Author Topic: Practicing Guitar  (Read 1247 times)

Luke Warm

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 799
  • Location: Ain't no time to wonder why
Practicing Guitar
« on: March 22, 2023, 06:35:02 AM »
I've been practicing my guitar fairly regularly. I have no intention of ever being good I just want to be capable. I've been sitting in with a group that plays once a month at a local brewery. Anyone can join in regardless of skill level. It's mostly bluegrass type stuff but nothing real technical. One song they play regularly is 'Whiskey Before Breakfast'. I've got the tab downloaded and I can now play the song from memory. I play with a metronome, slow at first then ramping up the speed. So 9 times out of 10 I can play it without mistakes but that 10th time just kills me. I've probably played the song 100 times so I have the mechanics down but there is some sort of mental thing going on, like the yips that baseball pitchers get. How do I work around this? Just playing the same thing over and over again seems non-productive.

former player

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 8822
  • Location: Avalon
Re: Practicing Guitar
« Reply #1 on: March 22, 2023, 07:09:18 AM »
Is it the same mistake each time?

Remember: if you make a mistake you are playing not practising, but if you make the same mistake a lot then you are just practising your mistake. 

It's only practising if you get it right.  That means more slow more often than you have contemplated so far.

The other thing I would say is that successfully sitting in with a group is actually a much higher skill level than 95% of would-be guitarists will ever achieve, and I count myself in the 95%.

Metalcat

  • Senior Mustachian
  • ********
  • Posts: 17378
Re: Practicing Guitar
« Reply #2 on: March 22, 2023, 07:17:27 AM »
Stop playing the 10th time. Play something else in between and then come back to it, see what happens.

Uturn

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 889
  • Age: 54
  • Location: Raleigh, NC
Re: Practicing Guitar
« Reply #3 on: March 22, 2023, 08:02:59 AM »
I can give you advice based on my vast experience of 4 months playing bass, or any stringed instrument at all.
I find that if I get stuck, it helps to play something else and come back to it.  I also play it slow until I can play it with no mistakes before I speed it up.  I have also found that I sometimes have to slow it down again.

Bird In Hand

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 842
Re: Practicing Guitar
« Reply #4 on: March 22, 2023, 08:23:59 AM »
I'm not sure that getting it perfect 90% of the time constitutes the yips.  Especially for something as complex as playing through an entire song, in front of other people, on an instrument like a guitar.  It's reasonable for mistakes to happen from time to time when your left and right hands and fingers are orchestrating thousands of coordinated and precisely-timed movements over a period of several minutes.

Having listened to countless recorded and live performances featuring guitarists, I'd say the majority of the performances have small mistakes that I (an amateur guitarist) can detect.  And I'm certain that the guitarists made other mistakes that I didn't notice.

My advice is to stop comparing yourself to people who are currently at a higher skill level than you.  And while there's nothing wrong with setting a high standard for yourself, it's unreasonable for that standard to be perfection -- unless you think that you're better than 99% of professional guitarists.

Finally, it's much harder for most people to play well in front of others.  As you continue practicing on your own, and also playing with others, you will probably become more relaxed and confident, which will help with your error rate.  Do I understand correctly that the 1/10th of the time that things go wrong, they go quite badly wrong and you can't recover?  Also totally normal in my experience, and your ability to recover from mistakes and move on is very likely to improve as your skill and comfort-level playing in front of others increase.

IMO if you're getting it right 90% of the time while playing with others, you are doing VERY well already!

Bird In Hand

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 842
Re: Practicing Guitar
« Reply #5 on: March 22, 2023, 08:35:14 AM »
Even if your 9/10 success rate occurs when practicing alone vs playing in front of others, your ability to recover from inevitable small mistakes and get back on track should improve over time as you become more skilled.

I definitely agree with others that you'll want to take a break from just practicing that one song endlessly.  Spider walks, scales, etc. should be a part of your practicing in order to improve your baseline skill.

Luke Warm

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 799
  • Location: Ain't no time to wonder why
Re: Practicing Guitar
« Reply #6 on: March 22, 2023, 11:13:45 AM »
Thanks for the replies. It's pretty frustrating to think I've got the song down only to screw it up. It's some sort of mental thing I guess. The analogy I think of is when I was trying to juggle. Nothing for a dozen or so attempts and then and then all of a sudden I'm doing it. Then I think 'dang, I'm juggling' and it all falls apart. More practice is definitely warranted but I don't want to hate the song after I've mastered it.

patchyfacialhair

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1259
  • Age: 34
Re: Practicing Guitar
« Reply #7 on: March 22, 2023, 11:21:34 AM »
A close family member is a professional guitarist. As in, his full time job is guitar performance.

