2 practice strategies for guitar that I personally love but are quite rare AFAIK...

[Flamencology]

1) Practicing while wearing headphones and listening to something to block out the sound... I find that movies or tv shows work better than music... but, I mean, a vacuum cleaner will do the job here, if you want to make it really annoying on yourself.

2) Retuning the guitar to an alternate tuning, and then playing the piece as you would.

These are, I guess, most effective for learning compositions, and wouldn't be effective whatsoever for improvisation, etc. But still, something to try.

 

[Mark Wein]

If I'm trying to learn new music I spend quite a bit of time visualizing or working through the piece mentally without an instrument in my hands...if I have in in my head that way the rest is quite a bit easier.

 

[Mark Wein]

One thing that has been interesting is that the classes I currently teach often require that I be able to play the assigned music on every instrument. Usually while also singing. Doing this for the last year or so has not only made me a better musician all around but has made the process of learning music much quicker for me.

 

[Flamencology]

One thing that has been interesting is that the classes I currently teach often require that I be able to play the assigned music on every instrument. Usually while also singing. Doing this for the last year or so has not only made me a better musician all around but has made the process of learning music much quicker for me.

Big ears. Great musicians have it.

 

[Mark Wein]

Big ears. Great musicians have it.

I'm getting medium ears. Hopefully big ones at some point.

One experience I had last week was the opportunity to play drums at the blues jam with our bass player Martin. Actually having to play swing and shuffle grooves with a bassist who has incredible time and feel was quite an eye opener. I'm used to playing with him as a guitarist but as a drummer the experience was awesome....I don't have a lot of chops in terms of playing fills but I can play in time with a good feel in most blues and rock styles. Playing with a bassist of his caliber (I usually only play drums with students on bass) made it difficult to do anything other than play good time and groove. As much as I talk about the relationship between a bassist and drummer in classes this was the best "real" illustration of the concept.

 

[mosiddiqi]

Visualisation has been the biggest practicing breakthrough for me. I spend my daily commute "practicing" in my head..in some detail..actually seeing/hearing the notes, imagining the finger positions..it's done a heck of a lot for my ears. I've found that when I get home and pick up a guitar, I already feel warmed up. I can't recommend it highly enough.

It also really helps with memorising songs as most of ours have about a billion chords/changes crammed into a very short amount of time. If I can't "play" the song in my head, I've no chance of getting a decent take done.

 

[baimun]

Like I said in the other thread that Mark linked to here... when practicing guitar only, I like to practice in a dark room. It eliminates visual stimuli and makes you "feel and listen" instead of "looking for the dots".

---------------

With song lyrics, I just figured out this tip a few weeks ago: I tab the lyric lines in with the chord progressions, so I see the visual queues for the changes.

Here's an example that I just made up even though I already knew the song:

You'll note that the lyric lines tab in as the chord progression changes. When it rolls back to the beginning of the change, the lines return to the first tab.

The words in bold are the ones that I want to fall on down beats, with the others being more flexible for "swing". Sting likes to "lead" with Roxanne before the measure starts... with the second half of the word falling on the beat. rox... ANNE. The "..." in the third line is the chord progression moves and the lyric comes in late.

The italics lines are bridges (noting to me that it's not the same chord progression as the verses) and the choruses are in caps.


It has helped me visualize which blocks of words fall in which chord progressions and/or where certain lines fall with the chord changes.

 

[Mark Wein]

Like I said in the other thread that Mark linked to here... I like to practice in a dark room. It eliminates visual stimuli and makes you "feel and listen" instead of "looking for the dots".


With song lyrics, I just figured out this tip a few weeks ago: I tab the lyric lines in with the chord progressions, so I see the visual queues for the changes.

Here's an example that I just made up even though I already knew the song:

You'll note that the lyric lines tab in as the chord progression changes. When it rolls back to the beginning of the change, the lines return to the first tab.

The words in bold are the ones that I want to fall on down beats, with the others being more flexible for "swing". Sting likes to "lead" with Roxanne before the measure starts... with the second half of the word falling on the beat. rox... ANNE. The "..." in the third line is the chord progression moves and the lyric comes in late.

The italics lines are bridges (noting to me that it's not the same chord progression as the verses) and the choruses are in caps.


It has helped me visualize which blocks of words fall in which chord progressions and/or where certain lines fall with the chord changes.

I do that with lyrics, too.

 

[fanuvbrak]

1) Practicing while wearing headphones and listening to something to block out the sound... I find that movies or tv shows work better than music... but, I mean, a vacuum cleaner will do the job here, if you want to make it really annoying on yourself.

I think this would work better for people listening to me practice.

 

[Modern Saint]

If I'm trying to learn new music I spend quite a bit of time visualizing or working through the piece mentally without an instrument in my hands...if I have in in my head that way the rest is quite a bit easier.

Ditto - I love doing that because by the time the instrument is in your hands, the chord progression is known as well as the outline for most of the single note passages.

Visualisation has been the biggest practicing breakthrough for me. I spend my daily commute "practicing" in my head..in some detail..actually seeing/hearing the notes, imagining the finger positions..it's done a heck of a lot for my ears. I've found that when I get home and pick up a guitar, I already feel warmed up. I can't recommend it highly enough.

It also really helps with memorising songs as most of ours have about a billion chords/changes crammed into a very short amount of time. If I can't "play" the song in my head, I've no chance of getting a decent take done.

Ditto - I do alot of my learning when I am commuting to and from work as well as walking of exercising with my iPod on. The only times I get stuck is usually on a physical technique that is not normal to my playing style. I then have to spend a little more time getting that specific technique worked out.

Like I said in the other thread that Mark linked to here... when practicing guitar only, I like to practice in a dark room. It eliminates visual stimuli and makes you "feel and listen" instead of "looking for the dots".

I used to do this in my teens. When I lived in Hawaii we had a lot of winter storms which would knock out our power. I would just pull the guitar out and start playing.

 

[Denverdave]

2) Retuning the guitar to an alternate tuning, and then playing the piece as you would.

A interesting story about this one. My favorite acoustic song by Phil Keaggy came about this way, but by accident. he went over a friends house and while they were there he grabbed an acoustic that was out and started playing one of his tunes - but the guitar was in DADGAD instead of standard tuning. He liked what he heard so much he composed a song around it...

 

[Mark Wein]

just a note...I'll probably move this to String Theory in a bit because its really good and "On Topic" for that forum...

 

[baimun]

just a note...I'll probably move this to String Theory in a bit because its really good and "On Topic" for that forum...

Dammit Mark.... you're as bad as my wife "cleaning up" something that I'm working on.... as soon as we get a thread going good, you "put it away where it belongs" and we can't find it anymore.

 

[Mark Wein]

Dammit Mark.... you're as bad as my wife "cleaning up" something that I'm working on.... as soon as we get a thread going good, you "put it away where it belongs" and we can't find it anymore.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[micwalt]

You know what I used to do...
I used to get really high, close my eyes, and play completely atonal stuff--didn't make any sense at all, musically. But I'd concentrate on really cool phrasing with very precise bits of daylight between (and within) the phrases. I have no idea why I did this or whether any of it seeped into my playing at all, but it sure was fun at the time.

 

[baimun]

You know what I used to do...
I used to get really high, close my eyes, and imagine playing the coolest guitar shit in the world. For some reason, there were always like 50 cats outside my house afterwards .

 

[micwalt]

You must've lived next door.