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Muscle memory is what is accomplished from repetition. Howard Roberts was a great guitar instructor and efficient practicing was part of what he taught.
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12-11-2012 10:00 AM
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That is something Howard Robert said constantly practice slowly enough that you play perfectly so you don't make mistakes. In general Howard said you brain remembers everything, but doesn't know good from bad just know you were thinking scale X so the one with mistakes to brain is still scale X. So if you brain only knows how to do something right mistakes won't pop out later.
Originally Posted by kris
As Howard said if you make mistakes practicing you're practicing making mistakes.
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+1 Originally Posted by kris
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Great line! I'll have to put that on my practice log. Originally Posted by docbop
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Re: the TV question: I think for me it’s a question of what I’m trying to accomplish at the moment. If I’m trying to learn a new tune or doing some ear training, then having the TV on is an unhelpful distraction. But if I’m already familiar with a tune (i.e. without the chart) and improvising over the changes, often it’s helpful to have it on – as a deliberate minor distraction – in order to help turn off the left side of my brain which would be thinking of chord names and guide tones, etc. and use the right side, which would be hearing and feeling the changes instead. If I get lost, it’s an indication that I don’t know the tune well enough.
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I've actually found playing tunes I know and having distractions....(i.e.TV, dog barking, talking to girlfriend, etc) as actually being beneficial to some degree. If you ever played in a noisy crowd or have had people try to talk to you while playing, being able to focus on two things may be good training. But of course while working on new things I want to learn...I need silence.
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Miles used to practice while watching TV. That made me feel better about doing it also...
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I don't think there's too much on tv worth concentrating on anyway so you may as well have a guitar in your hands. Just picking it up for a few minutes waiting for my wife/ kids and reinforcing just one issue I think is worth any mindless short period of time. Multiple short practice sessions I find help more than the 2 hr cram in isolation anyway.
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Originally Posted by bobby d
You know, I've argued about this before, but I don't beleive in "muscle memory." The muscles cannot remember anything on their own....the brain has to be involved.
Why is this important? I think because you can repeat a motion 1,000 times absentmindedly and eventually the synapses fire to do it on "autopilot," or, you can conciously practice a movement perhaps as few as 100 times and have it licked if your brain is completely involved.
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I think I would disagree about the 100 vs. 1000. Of course, muscle memory doesn't literally mean the muscles are remembering anything - yes, it's all in the brain. But if you're trying to internalize a paticular fingering or scale or interval, as long as you do it correctly (no mistakes), I don't think you have to necessarily think about it as you're repeating it. On the other hand, it's been discovered that just thinking about or visualizing doing something without actually doing it stimulates the same synapses as doing the activity itself, which helps develop so-called muscle memory.
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Muscle Memory:
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Glad you said this. Not that I agree with it (-or disagree, for that matter) but because it might prompt conversation about how we understand the term. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
I've seen the use of the term 'muscle memory' to be, say, the way to make a chord on the guitar without looking, how that feels, and that's ALL muscle memory is. Others use 'muscle memory' to refer to things such as 'how to make a series of chord changes' but I think that is unconscious memory rather than muscle memory. (I think a lot of what is called 'muscle memory' is unconscious memory, but of course that depends on how narrowly one defines muscle memory.)
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I guess I've always defined muscle memory as the ability of the brain to remember precisely how to do some physical activity - usually one that takes a good deal of precision - like sinking a foul shot or throwing a football exactly 45 yards or knowing where a minor third is on the fretboard if you're in whatever position, etc. Or knowing how far the strings are from each other and in relation to your picking hand so you can pick the B string instead of the G string without looking down at them.