He's practiced 8+ hours a day since 8th grade, got his undergrad degree in jazz studies...and he still makes constant mistakes. They're mistakes that 99% of the population wouldn't notice, but they're mistakes nonetheless. Nobody is perfect.

Give yourself a break and don't be so hard on yourself. It'll click eventually with enough effort.

Kris

  • Walrus Stache
  • *******
  • Posts: 7335
Re: Practicing Guitar
« Reply #8 on: March 22, 2023, 12:31:11 PM »
I'm also learning guitar at the moment. I've got a musical background beginning in childhood with 12 years of piano lessons, several semesters of music theory in college, harpsichord, bass clarinet, saxophone, and percussion lessons scattered throughout childhood and my twenties.

Everyone makes mistakes. The more important thing is how you recover from one. I used to have this bad habit when I was a kid that I would play a song that I was trying to "master," and as soon as I made a single mistake, I'd stop and go back to the beginning. After a while, it got to the point where I had "practiced" this habit so that I basically wouldn't finish the song nine times out of ten because the first time I screwed up I'd freeze up and that would be it. Which meant that I'd approach each attempt nervous and rigid. Which would all but guarantee I'd screw up.

If you overpractice or get fixated on perfection, you'll be rigid and anxious and it will make you more likely to make them. Try to loosen up and tell yourself that right now, the most important thing is to just get into the flow of the song and not let mistakes derail you. All performers make them, after all. You probably don't notice when you're in the audience, do you? So it's fine.

And it's not like juggling. If you make a mistake juggling, you drop the ball and it's over. If you make a mistake playing, you just keep playing and it's no biggie.

It's called playing. It's supposed to be fun. Let it be fun.

GuitarStv

  • Senior Mustachian
  • ********
  • Posts: 23128
  • Age: 42
  • Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Re: Practicing Guitar
« Reply #9 on: March 22, 2023, 12:52:46 PM »
Just keep playing regularly and practicing.  Small amounts each day (even just 20-30 minutes) is usually better than many hours once or twice a week.  Also, it's possible to over practice stuff, wipe your brain out, and not really get better.  Set short 5-10 minute sessions and then take a minute break and move on to something else.  Split it up between chords, scales, learning songs, ear training, theory, whatever . . . but make sure you've got multiple irons in the fire.  This holistic approach keeps your mind better focused and will keep your mind from wandering and screwing up due to the sheer boredom of playing the same tune for the 10,000th time.

Practice with a metronome is great and essential . . . but it's when you're playing live and with others that you learn other skills - and one essential skill is how to cover up mistakes.  This covers dropping out for a second to get your timing back, ignoring that note/chord that you accidentally flubbed and getting right back into it, just scratching the strings in time until you remember where you are in the tune, etc.  Nobody plays perfectly every time - but the best players are able to hide their mistakes well enough that they aren't recognized.  The old adage 'if you hit a wrong note, hit it again and act like you meant to do it' holds here.  :P

chevy1956

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 415
Re: Practicing Guitar
« Reply #10 on: March 22, 2023, 03:45:19 PM »
I play every day. I love it. I played years ago and quit and prior to retirement took it up again. I don't play in a band so I can't give a response to your specific issue however I'd relax a little bit. You don't have to play the same thing perfectly every time. Just get into the music and if you stuff up stop and start again.

I change it up all the time. For instance I'm playing some SRV licks now and I don't play them exactly the same every time. I am playing Let It Be by the Beatles and I just keep playing all the parts once. I'm also playing Alicia Keys Girl on Fire. This is actually interesting. It's a simple chord progression that I just mix up Hendrix style. I tend to pick some random pop song and learn it mostly by ear.

Sometimes I just list some songs on YouTube and play over them.

GuitarStv makes a good point. I don't really have a practice regime. I just have my computer and my guitar sitting together and I just pick it up and play a couple of times per day.

blue_green_sparks

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 479
  • FIRE'd 2018
Re: Practicing Guitar
« Reply #11 on: March 22, 2023, 08:11:53 PM »
I was playing piano with a band that did some pretty big shows for 2,000 people or so. Well, that all ended with the pandemic. They rung me up last week to see if I'd be interested again and I told them I haven't played any of that stuff in over two years. In fact, I have been playing mostly bass guitar. It took me a few sessions and I'm right back on it. Like riding a bike. I don't know if you have ever heard the piano solo on 'Call Me The Breeze' by Skynyrd. It's a doozy. Muscle memory is a crazy thing.

