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I think this is all an elaborate troll/joke on bad practice approaches. What do you think?
If so Neely is an absolute masochist in service of his art, and has a brilliant poker face.
Much as I like to believe the musicians of New York are relentless Terminator like beings who will absolutely not stop until all combinations of everything are mastered, I cannot believe Neely is putting this video as an exemplar of how to practice anything.
Which is exactly what a lot of his posters seem to think, tho. 'This is the dedication it takes to be the best of the best of the best!' Hmmm....
Last edited by christianm77; 06-29-2017 at 10:49 AM.
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06-29-2017 10:44 AM
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I was thinking the same thing. Nice that he doesn't nail it all like a Terminator though
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Adam probably did it to keep a chunk of his followers busy and not sending him lesson requests for awhile. I can't imagine all the email Adam, Beato, Nolte, Gwisdala, Larsen, and the others get daily. You read some of the posted comments I hate to think what people say and ask in private.
Adam has twice the subscribers of the others over 200,000 people. Beato seems to be experimenting with his YT's as a marketing tool. Nolte has slowed down some, but has been buy better video gear so appears she's hanging. I think the wise one are like Larsen who commits to once a week video and occasional does more. Bob Reynolds doesn't do a lot compared to the others, but he is very into video to the quality and editing of his videos is real good. Adam is using Patreon and asking viewer to donate per month to underwrite his videos, I wonder how well that works, how many are actually donation monthly.
Oh well, just thinking out loud.
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I haven't watched it, but if he doesn't nail it then I assume that the 5 hour session isn't part of his regular rutine
Originally Posted by yaclaus
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how is this a bad approach? this is exactly the sort of thing a lot of people avoid, learning something inside and out
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Could be. I'm don't mean to be nasty but there's a lot of absolute fucking idiots out there. :-)Adam probably did it to keep a chunk of his followers busy and not sending him lesson requests for awhile. I can't imagine all the email Adam, Beato, Nolte, Gwisdala, Larsen, and the others get daily. You read some of the posted comments I hate to think what people say and ask in private.
I haven't watched it, but if he doesn't nail it then I assume that the 5 hour session isn't part of his regular rutine
Ha, what do you mean you haven't watched it? (The joke being that there seem to be followers of his on you tube that have watched a couple of hours of this stuff.... I must assume they don't have anything better to do.)
Furthermore, if you are nailing it first time, you should probably pick something else to practice. Most people do't vlog their practice, because you sound crap when you are practicing. If you don't you aren't doing it right. Practice is about failure and striving toward success. People like Gwizdala, Beato etc blog a projection of success. Nothing against them - it's a pitfall of the form, especially if you want to make money with it.
Anyway, let's say - just for the sake of argument - you want to spend 5 hours with one break practicing the major scale. I mean it's a stupid idea on every level but let's just park that.
How would you lay out the material Adam has listed in the comments section? What do you start with?
(I mean of course the 5 hour major scale session isn't his regular routine. :-))
Adam's a smart cat.... What's he up to? I think he's starting a debate. There's a sort of absurdist element to his personality - that's why he's my favourite music youtuber. It's like he's going to the extreme, almost a surreal parody of this sort of idea of how musicians practice to subtly mock it, and thereby spark some interesting questions.
It's shame most of followers are too young/inexperienced/boneheaded to cotton on.Last edited by christianm77; 07-02-2017 at 06:45 PM.
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Here's a hint - watch the way Adam is physically and mentally towards the end of his session and the start and the relative difficulty of some of the exercises compared to others. Is it easier or harder to play 3rd inversion seventh arpeggios through the scale or a major scale straight up and down? Originally Posted by nick1994
Is it in fact possible that someone like Adam might already know how to play some of these exercises perfectly already? (I know I do and I daresay so can you) If so, why include them? To what end? Perhaps as a warm up?
Another hint - how sustainable is this form of practice? Is it possible to continue with this on a daily basis? What is better - little (or at least less) & often on each area that needs work, or one massive splurge of time on one subject?
Many other issues... Just to be clear, I'm not saying don't put in 5 hours a day. I'm not saying don't learn everything on Adam's list. I'm saying use your head and do things efficiently.
