learning the tune in question, which I'll probably play for a couple of days then move on.
My advice to beginners: Don't do what I do!!!
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My bag changes... in the last years I put in a few 20-30 hour weeks on the guitar. I needed to get some things in line before I could gig and play comfortably with my trio. I woodsheded a lot.
Now I run three businesses, have a lot of hobbies, and a great girlfriend, so my time is spit... and so is my mind. I still get in 1-3 hours per day somehow! Writing my book took a lot of practice time away... and it will when I start revising the next edition. grrr.
Right now...
I have revamped my entire stand-by chord vocabulary. I am still working out a few spots. I've adapted the left-hand piano voicings of the 60's for the guitar. I am using "modal" chords in functional harmony now. I play RC, blues, or standards with upper structures, quartals, so what, and cluster harmonies as practice. I play in every key... a few per day.
I am getting good at playing 4 over 3 in jazz waltzes, etc. A division I really like. It took me a while to master quarter-note triplets a few years ago, now it's the opposite. It's a nice feeling.
I am playing a lot of bop linear motifs over typical changes and Giant Steps cycles. Also in octaves. I am trying to adapt outlines into some good 16th note runs. As you have might seen in my live showcase thread, I am no speed-demon. I can't shred! Oh well.
Overall, I am trying to do what I already do and hear effortlessly. I want to relax and just play.
I love to compose, but that is on hold for now. I need to record/perform my current 25+ originals and get my book revisions out of the way.
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overall pattern changes periodically (every year or so). theses days first session is working through garrison fewell's triad ideas in all positions and all keys. great for improving fretboard knowledge and playing long smooth lines.
second session is some aspect of a tune (or several, some days): melody, comping, chord tones, etc. all of you, wave, and green dolphin street today.
embarrassed to say how many hours...
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It's divided between learning & memorizing the melody/lyrics for voice and melody and chords for guitar. I get in an hour or two each day. Somedays I'll spend more time writing a new tune than practicing.
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Great subject. I always like hear how other people practice. I spend most of my time learning and memorizing solos. I’ll learn a complete solo then take the recording and slow it down to about 80% and place it on my iPod to play along with it. Once I get it down perfectly I then make my own rhythm track of the song and start practicing with that. I ultimately save some decent recordings. When I’m in my car I listen to music to figure out what songs/solos I want to learn next. I just keep moving on to new songs. Basically that’s it for me. I don’t practice scales, arpeggios, chords or anything else. I sight read well already so I don’t need to labor over that too much any more. It’s just memorizing solos and playing songs for me. That’s it.
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Right now, I wake up a 1/2 hour early to get a half hour in. Mondays, Tuesdays and Saturdays I can usually get an hour in in the afternoon/evening.
I teach Wed. and Thursday night, which is a little like practice, but not always jazz, unfortunately.
Every other weekend my wife works and I cram all of my chores into Saturday so I can shed all day Sunday.
My practice is all tunes playing/arranging now. I only go back to basics if something is coming out clumsy and I know I need to work with a particular scale or other idea.
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especially if you write on a piano! Originally Posted by markerhodes
seriously though, i think songwriting is a great way to improve your playing from a maturity standpoint. by writing you immerse yourself in deliberate, conscious choices.
i tend to blow a lot less air now, both because my chops are a bit less oiled, and because i choose to blow less air.
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I pretty much gave up on practicing, so I could lurk in jazz forums.
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AHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!! Originally Posted by max chill
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I get up at 5AM, practice 1-2hrs before work, then "noodle" at night some over a glass of wine. Much more on weekends (practice as well as wine)!
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I think songwriting is a noble calling, but there's no guarantee your "deliberate, conscious choice" will be any good. (I'm not singing *you* out here. This goes for anyone.) There's an irony about songwriting: if you know nothing else about a song other than that the writer worked hard on it for a long, long time, the smart money is that it sucks and should've been abandoned the day it came to mind. Not every great song was "tossed off in five minutes" but a multitude of good tunes seemed to "just come" to their composers. Originally Posted by lotuscent
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This is a very inspiring thread for me. Lately my practice sessions have been made up of jamming with Jamie Aebersold tracks and trying to learn new tunes. I know I need to do more, but frankly, have been too lazy. This thread seems to be recharging my battery though. Thanks!
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I've been a little lax the last week or so, but my normal routine breaks down like this:
1) JB's 5 fingerings in whatever key I feel like
- Up and down
- Coils of 2 and 3 (sometimes 4)
- Thirds
- Arpeggios
- Pentatonics
2) Mickey Baker lesson
3) Swing & Big Band rhythm Guitar lesson
4) Rhythm Changes in today's key (four note chords wherever I can find them)
5) Tune(s)
- Comping for vocalist (me)
- Comping as if in a small group
- Pick out a chord melody (as best I can)
All in all, it takes about two hours to get through the whole thing straight through. Sometimes I'll grab a metronome and turn it on during the whole thing and not stop it just to make myself consistent.
I'll also drop some of it just to shorten it up for the time I have. Usually that means working fingerings up and down, MB's lesson, and a tune.
I use this same approach to playing rock/folk guitar (minus the jazz lessons) and ukulele.