Log

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 664
  • Location: San Francisco
Re: Practicing Guitar
« Reply #12 on: March 23, 2023, 03:19:33 AM »
I'll agree with others that 100% consistency is an unattainable goal, and professional musicians make mistakes all the time. That said, the two practiced methods that immediately come to mind are:

1) Chunking. While working up from a slow tempo is one great method for working on fast technical music, an alternative method for fast music is to go at full tempo as much as possible, but only a few notes at a time. You can pick a manageable number of notes (say, 4) and play those first 4 notes at tempo a few times. Then play notes 2-5 at tempo, then notes 3-6 at tempo, etc., etc.. By playing overlapping chunks like this, you build up a ton of muscle memory of each individual note change. By doing a few notes at time, you make it easy enough to play accurately and not practice in mistakes, but you're doing so at full tempo, which makes it a closer approximation of the real thing than slow practice does.

2) Mental practice/positive visualization. Visualize as much as you can (sound, touch, sight, even smell) of playing the music in your actual performance conditions. Research suggests your mind can't really tell the difference between visualized practice and actual practice, and you can see real technical improvement from mere visualization. Visualization practice was first used extensively in sports psychology before being adopted by musicians, and tons of musicians at the highest level use it. One of the first "aha!" moments of visualization is seeing that sometimes you may struggle to even visualize playing a certain tricky passage correctly. This almost certainly shows that you have a mental block getting in the way—once you address the self-doubt, the technique will often resolve itself.

Luke Warm

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 799
  • Location: Ain't no time to wonder why
Re: Practicing Guitar
« Reply #13 on: March 23, 2023, 11:25:12 AM »
I'll agree with others that 100% consistency is an unattainable goal, and professional musicians make mistakes all the time. That said, the two practiced methods that immediately come to mind are:

1) Chunking. While working up from a slow tempo is one great method for working on fast technical music, an alternative method for fast music is to go at full tempo as much as possible, but only a few notes at a time. You can pick a manageable number of notes (say, 4) and play those first 4 notes at tempo a few times. Then play notes 2-5 at tempo, then notes 3-6 at tempo, etc., etc.. By playing overlapping chunks like this, you build up a ton of muscle memory of each individual note change. By doing a few notes at time, you make it easy enough to play accurately and not practice in mistakes, but you're doing so at full tempo, which makes it a closer approximation of the real thing than slow practice does.

2) Mental practice/positive visualization. Visualize as much as you can (sound, touch, sight, even smell) of playing the music in your actual performance conditions. Research suggests your mind can't really tell the difference between visualized practice and actual practice, and you can see real technical improvement from mere visualization. Visualization practice was first used extensively in sports psychology before being adopted by musicians, and tons of musicians at the highest level use it. One of the first "aha!" moments of visualization is seeing that sometimes you may struggle to even visualize playing a certain tricky passage correctly. This almost certainly shows that you have a mental block getting in the way—once you address the self-doubt, the technique will often resolve itself.

I do both of those things more or less. Learning a song, I do one measure at a time then move on to the next one. Then I go back and tie the measures together. It's an efficient way to learn for me. Also I'll run through a song in my head when I can't sleep.

jeninco

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 3995
  • Location: .... duh?
Re: Practicing Guitar
« Reply #14 on: March 23, 2023, 12:00:46 PM »
My only other suggestion (besides all the ideas that have been presented here) is that when I play through a piece mostly correctly I mark where the mistakes are. (which means I have the music out, even if I'm not really using it). Then I go back and play the marked section really slowly, until I can do that perfectly. Then a little more of the area around it. Then a little faster -- but if I make a mistake again, I go back to playing it really slowly. Sometimes I pick a number, so play it super-slowly 10 times, then slightly faster (but still perfectly) 10 times. Rinse, Wash Repeat.  I'm working on piano, but I bet the same logic applies!

Hall11235

  • Stubble
  • **
  • Posts: 246
  • Age: 30
  • Location: Mass
Re: Practicing Guitar
« Reply #15 on: March 29, 2023, 10:02:34 AM »
I am also learning Whiskey Before Breakfast lol.

My main focus with my teacher is memorizing BG classics.

I have found that, as long as you are in the same key when you 'flub' its easy to hide, especially among a consistent boom-chick rhythm.

The other big part is just owning the mistake. The biggest level up I had in the last year is not visibly acknowledging a mistake when playing in front of/for others. Just play through it until you are back where you are supposed to be (you could just bang quarter notes until you got the feel back).

