What is your practice regiment?

[TapperMike]

I'm becoming very skilled in the art of procrastination.  The last month has been a rainy one and I've pretty much stopped busking for the time being.   I've also stopped playing / practicing.

 

Do you have a regiment that keeps you going through the slow times, such as working out scales and patterns and then a setlist to keep your chops up?

 

[starise]

I sort of fell into my way of doing things. I am intently learning violin. Usually an hour minimum per evening. If I have tunes to mix and play on I'll usually wait until later in the evening and do that since it's usually quiet then. That's a form of practice I suppose. Mix practice. Keeping the ivories tickled and the guitars warm. On Sundays I'm in preparation mode on keys, so I'm ironing out any possible problems before I go out to the rest of the group to spend another hour in practice with them. 

 

I have never been the type to learn by strict drilling on scales every night. The technique I've picked up has been in doing mostly "fun stuff". Although I do put my nose to the grind on violin 

[TapperMike]

For the longest time I would drill down scales, arpeggios and patterns.  Complete the circle of 5ths every two weeks in major and melodic minor.

 

Arrangement takes me away.  I almost never want to play a long solo and because arranging can be and endless pursuit with so many different approaches to choose from I rarely find myself completing an arrangement.

[MikeRobinson]

The main purpose of "practicing," I think, is to build muscle memory, so that when your brain wants to do something, your body simply "does it," much as my hands are now doing to type these words.  I'm only thinking of the words that I want to "say."  After forty-odd years of doing this, my fingers do the rest "without thinking."  When you practice your instrument, you're basically teaching your body to do a similar thing, and muscle-memory works by repetition.

 

Quite honestly, though, I think that the most important thing to do, is simply to "play your chosen instrument, every day!"  Gee, I hope that you still think that this is fun and enjoyable.  In addition to the inevitable "noodling," try to direct your thoughts toward some particular musical sound that you want to hear, and see how well "that musical 'nudge,' alone," in fact results (or does not) in you actually hearing the sound that you wanted.  Maybe put some exercise on your music-stand and ... "have a go."  Maybe the whole thing – maybe just a phrase – but, keep playing.  (I'm a keyboardist ... for more-or-less the entire hour-or-so, don't let your fingers be often still.)

 

I try to carve out "one good hour in the morning," more-or-less after I've downed my second cup, toward this exercise, before moving on to other parts of my day. But it's still a pleasurable highlight of each day.  Sometimes I return to it – for the same pleasurable reasons – at the close of the day.  These are your special times; these are your times.  Your personal rendezvous with Music.  Enjoy.

 

I've also learned to start a MIDI-recorder application at the start of each session, and to record (without stopping) anything and everything that takes place.  "'You never know ...', but if you never captured it, you'll never know!"

[Rudi]

I have never really practiced, but usually play every day. Since I retired at the end of June, I have actually played less and now only play maybe 4 days out of 7 and for shorter periods. 

 

I need to up my playing. There is a fingerpicked tune I composed a while back that needs plenty of work.

[TapperMike]

Yeah I used to record everyday for awhile as a way of overcoming mic fright.  Though my greatest criticism of many newer electronic musicians is that they confuse the purpose of practice with performance/recording.  They don't develop timing and technique as a result and end up with sloppy performance that can't always be corrected with quantizing.

 

I watch way too many youtube videos.  One thing I've noticed is that guitarists who are alledged fans of John Coltrane are absolutely crap when they go through the motions of recreating his songs.  The phrasing simply isn't as it should be.   Now I fully understand that a guitar is not a sax and when you try to emulate a sax on guitar you have to look for ways around the limitations of legato playing.  These guys (and they are very good musicians otherwise) Simply don't lock into the essence.  So that's been my pre occupation recently.  Trying to master Coltranes phrasiology.  When I was younger I would beat Santana into my soul trying to mimic all of his phrasing not just playing the right notes in the right order with the right tempo.  I did that with many guitarists including Hendrix and Page.  These are things you don't get by playing scales ad nausem.  

 

I've been looking at the Mike Stern course

  

He's closer than any other guitarist I've heard at getting the essence of sax playing on guitar.  Still I have quite a few tricks up my sleeve that Stern doesn't.  No it doesn't make me a better player than Mike Stern  but yes they can have a more authentic representation.  I may buy the course for the sheet music.

