Question about practicing stuff.

[wickenspoet]

I've noticed that I have a tendency to write musical ideas that I can barely play the next day. Chords that are maybe too hard to play. Licks that seem too fast for me to play consistently. Like my own ideas are outside of my physical ability.

Some times, it's discouraging. Thinking I'll never be able to play the ideas in my head. I keep on waiting for my muscle memory to kick in and make things smoother, and easier.

Does anyone here know what I'm talking about?

How can you tell if you just need to stick with it and keep practicing, hoping you'll eventually get it with enough slow repetitive practice?...

...or if maybe you're playing it wrong and you need to learn to play it a different way?

How can you tell if you're playing / practicing something the right way?

 

[DankStar]

Re: Question about practicing stuff.

some stuff requires a lot of warming up. just can't pick up an axe cold and start shredding on something you did yesterday after 2 hours into jamming. some stuff I immediately dumb down, knowing the re-learning curve will be high. I keep the tempo and feel, but easy up on the stretch/number of notes/etc. some days are just off days; I put down the axe and go read a book.

 

[karpathion]

Re: Question about practicing stuff.

man i do it daily. but i do have to agree with dankstar warm up a bit, and sometimes you do have to simplify the riff a little to be more consistent. i like to record the riff while it's fresh, so i can go back the next day and play along untill i get warmed up. it help's me, but evryones different.

 

[Osensei]

Re: Question about practicing stuff.

Yeah! It happens to me also. You know I really envy sax players because they can rip arpeggios all over their axe. But I find guitar players and trumpet players have more limitations because of the mechanical layout of the instrument.

For instance Alan Holdsworth is one of the few guitarists I know that can even come close to the proficiency of a sax player. That's because the man has evil legato and a left hand that can cover half of the fretboard if he really stretched.

It is for this reason that many mere mortal guitar and trumpet players stick to more scalar passages and chromatic ideas. But it's worth every bit of frustration for you to keep pressing forward. You will find that you will eventually overcome some limitations, while for others you may have to compromise and still others you will have to totally rethink.

One helpful hint I can give you is to learn to use dead notes! I know lots of licks I've heard in the past on recordings by major artists that sounded impossible to play technically. But when I slowed the play back down, I discovered that many times there were dead/muted notes in the licks! This tricks the listener into thinking that they heard an actual pitch because the brain was anticipating the note. But what was actually played in that spot was a dead "pluck"!

Remember also that rhythm and phrasing is just as important as note choice in a solo! Playing wide leaps, skipping strings, sweeping and trying to apply all sorts of wild technical acrobatics will not yield any better results than a well constructed phrase! Study prasing and you'll find that you will be much more capable of expressing ideas than just relying on so much technique.