Luke Warm

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 799
  • Location: Ain't no time to wonder why
Re: Practicing Guitar
« Reply #16 on: March 29, 2023, 01:00:28 PM »
I am also learning Whiskey Before Breakfast lol.

My main focus with my teacher is memorizing BG classics.

I have found that, as long as you are in the same key when you 'flub' its easy to hide, especially among a consistent boom-chick rhythm.

The other big part is just owning the mistake. The biggest level up I had in the last year is not visibly acknowledging a mistake when playing in front of/for others. Just play through it until you are back where you are supposed to be (you could just bang quarter notes until you got the feel back).

It's funny, these bluegrass songs sound so rudimentary when you play them slow but when played at the proper speed they sound so intricate. I got to play WBB the other night in the picking circle. I was less than stellar but my guitar is not very loud so it didn't matter anyway.

Hall11235

  • Stubble
  • **
  • Posts: 246
  • Age: 30
  • Location: Mass
Re: Practicing Guitar
« Reply #17 on: March 29, 2023, 01:25:10 PM »
I am also learning Whiskey Before Breakfast lol.

My main focus with my teacher is memorizing BG classics.

I have found that, as long as you are in the same key when you 'flub' its easy to hide, especially among a consistent boom-chick rhythm.

The other big part is just owning the mistake. The biggest level up I had in the last year is not visibly acknowledging a mistake when playing in front of/for others. Just play through it until you are back where you are supposed to be (you could just bang quarter notes until you got the feel back).

It's funny, these bluegrass songs sound so rudimentary when you play them slow but when played at the proper speed they sound so intricate. I got to play WBB the other night in the picking circle. I was less than stellar but my guitar is not very loud so it didn't matter anyway.

I agree. I tend to think about these songs (WBB, Blackberry Blossom, Salt creek, etc.) as frameworks more than songs. They are basic, but allow so much space for musicians to play. I appreciate Tony Rice and Doc Watson so much more now  that I know a little bit about music.

Luke Warm

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 799
  • Location: Ain't no time to wonder why
Re: Practicing Guitar
« Reply #18 on: March 29, 2023, 02:12:16 PM »
I am also learning Whiskey Before Breakfast lol.

My main focus with my teacher is memorizing BG classics.

I have found that, as long as you are in the same key when you 'flub' its easy to hide, especially among a consistent boom-chick rhythm.

The other big part is just owning the mistake. The biggest level up I had in the last year is not visibly acknowledging a mistake when playing in front of/for others. Just play through it until you are back where you are supposed to be (you could just bang quarter notes until you got the feel back).

It's funny, these bluegrass songs sound so rudimentary when you play them slow but when played at the proper speed they sound so intricate. I got to play WBB the other night in the picking circle. I was less than stellar but my guitar is not very loud so it didn't matter anyway.

I agree. I tend to think about these songs (WBB, Blackberry Blossom, Salt creek, etc.) as frameworks more than songs. They are basic, but allow so much space for musicians to play. I appreciate Tony Rice and Doc Watson so much more now  that I know a little bit about music.

Yup. Funny thing I heard the other night. We were getting ready to play Blackberry Blossom and the guy next to me called it as Black Harry Possum. A little bluegrass humor I guess.

draco44

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 527
Re: Practicing Guitar
« Reply #19 on: March 29, 2023, 08:06:59 PM »
Sounds like you are doing great overall. +1 to the observation that playing with others is itself a big skill. Pursuing excellence is laudable but backing off occasionally and remembering to have fun is important too. I also find it helpful to take a moment and remember how cool it is to know even the most rudimentary of music-making skills. Story time!

For me my #1 goal when starting was to play with others as soon as possible. The first time I went to a jam, literally all I did was quietly play a C chord whenever it came around on a song. Just that one chord. But I was with others, playing something. (Note: I had asked in advice and verified the group was beginner-friendly.) A kind member of the group talked me up afterwards noting that despite my limits, I was brave enough to come out, successfully playing my chord on command, in time, coming back into the song at the right moments, and knowing when stop and let others play. Not exactly Tommy Emmanuel stuff, but not nothing either.

When I could confidently play TWO chords, suddenly I found I could successfully lead a friend through singing I'll Fly Away. It felt magical.

Another time somewhat later, I met another beginner who could play the melody of three Coldplay songs, and absolutely noting else. I backed him up with chords, and suddenly it sounded great. That was fun.

Strive for improvement but be proud of how far you've come already.