lowquality.net

This is an old blog post that I decided to go back and update. Some of the ideas I expressed here have evolved since the first writ­ing, so I wanted to reflect that. I’ve totally removed the bit about mak­ing orga­nized prac­tice rou­tines because, as it occurs to me, they’ve never been so suc­cess­ful. I’d love to get more input, so feel free to leave some comments.

I wanted to attempt to answer two basic ques­tions that can offer a lot of prob­lems for musi­cians if they go unan­swered. These ques­tions were not answered for me when I was a begin­ner, and it was not until I was very deep into my musi­cal edu­ca­tion that I finally found the teach­ers that taught me some of these fun­da­men­tals that prob­a­bly should have learned much earlier..

Going Solo

The first thing to keep in mind when learn­ing to play a musi­cal instru­ment is that no one can teach you any­thing. That’s right, no amount of pri­vate lessons, instruc­tional books, videos, drum machines or prac­tice gad­gets will yield you any sub­stan­tial results if you do not put time in on your instru­ment. Some­times, prac­tic­ing untu­tored can feel like you are beat­ing your head against the wall and it can be dif­fi­cult to find the the answers alone.  Real­ize, though, that a teacher is really just a guide. He can’t make you a bet­ter player with­out your help. A pri­vate instruc­tor is sim­ply some­one who has been where you cur­rently are and can show you the way.

Bot­tom line: You have to do the work.

Ques­tion 1: What do I practice?

This ques­tion can have many answers. A pop­u­lar prac­tice ses­sion among musi­cians is sit­ting down and spend­ing hours play­ing music we already know, jam­ming with our favorite record­ings and noodling while we watch TV. After we’re done we brag to our friends that we prac­ticed for hours and we con­grat­u­late our­selves inces­santly. I am not bash­ing this kind of self-gratifying per­for­mance, because we all do it. It’s fun and I strongly believe that it needs to be done. How­ever, we need to stop lying to our­selves: this is not prac­tice, this is sim­ply play­ing. Prac­tice, in my opin­ion, is work­ing on music you do not know. Prac­tice is con­cen­trat­ing on weak­nesses and devel­op­ing skills. Some reg­u­lar advice I give my stu­dents is that if a con­cept feels uncom­fort­able it means you are learn­ing some­thing. Prac­tice is not always fun, and not always easy, but if we learn to acknowl­edge our weak­nesses (which can be the hard­est part of prac­tic­ing) then we have a bet­ter grasp of how we will make efforts to improve.

If you are study­ing with a good teacher then, hope­fully, they are giv­ing you mate­r­ial that hones in on your weak­nesses, and that is what you should be con­cen­trat­ing on. If you are not cur­rently with a teacher, try to be hon­est with your­self and acknowl­edge your faults and find some ways you can go about improv­ing them.

Here are four basic con­cepts I rec­om­mend that you prac­tice (if you do not cur­rently) and my rea­sons as to why. I believe these are fun­da­men­tals that musi­cians of all lev­els can stand to improve on:

1. Sight-reading Not sim­ply because I believe that all musi­cians should be able to read music (though I do). I dis­cov­ered that when I started to really prac­tice sight-reading, other weak­nesses in my play­ing became appar­ent and then improved because of it. You will find that as you improve as a reader that your knowl­edge of the fret­board, your inter­nal­iza­tion of meter, your rel­a­tive pitch and your basic under­stand­ing of rhythm all improve expo­nen­tially. Don’t dis­re­gard sight-reading because you are “a rock guy” and don’t think you need it, because I guar­an­tee you that learn­ing to read will improve the way you play rock music.

2. Scales / Arpeg­gios It is aston­ish­ing how many stu­dents I have had that want to solo like Vic­tor Wooten but fail to see the impor­tance of these basic rudi­ments. I’ll put it in SAT Test format:

Not learn­ing your scales and arpeg­gios means to a musi­cian what not learn­ing the alpha­bet is to an author.