I know we are trained to believe hard work is everything, and it is important, but hard work applied with intelligence is SOOOO much more effective. If you don't know how to plough a field, you aren't ever going to grow wheat, however hard you toil.Last edited by christianm77; 07-02-2017 at 06:58 PM.
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Here's the cliff notes video summary:
MAJOR SCALE 12 keys, 2 8ves
INTERVALS (ALL 12 KEYS)
3rds
Ascending, descending, alternating up/down, alternating down/up
4ths
Ascending, descending, alternating up/down, alternating down/up
5ths
Ascending, descending, alternating up/down, alternating down/up
6ths
Ascending, descending, alternating up/down, alternating down/up
7ths
Ascending, descending, alternating up/down, alternating down/up
TRIADS
R ascending, R descending, R alternating up/down, R alternating down/up
1I ascending, 1I descending, 1I alternating up/down, 1I alternating down/up
2I ascending, 2I descending, 2I alternating up/down, 2I alternating down/up
12 keys
SEVENTH CHORDS
R ascending, R descending, R alternating up/down, R alternating down/up
1I ascending, 1I descending, 1I alternating up/down, 1I alternating down/up
2I ascending, 2I descending, 2I alternating up/down, 2I alternating down/up
3I ascending, 3I descending, 3I alternating up/down, 3I alternating down/up
Adam focuses on a 2 octave simple statement and some basic mechanical major scale patterns.
The video would be much shorter if he didn't have to explain everything while being personable.
For abstract argument sake, I'll venture that he could have got this all done in 3 hours.
180 divided by 12 is 15 minutes per key. Four keys a day in one hour.
All twelve keys every 3 days, twice a week with one day off, 8 times a month.
For once I get to experience myself as a voice of moderation, not a completely familiar feeling.
Last edited by bako; 07-02-2017 at 08:12 PM.
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Thanks for the summary. Originally Posted by bako
Moderation implies compromise. There is no compromise here, it's actually less compromising because an intelligent practice session will head straight for the jugular of the stuff you can't do. It's overlong, stereotyped and mechanical practice which is the real compromise here, because it's less efficient and effective. Scientifically speaking.
I reckon you can master everything in this list in the space of months with regular normal practice, if you are organised about it.
Another point - you are not practicing just the scale, you are practicing practicing scales.
So, the first time you ever learned a scale it was really hard, right? The more scales you learn the easier it got. Same with patterns.... The more you get used to working through patterns etc the faster your brain gets at learning new patterns. This is not a linear process at all.
So for me looking at this, I would focus just on stuff I can't do. Some I know that I know cold. Other ones, maybe maybe not - there's an element of ongoing assessment here - can I do this one? Yes. Great, move on, no time for self congratulating :-) How about this one. Ah tricky, spend a little more time. And so on.
The gold is to be found in the hard stuff that hurts your brain. You don't want to spend too much time in one sitting on this type of stuff. Go straight for that while you are fresh - if you've been able to work out what that stuff is. (Assessment again, right?)
Target these areas like a suck seeking missile.Last edited by christianm77; 07-02-2017 at 08:41 PM.
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I'd like to call this a sort of maximalist approach. This demands a lot of work and it is very unclear what one will yield. Could you imagine being able to play this perfectly yet still lacking very much in improvising through a blues? I sure could!
I also think people are different. I think many very good players don't spend time on this (Moreno def comes to mind) while others blast through this (Kreisberg probably). Maybe others have a few pet scale patterns they play a lot as a sort of warm up, but not much more than that (I could imagine Rosenwinkel being one of them, but I should stop speculating).
A funny thing is some players may not practice this much, but can play the c*** out of some of these things basically because their playing and understanding of music is at such a high level.
To me a big problem with this sort of practice is, when does it end? Next up three note patterns, four note patterns, chromatic patterns, melodic minor, harmonic minor, harmonic major. Was it Zappa who had something like "The torture never stops!" in one of his songs? Also Mark Turner said "you can practice for millenia". So it's probably better to find the exact thing you want to get better at than try to fit in to some sort of "highly organized" practice scheme that you think will save your b*** for the dancefloor. It probably won't anyways
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It never ends. Originally Posted by yaclaus
I'm not questioning the value of practicing this material. I questioning the value of playing all of it one sitting back to back.