 

 

@Rudi when you play live and have your "thing" you don't need to practice.  Your thing, my thing everyone's thing is what they do when they cobble together different ideas from different people and have happy accidents along the way developing a certain style that is unique to them.  I had different things when I'd play jazz in groups which was quite different then my jazz or rock settings or my solo performances.  I have less of a thing when I'm exploring (as I always do) because exploring isn't internalizing.  

[The S]

No regiment no, but I play everyday for at least an hour. Sometimes practicing whatever needs to be practiced, and sometimes just noodling. 

 

Though the quality may vary, at least that hour (sometimes more) is consistent and has been, more or less, over the years.

 

/Peter

[MikeRobinson]

Another thing to do is to ... at some point well after the beginning of your "music time," when you've gotten warmed-up ... is to play something as "performance-ey" as you can, and record it, maybe just as a voice-memo on your phone.  Then, a couple days later maybe, while you're thinking about other things or maybe when you're doing something where you ordinarily listen to other people's tracks, listen to yours.  (Ignore any "clams" or mistakes.)  How does this "musician that you've never heard of"  sound to you?

 

Just as you really can't quite hear yourself when you sing, you don't quite hear yourself when you play.  There are things that you'll hear about your recording – some you might not like so much, but some you really will(!) – when your mind is far-away from performing it.

 

The same is very true of composing, too.  Spin off an MP3 of your latest draft and stick it on your desktop.  Then, at some point when you're not thinking about it, "abruptly play it."  What sounds wrong? What sounds right? What sounds ... cool?  Pretend that it's a track that you just downloaded from an artist you've never heard of.  How would you critique it on SongStuff?

[Rudi]

On 9/21/2017 at 8:12 PM, TapperMike said:

@Rudi when you play live and have your "thing" you don't need to practice.  Your thing, my thing everyone's thing is what they do when they cobble together different ideas from different people and have happy accidents along the way developing a certain style that is unique to them.  I had different things when I'd play jazz in groups which was quite different then my jazz or rock settings or my solo performances.  I have less of a thing when I'm exploring (as I always do) because exploring isn't internalizing.  

 

True enough Mike. The problem is that Blown Out have been on a hiatus this year. We have not played at all in 2017 though we have a gig next month. I have been missing playing out. 

[The S]

On 2017-09-24 at 10:51 AM, Rob Ash said:

 

 

 

 

Peter,

 

I really dig your stuff. It's earthy. Simple in the very, very best of ways. Like a fine, distilled whiskey, where everything you don't need has been burned away, leaving the pure, essential core.

 

Oh Sweet Highland Maid is fine, fine work. And Bourbon Street...

 

Tasty.

 

 

 

You being a rocker and all, out of my songs I could've sworn you'd go with the rockier "Elegy on the death of an american girl", but you went with the slow stuff, who would've thought?!?! 

 

I'm humbled you took a listen, even more so you took the time to also comment on it. Thank you sir, made my day!!!

 

Dig the cover on War pigs!!! Such a classic!

 

Cheers,

 

Peter

[Rudi]

Blown Out have a practice tonight. I will leave for it in about an hour. We haven't had regular practices for many years. This is to see if we can still remember stuff probably. Its going to benefit singist Pete mostly I think. I'm taking the 339 and my small practice Fishman amp.

[TapperMike]

Curious to how it went.  I'm sure you miss playing with the group even if it wasn't playing out.

 

It's funny I have a greater sense of camaraderie with my fellow cooks working on the line than I did in many bands I was with. That's not to speak ill of those bands we would play great together and developed lasting friendships.  These guys all look to me as a leader even though I tend to shy away from acting as one.  Perhaps it's just a place where mutual respect is more important than ego.

 

[Rudi]

11 hours ago, TapperMike said:

Curious to how it went.  I'm sure you miss playing with the group even if it wasn't playing out.

 

It's funny I have a greater sense of camaraderie with my fellow cooks working on the line than I did in many bands I was with. That's not to speak ill of those bands we would play great together and developed lasting friendships.  These guys all look to me as a leader even though I tend to shy away from acting as one.  Perhaps it's just a place where mutual respect is more important than ego.

