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I think musicians have learned how to learn. ANYTHING, if it's applied. With music it's a tactile thing. You don't REALLY learn it by staring at a picture of a fretboard. You learn it by drilling it with your fingers on the fretboard. And the IMPRESSION of that visual and tactile drilling stays in your mind. IMages and the finger impressions on your guitar, mentally.This is what I try to convey to my students anyway.
I was lucky. I got this concept very early. They go hand in hand. But learning anything requires drilling. Repetition. Toddlers learning to walk is done by doing it over and over, everyday. Learning to talk, to drive, to eat, to sing, to tell jokes, to read, make love, passing classes, studying -- it's all done by learning through repetition, until you GET the drill and just do it. We musicians call it practicing. In school they call it studying, but as far as I'm concerned few people know how to study because they don't know what it entails. You can have some people who are glib and learn how to memorize pieces of data; enough to pass a test, and forget it two days later. Can't apply a thing. They don't really know how to study.
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08-03-2014 01:24 PM
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Yes Professor - absolutely correct - a great exercises. And one that can be applied to any chord sequence from any song you happen to have the sheet for.
But don't over do the speed. The key to learning is to start very slowly and not make any errors - you want to train the fingers to kniow where to go - not make errors. Slower is good. I start one of my students at one note per second - quarter notes at 60bpm. If you are flubbing note - slow down. Perfect is easy to speed up - an error filled exercise isn't going to be getting better when played faster.
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Totally disagree...
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What aspects are you in disagreement with Reg?
Originally Posted by Reg
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I think Reg is not a big fan of the "practice slow to play fast" advice.
I'm back and forth on that myself. I spent a lot of time practicing slow and precise, and yeah, I could speed it up cleanly...but I wasn't able to pull off any fast playing in real time until i set the metronome at 250 and starting hacking away.
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OK. Playing very slowly helped me play fast, I think. I could always play fast. But when trying to play fast bop stuff I couldn't hang. And it was because, as far as I can tell, my vocabulary wasn't smooth at faster tempos, so I had to slow everything down to the point where I knew what I was doing, like a gnat flying through raindrops.
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This reminds me of an audience member in the TV show "Question Time" and they just made a statement - and got burned by David Starkey on the panel for not having a supporting argument. I'm not saying you can learn to play fast by always playing slowly - like running fast, there comes a point when you have to be actually running fast - but a lot of physical techniques are learnt slowly before they are run at full speed whether that is music or sport.
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Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Yes, I'm a believer is play slow to play fast. So I would ask is when you crank the metronome up is it a technique issue that is the problem of a not confident at that tempo problem. As we become more confident in our playing tempo increase usually come with it.
HR would say don't need to work on speed it develops on its own. If you look at his SuperChops book that many used to develop speed, it is slowly developing your technique with gradually tempo increase that you track to build confidence.
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I remember someone saying (was it in the book 'Effortless Mastery'?) that difficult music isn't difficult, it's just unfamiliar. So slow practice and loads of repetition makes it familiar and therefore the music becomes less difficult.
Howard Roberts (is that your HR?) would say he needed to play through a piece 50 times before he was ready to start improvising on it - so repetition and steady practice meant a lot for him. I think it is a lot like cooking a meal you are very familiar with - you can talk, cut, boil, fry and generally complete the meal very quickly without a lot of effort. But a new or unfamiliar meal takes time, reference to the book, no distractions, steady progress - three times longer to finish. Playing to an audience needs to be the first - the star chef on stage - on semi-autopilot, looking and feeling confident, and super relaxed. Comes with lots of private practice and then honing it with lots of public performances.
Most students I have taught have completely underestimated how much practice is needed by something like 200% - they think they can learn a piece in 3 hours and I know it will take them 9. So the next time we meet they try to play the piece at tempo and fail - it is not that it's difficult - it's about not giving the brain enough time to develop new pathways, new methods to retain the new knowledge and 'muscle memory'.
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That's a pretty good tempo. I'd love to hear some of that because I can't get to it and still remain very musical. Originally Posted by ecj
As far as learning licks and phrases vs strings of notes, both have their use in learning the guitar.
In his great book Super Chops, Howard Roberts strongly suggests that for the purpose of getting one's technique together, there's nothing better than playing consecutive 8th notes at continuously increasing tempos with no slurs, hammer on of pull off moves and no rests. Going through that book was a wonderful experience for me.