After you get your basic chops together, practice (I think) is about nurturing flexibility.
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I have no idea who this guy is, but this clearly has to be some sort of elaborate joke . I turned it off after five minutes.
This demonstrates the absurdity of the Internet. Nothing wrong with practicing five hours a day, that's my goal actually. Actually, I'm working towards taking a year off to work on music to really at the woodshed. That will probably be 10 hours a day.
But everybody practices a balanced practice schedule, A little bit of this a little bit of that, some technique, some free improvisation, but mainly repertoire. Do we really need to discuss this ?
I spent 20 minutes of my time every day doing nothing but an Alzapúa. It's just basically a triplet with the thumb that sadly only exists in flamenco-- down down up -- and it's really really really hard. I suppose I could spend five hours a day doing that. But that would be really stupid. At the very least I will be doing this 20 minute exercise for months and months and months . Every day. I have to believe everybody knows the consistency over a long period of time is what counts. This is not rocket science .
The only thing most people don't practice or think they need to practice is time feel, polyrhythms, groove. They think they'll just somehow "get it' and it will just come naturally. I spent 10 minutes a day practically nothing but a 16th note subdivision. And 10 minutes a day practicing nothing but a triplet subdivision. I'll be doing that for months and months as well.
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Adam Neely's videos are great... I wouldn't want to discourage you from checking out his vids, I think you'd dig them. Originally Posted by NSJ
It's belief that it's purposefully absurd... and yet people take it at fact value. IDK.This demonstrates the absurdity of the Internet. Nothing wrong with practicing five hours a day, that's my goal actually. Actually, I'm working towards taking a year off to work on music to really at the woodshed. That will probably be 10 hours a day.
But everybody practices a balanced practice schedule, A little bit of this a little bit of that, some technique, some free improvisation, but mainly repertoire. Do we really need to discuss this ?
I spent 20 minutes of my time every day doing nothing but an Alzapúa. It's just basically a triplet with the thumb that sadly only exists in flamenco-- down down up -- and it's really really really hard. I suppose I could spend five hours a day doing that. But that would be really stupid. At the very least I will be doing this 20 minute exercise for months and months and months . Every day. I have to believe everybody knows the consistency over a long period of time is what counts. This is not rocket science .
The only thing most people don't practice or think they need to practice is time feel, polyrhythms, groove. They think they'll just somehow "get it' and it will just come naturally. I spent 10 minutes a day practically nothing but a 16th note subdivision. And 10 minutes a day practicing nothing but a triplet subdivision. I'll be doing that for months and months as well.
At the very least - take regular short breaks and don't forget to eat. :-)
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I've watched a few of Adam's videos that had good content and were well explained.
Scales, arpeggios, patterns are practiced because they are relevant pitch collections and movements
likely to occur in music. It is a pretty safe to say that in western music, a major scale is a prime note collection.
It is the ground zero that is being modified when interval, scale/mode, chordal formula are stated.
G Harmonic Minor - 1 2 b3 4 5 b6 7 applied to a G major scale G A B C E E F# becomes G A Bb C D Eb F#
This video presented more of a quantity of content over quality of musical expressions.
Each key was played in a nondescript, non-expressive, mono-rhythmic way.
If I were guessing, I would say Adam was aiming towards better fingerboard knowledge and freedom of
scale navigation based on things he said early on in the video.
If we assume that a given note collection has importance to us, what can we do from there.
1. Simple statement - before doing anything fancy it is reasonable to go up and down with good sound production.
2. Explore and understand it's harmonic content. Playing interval and chord scales helps both physically,
conceptually and aurally.
3. In my opinion extracting patterns from actual music and Hanonizing them is a worthy activity.
The source music provides an expressive model while hearing the content modified by the various
intervals on each scale degree.
4. Explore the melodic content. Create melodies using the source material, improvising in simulated
and actual musical contexts.
5. Become aware of musical content present and missing. Learn ways to supplement the basic material.
6. Full integration into the process of music making with little or no thought required.
What else?
