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By kumarabhi
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TapperMike

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I agree with Tom.

Honestly it's a matter of style and desire. I've known guys who practiced their arses off and weren't any better for it. I've also known guys who practicing really helped.

If you are playing live all the time infront of real people that becomes your practice. You become as good as you can be for what you are playing. But you don't become the be all/end all for everything.

A buddy of mine is a teacher and a professional blues guitarist. He always has a few things on the backburner so he can transition between styles. He's one of the few guys I know who practices.....Chords not just any chord progressions but Ted Greene types of chord voicings, I've seen him play rock, jazz, blues, fusion, and bluegrass but I've yet to see him perform "Soloist" jazz though I have seen him practice the Ted Greene stuff saving it up for someday. As a full time guitar teacher he has to have his chops down from beginner to advanced for his students. It's a lifetime of juggling which few could or would want to maintain. Usually we find one or two niche's and we stay there.

Sometimes I wish I had a productive regiment. Something more goal orientated. Being a chameleon of sorts myself it's hard to lay down roots and say. This is what I want forget the rest. But if you really want to be good at something that's kind of what you have to do. It doesn't matter that you may like to be as versatile as possible. Somethings are more distraction then they are worth.

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Just1L

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Sadly, I don't have any time for practice nowadays. I usually learn and make up parts of a song while I'm recording. That being said, when I was younger and learning I would try to practice at least an hour a day usually more. I started playing in 5th grade and played as much as possible until I went away to college. It was really only once I was in college and still playing that something clicked and I really no longer had to think about what I was playing but just doing it. So it took a long time to get to that point. Could be I'm a slow learning though and have "carny" hands.

I think a minimum of an hour a day is def a good start.

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pboaz

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I've recently put more effort into practicing. I'm focusing on electric blues, as it's the foundation of the kind of influences I would like to come more to the fore in my writing -- Jack White, The Black Keys, Led Zep.

Some days I'll play 2 hours, other days it's just 10 minutes. But I try to make sure I do at least something every day.

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TapperMike

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I wish I could still practice 6 hours a day. My heart isn't in it that much. I do remember thinking when I was practicing 8 hours a day that "This is as good as I'll ever be" and feeling somewhat disappointed. Fortunately I was wrong. Live performance has always been the tipping point for me. Get me out on stage a few times a week and I catch fire. Then whatever I practice unrelated to what I'm performing also gains a lot of momentum.

What's odd is that I'll go thru cycles of rediscovering the guitar....

Almost everything I do now is tapped on the ztar. It's my great experiment and I'm equally frustrated and rewarded by it. But as a result I'll put down the guitar for weeks or months at a time. Alot of the early stuff I played comes back fairly quickly but not all of it. It's funny that my fingers hurt and it's funny that in as much as a ztar is fashioned much like a guitar the mentality and the responsiveness is quite different when your tapping everything which is more like playing a piano then a guitar.

I pulled out a strat that I hadn't played in over a year yesterday. It was my go to guitar thru the 80's and 90's and somehow it feels very very strange playing it now.

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TapperMike

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I've been playing guitar since the 70's and midi guitar since the 80's. I tried playing the piano. I'd play for hours and no magic would come from it. then I'd pick up a guitar and instantly have a very close if not better thing happening in seconds from a guitar. So I went midi. I played almost ever midi guitar thing I could get my hands on. They all fell short of the mark in one way or another. I'd always have to play very very stiff to get anything out of them and even then it was rough getting it to work like I wanted it. As well I began to fall in love with "chord clusters" groupings of notes not attainable on a guitar.

I saw this video and I was very impressed though not the direction I really wanted to move in

Then I saw some of Michael Bianco's video's and that was more where I wanted to go.

He's tapping the melody with his right had while supporting the rest of the arrangement by tapping with his left hand. That's the direction I wanted to go in and I'm still not fully there yet but it told me all I needed to know.

I saved my pennies and saved and saved even though money was tight for my first ztar. It fulfilled most of my expectations but because I bought a baby z I didn't have the range. Baby z's as opposed to the rest of the line up only have 16 frets. Eventually I got a z6 that was used and seriously abused. But it does allow me to get all 24 frets tapped.

Edited by TapperMike
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TapperMike

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I bought a yourock. I was one of the first people to buy one. I placed my order a year before I got mine even though the kept on saying "sorry for the delay, next month" The string to string consistency was terrible. Hit one string soft and it plays loud hit another string hard and it plays soft or even medium and it disappears. The b and g strings would hang you could hit them once and maybe they'd make a sound maybe they wouldn't. then they'd get caught and not return to zero so I'd have to figit with it to get the strings back in place (very very poor workmanship) The neck was extremely fat and round. The string sensors that layed over the frets were like glued dental floss it was hard to target them and really really rough if you wanted to play barre chords of any kind.

Whenever anyone would give an honest critique of problems with the hardware at the yourock forums they would get an insta ban and posts were deleted. We had pages and pages and pages of posts complaining about what was wrong with it and the attempts by you rock employees to silence us everywhere. They'd threaten us like mad. Then they started offering firmware updates alledgedly to fix problems that where hardware related. I tried it once and it permanently disabled the product from operating....Others tried later versions and not only was nothing fixed by the firmware some reported viruses in it.

If you want to go midi guitar.. Ztars especially the Z55's are a great deal. Yes they still will cost you some money. If you don't need 24 frets and have an older ipad (1,2) then I'd suggest an ion.

It can't do even a third of what a ztar can do but it is prolly your best non starr labs/misa digital instrument on the market.

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