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The mind plays the guitar. This is the way I look at things. It's the MIND. The muscles and tendons have to be trained to react. But on their own the hands do nothing significant. Yet it's repetition of muscle action that trains the MIND where to order the fingers to go. Eventually the mind can SEE Bb7b9 and the fingers go, not on their own, but it can seem that way. I think you've, the player, set aside a list of possible configurations and answers to solve the question "what do I want to play on that chord?" I believe most minds see in images or pictures. I see a fretboard that's divided up into all kinds of geometric shapes. I can see the tonic or dominant or every third, altered tone and 327 different ways of getting from one place to another. My fingers don't know this. I know this. But I've trained my fingers to not be unfamiliar with the territory. Otherwise I'd have to take a lot more time to slowly train them to skip over the G string, play the D with my little finger, while muting the 1st string, etc.
The times when I play best, as I think everyone does, is when there is no THINKING. Thinking requires effort and computation and decisions, all of which take time. Improvisation is wonderful because it shows us how quick the human mind can work. I can just KNOW what to do without thinking or even paying much attention. If I know the material and the fretboard well enough I can just let go and play automatically, so it appears that I'm playing from muscle memory alone. Yes, I'm letting my hands go. But that's because I'm just playing by sound or by feeling or by images. If we had to order each finger what fret to play or how hard to press or which finger I wanted to use or what lick, the song would be over before we got through the first 3 bars.
It's not magic. It just seems so because we don't give the mind enough credit for what we/it can do.
I view practicing as a method of training my mind where the notes are on the guitar and how to play them.Last edited by henryrobinett; 12-11-2012 at 05:54 PM.
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Think of a baby learning to crawl. It takes time. Babies have no muscle memory of how to crawl. They develop it through crawling and eventually crawl without considering how they do it; instead, they focus only on where they are going and why they want to get there. Originally Posted by Solo Flight
Precision need not be a part of it. If you slouch when you sit it will take great, sustained effort to sit up straight. If you grip the guitar neck a certain way and have for years, and you realize that it's limiting you, you will have a hard time developing a different grip.
Bad habits developed as a beginner are a cross many mature musicians struggle to lay down.
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Muscle memory, noun; your memory for motor skills.
I think we all know what muscle memory means and we've all experienced it.
It doesn't mean literally that your muscles have memory. Everyone knows that, right?
It's a figure of speech. No need to get bogged down in semantics.
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I don't think it is this simple. Typing your PIN at an ATM is a use of muscle memory but very little guitar playing (-other than scales) is that blindly repetitious. Further, we've all had the experience of getting something right the first time and never being troubled by it after, while other things remain a challenge after concerted effort. Some muscle memory is much broader than particular licks---such as skipping strings, something most of us fumbled over initially, or learning to voice melodies in octaves. You learn how to move octaves and then may pick up a particular octave lick / passage / move immediately. Originally Posted by fep
I read an interesting article on this by a guy who teaches people how to improve their gaming skills and he uses the example of music because he plays several instruments and teaches. He says that if he asks a guitar player who isn't holding a guitar to form an E chord, the person does it without hesitation, but if he asks the person to hold that grip and then puts a guitar in the guy's lap, the grip is almost never quite right. (The guitar itself is an aid to muscle memory, which is why a passage you can play on your guitar flawlessly might not come out so smoothly if you're playing another one.)
If you're playing "Summertime" for the thousandth time, though, it won't be the same as the time before or the next time because you vary things, such as chord voicings and comping rhythms, perhaps shifting registers in the melody. That's not muscle memory.
If you're working up a solo or etude from a book, or that you've transcribed, that can involve muscle memory, though it is curious that some parts were always easy, while others remain a challenge despite isolated repetition. (This may be where Hal Galper would poke his nose in and say 'if you can't play it it is because you're not hearing it!")
Also, much writing about muscle memory claims that it takes 3,000 to 5,000 repetitions to form a muscle memory. If this is true, most of what we play on guitar is NOT from muscle memory. (I don't think it took me that long to learn to type in my PIN at an ATM without looking, either.) Much controversy surrounds central claims in the use of muscle memory. It is not a 'done deal.'
I think we all get this in relation to certain licks / phrases (or melodies) that we've played thousands of times, but then, who had to play the melody of "Summertime" several thousand times before getting it down? And who isn't still plagued by a particular lick that they HAVE played a few thousand times but still sometimes flub?