Scale, arpeggio, pattern regimens have existed in music pedagogical materials for a very long time.
We can engage or bypass this type of approach, aiming more directly towards the music itself.
If we choose engagement, then we need to fashion models of activity that best serve our
creative musical goals.Last edited by bako; 07-03-2017 at 11:56 AM.
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I certainly don't want to dismiss or poo-poo the actual content, which I still think is very valuable.
When I was taking lessons, my teacher always said that you're never too good or too old or too jaded to stop practicing technical exercises and skills and so forth-- Music is a lifetime endeavor . They should, he said, ideally be the first part of your regular (daily) practice routine, part of a warm-up exercise. But he also emphasized, when you practice scales, don't practice scales -- use them as bases for practicing patterns- intervals-harmonizations and so forth . Like Bako mentioned above. Pick a few things, work on them for a few minutes, change it up after a while . Do it regularly and steadily, a Little bit every day.
But what does he know? George Benson asked to Study with him, Joe Diorio lamented that he never got to study with him. .
Hell, even Pascuale Grasso even talked about practicing scales this way , in his teaching videos . But what does he know ?
I think the point made all the time that there is too much information on the Internet and we can be easily distracted and go from this to that to something else randomly and haphazardly, that's very valid . It's Something to be mindful for . Conversely, we must be aware of opposite reaction --a crude, dumbed down anti-intellectualism, where we take an important useful principle ( Music is learned experientially, by doing it and performing it and practicing it, not as a theoretical concept of just learning it abstractly) , and distort it, removing all the intellectual content from it.
Charlie Parker always wanted to study with Stravinsky and at one point was even really looking forward to studying music formally in Paris at the Sorbourne. Would anyone ever dare accuse him of being an idiot for thinking about those choices, and instead tell him just to "transcribe the Masters "?
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Yeah, let's remove this all from any strawmanning so to speak. I practice scale patterns and arpeggios every day. In general practice of all the material Adam has in his video is mainstream.
It's more like - don't practice stuff in a silly way.
I'm not saying I am an expert in what works (I know what seems to help) but I've been using this type of practice routine for a couple of years and I advocate it. If anything, working this way can be more demanding than spending an hour doing one thing.
The Interleaving Effect: Mixing It Up Boosts Learning - Scientific American
This work is the basis of the popular bulletproof musician website.
It's easy to work out how you could devise a randomised/interleaved practice regimen using the scale material. Perhaps you could even roll dice to select and exercise, crossing through those selections that seem to have already been mastered. I might get some nerdy Dungeons and Dragons dice and give that a go actually.
Has anyone else tried interleaved practice?
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What to Practice can be a tricky, personal thing.
Your own Tal Farlow I believe said something similar to 'Practice what you will play at the Gig.' or maybe
he said ' use at the Gig '.
Go about to 6:26 minutes in ...
I think it's a good point...
However playing unique or even basic intervallic Patterns and constraining to scale / constraining to Key/ Constraining to Chord especially if you can do it Rhythmically can yield a lot of fresh sounding stuff and the more Vertical and Rhythmic you get it the fresher it sounds IMO. ( on Guitar )
Can Adam Neely really Play ?
Will I do what he says if he can ?
No ...just curious..
On the Scale Video he sounds coherent and relaxed.
But on the his Coltrane Video - he sounds not relaxed.Last edited by Robertkoa; 07-06-2017 at 01:59 AM.
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Try this instead;
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Very wise advice. Learn the bloody tunes! Originally Posted by Robertkoa
Obviously if you are a jazz musician, you do want to practice scales, arps etc because they go to make up language and lines that you are likely to play on gigs etc. But it's best to do so through the tunes you are going to play.
Bitter experience has taught me that just because a tune appears to be straightforward, it doesn't mean you an necessarily play it as well as a 12-bar blues (or anything else you have shedded extensively.)
And of course, many tunes are NOT straightforward.
Yeah, he's a professional musician living and working in New York - mostly I think playing pop sessions, covers and some crazy fusioney projects. The youtube thing started off as a sideline for stuff he was interested in (his videos are some of my favourite on Youtube actually.)
Go about to 6:26 minutes in ...
I think it's a good point...
