🛠️ The practice tool no one taught you
Every guitarist has one. The thing you figured out yourself — or stumbled onto, or stole from somewhere — that quietly changed your practice forever. 🎸
💬 What's the practice tool you use that nobody actually taught you?
Could be:
- The way you trick yourself into starting on a hard day (a 5-minute timer? a specific piece you always begin with? leaving the guitar out on the stand?)
- A warm-up that gets you ready faster than scales (tuning slowly and listening? a specific opening passage you always come back to? humming through a phrase before playing it?)
- Something you do between practice sessions (score reading on the train, mental practice while walking, sleeping on a hard passage)
- A performance "dress rehearsal" trick that builds reliability under pressure (recording every run-through? playing for a non-musician housemate? dimming the lights and standing up?)
Share:
- What it is
- When you use it
- Why it works for you (even if it wouldn't for everyone)
Let's build a thread of self-discovered wisdom. The unwritten practice manual.
13 replies
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Well, I have the 16 Methodological Tools i have shared previously in a text. Those solve almost all problems that may appear ... i'm curious if any of you had the chance to use them and what were the results...
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Spaced repetition for working on technical exercises and repertoire. Without it, it’d to overwhelming to fit everything in or try and randomly alternate because invariably something always gets left out and not practiced enough. The second thing that’s been really helping is a short 15-20 warmup by David Russell that focuses on reflex training of the fingers on both left and right hands.
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In a tricky passage, I practice multiple different fingerings, up to four different GOOD fingerings.
For example, I can perform Frog Galliard with I-m, I-a, and p-i. Somehow, they help each other in my brain. If I need to play cold, I’ll do p-I, for example.
Same with preparation, I learn multiple different ways to prepare, including no preparation.
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Really basic stuff, learned from a book and on the web, but to avoid practicing mistakes two approaches to practice have helped me immensely. The first is to play at snails pace so that my left and right hand fingers go where they need to without tension, hesitation, and fumbling around. The second approach is segment practice, identifying the challenging measures in a piece and then practicing them one at a time, beginning with the note before and ending on the note after. Once I can play the segments easily, then I'll start playing through the entire piece slowly. With more repetitions over time, I can start to increase the tempo. The issue is that I want to play fast, but the hard lesson for me is that the fastest way to achieve speed and fluidity is to begin at a snails pace.
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I may have undiagnosed attention deficit disorder because I could not (and cannot) practice for more than 10-15 minutes at a time. I was always getting up to take breaks. And I'd get bored with one thing, move onto something else, then move on to something else, then later go back to the first thing. Then I learned about the power of microbreaks and spaced practice. And I was already doing it.
Looking forward to learning about others' tips and tools.😄
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It may be very basic but it took me years to realise how much faster progress is made by doing everything slowly. This includes giving myself a lot longer to learn each piece.
I break each piece into a few bars, play those very, very slowly and after each repetition stop and analyse what went well and what didn’t before replaying the repetition. Sometimes I give myself a score out of 10 for each repetition and work until I score 10/10.
If I continue to have difficulties always simplify - maybe practice fewer notes at a time or play even slower. Then only build up once that simpler part feels good.
I also find putting the new piece to one side for a few days means I come back to it refreshed and get away from getting stressed trying to get the piece learnt as soon as possible and then move on to something else.
All of this is basic, but years of frustration has taught me that if things aren’t working simplify to make it easier and don’t try to force things in the hope it’ll all work out.
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said:
microbreaks and spaced practice.I have some understanding of spaced practice vs. practicing for one long session, but I need to look into the concept of micro breaks.👍
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I warm up with the same routine every day. First, just simple arpeggios for the right hand, no left hand. And then when they feel fluid and loose I play a renaissance lute piece, Go From My Window, from the Noad book. I've been playing that as my warm up piece for many years because it has 5 variations that give me a range of things going on, and for some reason I find that Renaissance music really gets my left hand in a good position. Also, if I'm not playing it well, I know what to work on and warm up on next.