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It may be that we're talking semantics, but I do call this muscle memory. If I play an improvisation on Summertime, I have gone over so many ramifications and permutations of chords, scales, playing various forms on and around Summertime and tunes that remind me of summertime, over time, that I glide from chord to chord in ways I can only describe as muscle memory. Cmin 6 is Cmin 6, and Dm7 is Dim7. The ear leads the charge and fingers do their due diligence Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
Here's another way I might describe it: I think the mind takes "pictures" that contain all perceptible things like hand position, pressure, string gauge, comfort, discomfort, as well as chord shape, scale or mode shape, enclosures, licks, rhythmic patterns, note possibilities. So when I play, practice, noodle, all of these things come to play, so to speak. It takes great repetition to get it all working in coordination.
The thing about jazz is, it's not like we're inventing a new form of music each time we play. Much of it takes very similar forms and shape. In playing general tunes over and over and over again we apply similar concepts. In practicing scales, arpeggios, 2-5 patterns, exercises, we train our hands in muscle memory, because primarily because we are grooving in the mental image pictures of those playing patterns, hand sensations, and visual fretboard layouts, therefore creating what some call "muscle memory."
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I'm not talking semantics...I'm talking about the difference between distracted practice versus deliberate....one can wait for muscle memory to get them there or work a little harder and get there faster. Originally Posted by fep
It's about using your brain proactively and not waiting for a "magical" occurrence that is completely non magical.
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Which one is magical to you and why?
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Nothing's magical. I'm just saying i think there's something to the concept of practicing with the mind fully involved...at least I see results quicker that way.
Or people can practice absentmindedly and wait for "magic."
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I see. That makes sense. I keep my mind more or less fully engaged when I practice. But when there's magic and there often is, at least for me, it's when my mind is not thinking. You can still call it engaged if you want to. But I'm just playing. I'm not thinking about what I'm playing. I'm seeing and hearing what I'm playing. But magic happens in those moments for me. But it's only possible if I've done copious home work. Thinking I'm defining as figure-figure, effort-effort. When one PLAYS one is relaxed and in the moment. THINKING is effort. Thinking is always ahead and behind, never NOW.
Not waiting for magic. I can play whether there's something magical going on or not. And by magic I don't mean that notes just appear out of nowhere. I'm talking about those moments when you're almost outside of yourself playing. And there's a symmetry and logic and communication almost beyond what I could have created by THINKING about it. As a matter of fact it's precisely this thing that got me into playing music and jazz in particular, in the first place.
It's like trying to talk and always being aware of your grammar and sentence structure. Or running and you have to constantly tell yourself which feet go where when. Jazz does seem to have this magical thing happen when you KNOW YOUR STUFF and then relax and think about NOTHING and play some real shit. You're not thinking bebop scale, enclosures, arpeggios, chord changes, but you're playing all of it beautifully because you've worked on it until it's second nature. THAT'S when the magic happens. All the time. For me anyway. That's what it's all about, for me.
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Sorry I guess I missed understood when your wrote: Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
You know, I've argued about this before, but I don't beleive in "muscle memory." The muscles cannot remember anything on their own....the brain has to be involved.
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Originally Posted by henryrobinett
Yeah, I think the idea is when you're not thinking, the stuff that bubbles to the surface is what you really know and remember...which can be surprising sometimes because the brain can hold a lot more than we might think, and it also might get recombined in a way that's completely new to our ears...and that part is kinda magical, I guess.
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A few decades ago, no one on Earth had ever sent a text message on a cellphone. Now, millions do it daily and some are very fast. That is muscle memory. (The same thing goes for touch typing.) This is important because some seem to think there is a specific muscle memory for each thing you PLAY, like it would take a particular muscle memory for you to type "I wish I had a milkshake right about now" (without looking at the keyboard) even though you had never typed that sentence before. But it doesn't.
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