However playing unique or even basic intervallic Patterns and constraining to scale / constraing to Key/ Constraining to Chord especially if you can do it Rhythmically can yield a lot of fresh sounding stuff and the more Vertical and Rhythmic you get it the fresher it sounds IMO. ( on Guitar )
Can Adam Neely really Play ?
Here he is doing the Evan Marien bass/drums/Ableton duo thing... This type of stuff is quite fashionable I think?
<br>
You might think it sounds like ass (I like it) but it's not easy to play this stuff.
I'm not entirely sure how any of this information would relate to how you structure your practice routine.Will I do what he says if he can ?
No ...just curious..
Most people have too high of a fundamental physical lag time and /or lack of consistency to execute different patterns across the Fingerboard CONSISTENTLY .
So when you Practice you are reducing lag time and or increasing Consistency.
When learning a new skill - it requires more Attention Units than you have available ( oversimplification ) then as you ' absorb ' or 'get it' or ' learn it' it seems to require less "attention units or Mind RAM " and you can do it while talking or singing ...whether riding a Bicycle , Travis Picking, Minor 7th Arpeggios.
So closing eyes sometimes while Practicing/
Creating a strong aural image at tempo of what you are practicing..
No Drugs except Precription
Mental Exercises with eyes closed visualizing / auralizing.../ Meditation of different types can increase RAM (IMO - Can't prove it ).
Get stoned on Weed and it will screw up your ( increase lag time )reaction time for Guitar/ Boxing/ etc. for sure- I can prove that one..
I had my fret hand in a bad position for a small handed Player for decades and it locked me out of some high upper level Guitar Skills due to mechanics
lag time..I could Play but not like top technicians.
So many Players have fundamental limitations built into their Technique that show up after 5 to 20 years and make it hard to go beyond...unless addressed,
Mozart / Art Tatum were Savants with far far less barriers /
Scientific American ? - not sure.
What to practice is one thing. How to learn it is something else.
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There's 60 if I'm not mistaken. Originally Posted by Robertkoa
Hanon has worked very well for me.
Thanks..
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I don't think it's a put-on at all. I also don't think his thesis is to practice 5 hours of scales every day. I think he is just showing what a comprehensive practice of the major scale entails. One of my practice resources is "Expansions" by Gary Campbell (currently the only book I use other than some sight reading) and it mentions some of the same ideas. These things always seem easy until you try to do them with a metronome through all keys...
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Personally I think it's the value of science to this debate that it might provide approaches that are counterintuitive yet effective. Originally Posted by Robertkoa
I mean, it's counterintuitive that the common cold is spread by tiny organisms, and yet it remains the case that standing out in the rain will not in fact make you more likely to catch a cold, even though intuitively that seems to be likely.
It's intuitive that more works = more results. But this may not in fact be the case.
Anyway, if you are interested, check out the website. This stuff is starting to be taken seriously at colleges like Julliard:
Home - The Bulletproof Musician
I've been using this approach since 2013. I'd be interested in hearing what other people might experience when trying it.
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This has occurred to me. It kind of shows HOW MUCH material you end up acquiring through practicing this type of stuff any day. Originally Posted by coolvinny
BTW, there's a great passage on this type of thing in the book 'A Jazz Life' - Warne Marsh advised students to practice until they could play a pattern correctly at tempo and then NEVER practice it again. The aim was to avoid rote learned patterns.
A Jazz Life, a book by John Klopotowski | Jazz Guitar | Warne Marsh
Warne Marsh maybe one of my top 5 improvisors of all time. Sometimes I think he may be the best after Parker.
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I dunno, if you truly had the time, it could be cool...a deep dive...that's fun and useful every now and thdn.
For me, if I'm practicing for more than 20 minutes and I haven't played a tune yet, somebody should slap the shit out of me.
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I thought it was a 'troll' type thing too.
- no metronome/rhythmic variation
- too much material; made mistakes and kept going, didn't go deep into any topic (major scale is too broad)
- didn't seem to have the ears engaged, more focused on mechanically playing the patterns
- too long of a session to have no breaks; your brain can't be fully attentive that long
Just my opinion anyway, maybe accomplished musicians practice like this, I'm not sure.
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