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Originally Posted by ecj
Sheryl Bailey
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I'll try to do a quick vid of some rhythm changes or something. Originally Posted by Flyin' Brian
One issue I have with the connecting game, and maybe this is more a technique issue for me, is that, following up on my post above, a lot of this stuff is just not very practical at high tempos. If I look at what I can play when the sax player kicks off something at 300, it's all bebop lines and licks, or scalar stuff, but definitely not 7th arpeggios. There are arp fragments, for sure, and there are some fingerings that lay well for fast lines (especially ascending stuff), but there's just no way I can execute a lot of the "connecting game" kind of techniques at fast tempos.
The more of that kind of practice that I've done, the more I learned about the neck, for sure, but I feel in some ways that it was a huge waste of time that would've been better spent on learning licks.
I don't think I'd feel that way if I was capable of playing through all my arpeggio fingerings in 8s at 300bpm fluidly, but I seriously wonder, absent sweep picking everything, how many guitar players can really even do that.
Anyone else struggle just to nail a 2-octave C maj7th arpeggio at 7th position up and down at 300?
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If you've read and of my previous commits over the years, But OK... I'll get into it again.
Learning to perform something on your guitar is just that.... your not developing technique... your learning to play something. So you memorize it slow and gradually bring it up to speed. Your not developing a technique that will repeat in any situation. With enough practice any technique can produce just about anything... I might be stretching that... most just can cover at faster tempos... usually from not knowing or understanding what their playing and lousy technique.
Many times from learning something nice and slow. Usually after a few years of learning material nice and slow and bringing it up to speed... You'll develop a collections of techniques which may or may not be structured on common... anything besides what you've memorized. You end up with breakdowns and walls, which keeps you from being able to play what and how you want.
Whereas if one developes technique that will repeat and not need slow practice over time to play up to speed... My personal view is we're talking about apples and oranges... one is technique one is an understanding of what your playing. When you learn them together... you get mixed fruit.
If you have good or at least a developed technique... you don't need to play some slow to finger it... you generally just need to decide what position and how to articulate...
With arpeggios... I've posted lots of material about positions and fingering that work and work well to play or read any type of arpeggios... playing the connect the dots or playing arpeggios through changes should be about understanding what the arpeggios are not how to finger them
The point of developing good technique isn't making sure you find the best fingerings and picking method... it's developing one that repeats with out having to think about it...so you have a reference to work from, you have a foundation, maybe not good analogy, but hopefully you get my point.
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not the second octave Originally Posted by ecj
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Some people haven't been on the forum for years so a little elaboration is always a good thing Originally Posted by Reg
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I definitely agree with your first statement. I don't play enormously well at fast tempos because I don't play at them enough. You have to practice playing fast ... which means spending time playing at and just past your break point and pushing that point further and further. I'll also agree that I don't play well at fast tempos because I don't think fast enough to understand what I'm playing at those tempos. Evidence of that is that I can play really nice double time at 130 but playing the same tune at 260 is hard.
I don't, however, get the issue with practicing something slow. How do you develop that technique that repeats without thinking about it without practicing slow enough that you can repeat the technique successfully. I've always learned that a players brain doesn't really care what the hands are practicing ... it's always learning. We can't turn that off. So if you play fast and make mistakes then our brain learns the mistakes. I had a teacher that always said "Practice doesn't make perfect ... perfect practice makes perfect" ... granted he was a classical guy but as far as developing technique (not ideas or improvisational abilities or your ear but technique .. hands on the guitar technique) I think it holds true.
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I struggle to play 8th notes anything at 300... Generally at around 260... it becomes sloppy and the feel disappears. And generally the maj7 two octave arpeggio in position is the easiest.
Hey pamosmusic... I didn't say... or if that's what it seemed I implied... sorry. Practicing slow is great for playing slow... playing fast is different skills. Any technique works well at slow tempos, well maybe not any, but most.
And I think is good there are different opinions etc... I just wanted to make sure the unpopular opinion about how to practice wasn't overlooked.
I can play tunes that I know or new tunes and I'm sight reading the first at very fast tempos... it doesn't really make any difference to me... generally up tempos are better, I concentrate.
Have any of your students developed skills for playing up tempos, not memorized material, just being able to play at 240 + etc...Last edited by Reg; 01-02-2015 at 06:28 PM.