~DB
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Yes, a great thread - very interesting stuff from all of you.
For the past six months, I've been having it out with melancholy, and it's damned hard to do anything when the long black cloud keeps coming down. Before this started, and on my good days now, it went/goes something like this:
(I practice technique on an acoustic guitar - my Loar, usually.)
1) Pick technique, with metronome. I have several applicable books; Mel Bay did a great one back in the early 80s, is my dad's - mostly classical pieces arranged for plectrum. My favorite, though, is by Berklee graduate/National Flatpick Champ, Jeff Troxel - Right Hand Workout, it's called, and was put together with bluegrass flatpickers in mind, but it's good for anyone who plays with a pick. (If you think bebop is hard to pick, it isn't necessarily - not compared to what flatpickers have to do on dreadnoughts, strung with heavy gauge strings and playing sixteenth notes at 168 bpm or so... not saying bebop is easy!) Anyway, about 20-30 minutes of this.
2) Twenty minutes of Carl Culpepper's "Terrifying Technique" book - which brings the left hand into the right hand drilling.
3) I rest and loosen up a lot during all of this. I usually take a quick walk, then I practice tremolo for twenty minutes. Then comes a scale/mode practice routine that I won't even attempt to explain in detail. Lots of melodic sequences, playing as soft as possible to as loud as possible. It's mostly around a cycle of fourths or fifths, and is taken mostly from an old book by Rich Severson (guitarcollege.com) This takes about an hour and a half. Metronome or drum machine throughout.
4) Rest again, go online maybe, eat a sandwich, drink a Mt. Dew, always listening to Miles, Metheny, Django... Billie Holiday. Tony Bennett - wow.
5) Comping. Seems I always start by playing along with Holiday's "All of Me" in F. Then, Mickey Baker vol. one, and my all-time FAVORITE: All Blues for Jazz Guitar, by Jim Ferguson. All of y'all - get this. It's essential. I spend about 45 minutes comping, always to drum tracks or metronome, doing lots of Freddie Green chords... I'm not into the fancy stuff yet. Ferguson's getting me there, though. : )
6) TUNES! Lately been working on Donna Lee and Green Dolphin Street, with Band-in-a-Box. "Up a Lazy River," too - thanks guys! "Nardis" and "Autumn Leaves," the way Miles did it on his Funny Valentine album. I try to add one new jazz standard to my list per week - that's melody, chords, arpeggios, tricky scales, 4 or 5 keys. I rarely get it down pat, but I always review the "old" tunes. They eventually come.
That's it for jazz. At night, I do fiddle tunes on a dreadnought, fingerpick some, and do ear-training. If you don't know about this TOMB of musical GOLD, go to it now: Dolmetsch Online - Music Theory Online - Ear Tests and Drills // This isn't the homepage, but I just want you to see what one tiny part of the website has to offer. It's phenomenal.
A few nights a week, I play with a local acoustic bass player, who's positively gifted, and with another guitarist, and sometimes a violinist whose skirts get shorter every time we practice, I swear to god. It's killing me. Her name is Kim.
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Sounds like Kim's skirts are causing the blues.
Try Testim to solve both problems!
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Will do! Originally Posted by boatheelmusic
KJ
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This week I have a week off work so I've been able to play 3 hours + a day (I still have plenty of 'spring' things to do around the house, garage and garden!) but normally when working I struggle to find 30 minutes a day. I tried getting up early to practice the guitar but found that I was so stressed with all the things stacking up for me at work that I simply started work earlier rather than playing the guitar. I also finish much later these days than I used to so there's not much time in the evenings...
That said, I try and work through Jimmy Bruno's five shapes in every key every day and all his arpeggios (Major, Minor and Dom 7th) although I just normally pick one of my weaker keys and work through the arps in all the shapes for that key. I then work through some simple chord inversions (again, Maj, Min, and Dom 7th, and again only in one key). Quite often that's my available time used up. It's enough to keep me where I am but not too much forward progress. If I do get some available time, at the moment, I'll try and transcribe a bit of Charlie Christian or work through a few ii-V-I patterns.
Derek
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Nice thread!
I usually practice three hours a day, in one-hour-sessions. I do 30min each on:
-Scales/Arpeggios/Reading
-Learning tunes/Improvising
-Comping
-Transcribing
-Guitar Journals: Jazz
-The Jazz Theory Book
This works well for me, as the most important thing for me at the moment is to understand everything that's going on, and learn what other people do. But also to develop technique, as I hate how my playing always sounds ... unsteady, at least in my ears
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I practice around 2 hours per day, when I can find the time at least. I'm new to jazz, so I'm just trying to learn some of the chords, get better at scales, play a few tunes and so. (I'm really looking forward to be able to improvise) :O
I try to write a little music myself and transcribe a bit, but I feel that it isn't real "practicing", it isn't time on the guitar.
How much time do you spend on reading theory, transcribing and other stuff that doesn't really include practicing on the guitar?
/Laurits
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I use wine only while transcribing ergo => less frustration more done pages on nightI get up at 5AM, practice 1-2hrs before work, then "noodle" at night some over a glass of wine. Much more on weekends (practice as well as wine)!
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