 

 

I was 1st to arrive. The hall is  very large with a hard floor, bare walls and inward sloping ceiling, so yes, I knew it was all going to sound horrible.

 

Meeting up with everyone after so long was good, but like always. The camaraderie is there, but socialising with them outside of the band is rare (except for Pete: we went out for a drink last week). I hadn't seen the others since October last year. We are all a year older. Even the youngest of us is grey now.

 

So the sound bounced around and it was hard to hear ourselves properly. Most of the tunes are still solid. A couple of gaps showed, so we know what to work on. We will practice next week also. I cant make week 3 so they will manage without me. After that, the gig will be looming. We may be able to use a smaller room next week. That will help.

 

The equipment seems to age faster than us. I know the PA is lent out a lot to another band, but it looked like it had been sandblasted, with sand embedded in the hard plastic casing of the mixer. What the hell goes on when we aren't there??

 

The nice thing is that, I now seem able to bar more chords without using my thumb. I always could to an extent, but it made the thumb hurt anyway because the same muscles are being used. The hands are adapting to playing very nicely without thumbs. Amazing what the body can do to adapt. Pain is never welcome but it makes a superb driver for change.

 

Solos from everyone were fresher, more natural. The bass & drums had most problems with everything sounding doubled due to all that reverberation.

[TapperMike]

How is the variax working out for you?  I have to say for myself it sounds "close" but not the real deal.  I'm very particular about what a given guitar sounds like. Oddball artifacts often send me for a loop.  If I ignore the tone a little bit and just play out I can focus more on the playing which intern makes it sound more real to me (on reflection).  

 

I plugged it into my 60 watt roland cube about a month ago.  One thing about roland "COSM' technology.  They never say it sounds exactly like you would expect it to.  Instead Roland always adds this is the way we think it would sound if we built it.  It cuts them out of the controversy of "How real does it sound"   Still don't like the fact that eq is practically useless unless the amp is above 7 and the cops come when it's over 4.  Nonetheless I was pleased with the response even if it wasn't "Real"  Though I'm thinking of running my zoom  GX1on through the amp sometime in the future.

 

Funny thing about the zoom.... It's noisy as hell  This may be due to a combinations of things including the bad wiring in my apartment and the proximity of the effect pedal to my amp, computer, and monitor.

[Rudi]

The Variax. Funny thing is that it sounded exactly what I was looking for using just the magnetic pickup. The circuit sounds are pretty good but I haven't used them much.  I did begin to create a custom sound shortly after buying. I love being able to place the neck pickup onto the actual fingerboard

 

I see it as principally a studio guitar. The variax circuit should be clean & well behaved,

The tuning circuit will be useful for sure. I plan to use a riser on the nut and use it for some slide work. It will also save me having to buy a 5 string banjo. All good stuff.

 

 

[TapperMike]

Everyone fresher....  That's nice.  

 

In other news I'm actually trying to form a band.  I figure if I can get some amateurs  up to speed with a few blues standards we could sit in on open mic's / blues jams to start.  It won't be a full time thing.  Just oddball jamming on the weekdays and an occassional gig here and there depending on how much I can pull the band together.

 I got a definite no from a prospective singer and a yes from a bass player so far.  

[Rudi]

23 hours ago, TapperMike said:

Everyone fresher....  That's nice.  

 

In other news I'm actually trying to form a band.  I figure if I can get some amateurs  up to speed with a few blues standards we could sit in on open mic's / blues jams to start.  It won't be a full time thing.  Just oddball jamming on the weekdays and an occassional gig here and there depending on how much I can pull the band together.

 I got a definite no from a prospective singer and a yes from a bass player so far.  

 

Thats great news. Blues will obviously get you up & running quickly. Keep us posted on progress 

[TapperMike]

Thanks,  I'm hoping so.  My bassist is something else... She is all of 18 and 5'3' (63 cm) is classically trained in violin, viola, and cello as well as playing bass.  It's her first year at University.  I've known her for slightly over a year now as she works with me.  Smart girl, confident and still very sweet.  She is very determined that her life will be that of a working musician, and she's going to a school well known locally for producing talent in the performing arts.

 

I'm investigating rehearsal space right now.  Hopefully somewhere between here where I work/live and her school. Still need to look for a singer.   Drummer comes last