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I'm less talking about fingerings, at least right now, than I am executing improv. And since I rarely work things out in terms of patterns, not that either. For me when navigating improv through hyper fast bop changes I wasn't able to do it convincingly without going slow at first. And it wasn't because I didn't have technique. I could play a bunch of scalar things or chromatic things that fast. But to be able to pull off real cool sounding bop shit, with a lot of curly-ques, enclosures, triplets, pivot points, altered tones, took a lot more attention to detail than I could give just running at 300 BPM and missing half of it all. If you could, great. But I certainly couldn't. I COULD once I slowed it down to look at the detail up close and personal, like a gnat flying through the raindrops.
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Like a gnat flyin through the rain drops.... wow, I love that image. cool one liner. Good point...and yea the understanding of what one wants to hear and play takes some skills.
So whats slow, 300 BPM is fast, unless your feelin it in half time feel. Generally don't you feel almost all up tempos in 2. I play a lot of fast latin music which is almost always very fast ... but felt in 2, with tons of the triad arpeggios, almost like montunos. It's almost time to go play some BS ...
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My improv is more like a fat kid avoiding dodgeballs.
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Lets see if I can say this right....
I think a lot players can physically play fast, but their brain isn't ready to function at same speed. To play good solos at fast tempo all aspects of your musical skills have to be capable of the tempo. Like how improv teachers will have you write lines on paper away from your instrument and call it slow speed improvisation. They say you're practicing the same thought process you want to become automatic on stage.
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Sounds like me
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Me too, me too Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Sounds like me
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The argument about practicing slowly to get it fast comes up quite a bit. But I will say that I have taken lessons from guys who can absolutely fly, Henry Johnson being one of them, Larry Coryell being another and Sheryl Bailey being a third. I've gone through Howard Roberts' books and done some on line stuff with Jimmy Bruno. All of them....ALL of them say that if you want to be fast AND ACCURATE that you need to play slowly at first to get the muscles in your hands and their connection to your brain aligned correctly. If you practice something repeatedly and keep making the same mistakes, your body will accept those mistakes as being "correct" and now you've set yourself up for a lot of extra work to undo it.
I listen to Herb Ellis and Joe Pass playing with Oscar Peterson in some cases at about 310 or so. I've not heard them play anything close to a 2 octave arpeggio at that tempo, and the lines that they play are pretty much broken into short spurts compared to the extended lines that Oscar plays.
I also agree with Docbop....it's one thing to physically play at high tempos and a totally different thing to improvise and be musical at those tempos.Last edited by Flyin' Brian; 01-03-2015 at 12:37 AM.
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You guys are somewhat supporting my point... You can only perform what your able to play physically.... and there are two approaches to that performance, memorization or creating, understanding of and being aware of what your playing. And of course if you can sight read well... but that method doesn't really apply on this forum, so lets skip that one.
But the other two do, right. Your either going to play from memorization of... for this thread, fingerings and picking of arpeggios, the slow practice of examples and bringing them up to speed. A collection of individual memorization's or...
have the technical skills aspect of playing arpeggios developed and use the skills of arpeggios as part of creating relationships with other methods of improv etc..
I understand its not that simple, but it's also not that complicated. When we say slow, we generally mean what ever tempo we can perform what we have memorized or what we can consciously create in time... at the tempo.
All I'm saying is from years of watching teachers and student etc... most students don't ever really develop up tempo skills, so maybe the standard method doesn't work.
I worked on technique as a kid... young kid. Once I understood what teachers were teaching me... I usually could perform what they were teaching me... better. And I'm no one with medium pro skills.
The muscle memory of playing slow.... doesn't work when playing fast, it's different technique. (muscle memory). I would also say it's different mental memory also... I don't practice... haven't since I was a kid, if I put in the time like many on this forum says required... I would need to skip life and sleeping.
The other aspect of time put in.... again personally, you need to have long practice sessions, to reach higher levels of performance. At least occasionally, short time periods are for keeping you where you are.
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I remember an article in a Guitar Player magazine where someone noted for their speed recommended a pyramid approach to learning a skill, where the wide bottom area was slow practice, and the top was pushing past your comfortable speeds, with the areas in between being increasing levels of speed, and the width of that area representing time spent.
Of course, slow is a relative term. If it is accurate and effortless, I don't know why you would go any slower.
I am not a super fast player, but I have increased my speed by gradually going faster over the short sessions that I have time for.
Reg, I wonder if you are attributing a special quality to your long sessions, when really it is just a matter of total quantity. It is to be expected that if I practice for an hour a day and you practice three hours a day that you will make more progress. But if I practice an hour a day and you practice for seven hours only on Monday, my guess is that I will make more progress.
"Quantity has a quality all it's own."
--NapoleonLast edited by Jonzo; 01-03-2015 at 01:07 PM.
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