Scales and arpeg­gios are like words and make up your musi­cal vocab­u­lary. Not know­ing these rudi­ments does not mean you won’t play them, it just means you don’t know that you are play­ing them. These rudi­ments are the foun­da­tion to com­pe­tent solo­ing, impro­vi­sa­tion, and will give you an edge in learn­ing new songs more quickly. For some play­ers who’ve been at it for awhile with­out a the­ory back­ground, learn­ing some of the basics is as sim­ple as putting a “face” to pat­terns they’d seen a mil­lion times and can be really a pro­pelling moment of inspiration.

3. Ear Train­ing Ear train­ing can be as sim­ple as learn­ing your favorite song from a CD or sit­ting in front of a key­board and match­ing pitches with your voice. The key with ear train­ing is to prac­tice crit­i­cally, and really work towards remem­ber­ing what the dif­fer­ent inter­vals sound like, and asso­ciate them with music you already know. Most of the time, our instincts are much bet­ter than we real­ize, because even if we are begin­ners, we have been lis­ten­ing to music most of our lives and– even if we are unaware of it– know what “in tune” sounds like. At the very least we know what “out of tune” sounds like and that is a great of a place to begin learning.

4. Play­ing With Other Peo­ple So let’s say you’ve got all of this other stuff down and you head out to jam with some friends. The prob­lem is, you’ve been play­ing for 5 years but have never actu­ally worked with a band and, when you finally do, every­thing just falls apart. You can’t find “the beat,” the band plays every song in a dif­fer­ent key and you can’t even hear the vocals to fol­low along. It can be dif­fi­cult play­ing with other musi­cians if you are used to zon­ing out with your favorite CD. Every­one is capa­ble of mak­ing a mis­take in the per­for­mance envi­ron­ment– a vari­able that just doesn’t exist when you are rock­ing out in your bed­room. Play­ing in a band requires a dif­fer­ent kind of lis­ten­ing, and, truth be told, some guys never learn how to do it right. Even at the begin­ner stage, take every oppor­tu­nity you can to play with other musi­cians no mat­ter much bet­ter or worse they are than you.

Ques­tion 2: How long do I practice?

One thing that gets a great deal of con­tro­versy is the amount of time spent prac­tic­ing every day. Some teach­ers will tell you that you need to prac­tice sev­eral hours a day if you expect to be any good. I do not doubt that they are right, to some extent, but I think that this state­ment can be mis­lead­ing. “Sev­eral hours a day” does not mean sev­eral hours in one sit­ting, or a sin­gle hour at a time of intense prac­tice. The aver­age adult brain can only take 30 to 45 min­utes of con­cen­tra­tion at once, so it is impor­tant to take breaks. My advice to my stu­dents– par­tic­u­larly begin­ners– is that dura­tion is not as impor­tant as con­sis­tency. Devel­op­ing good habits and prac­tic­ing every day, even if it is for a mere 15 min­utes, is bet­ter than prac­tic­ing for an hour on one day and not pick­ing the bass up again for three more days. Much of the learn­ing process is based on rep­e­ti­tion, and when you are study­ing a musi­cal instru­ment it will be impor­tant to remem­ber that you are work­ing towards imple­ment­ing skills and con­cepts into your vocab­u­lary to the extent that they become sec­ond nature. Most of us can­not accom­plish this with a spo­radic prac­tice routine.

Treat learn­ing music as though you are learn­ing a for­eign lan­guage. You can­not expect some­one to prac­tice a new lan­guage for five hours in a sit­ting and retain much from that study ses­sion. Most likely you will remem­ber only a few things from that ses­sion. So, promise your­self to spend 15 to 30 min­utes a day prac­tic­ing, as an absolute min­i­mum. If you spend more time than that, great! Some days you will not want to prac­tice and 30 min­utes will feel like a life­time, but it is impor­tant to main­tain a rou­tine to keep your skills sharp.

Make a short list of the things you need to work on, and take your time with it. Don’t focus too much on any one thing. You don’t have to learn all of it one sit­ting, but make sure you touch on every­thing on the list before you are fin­ished. This requires a level of dis­ci­pline not com­monly found amongst musician-types, but its some­thing to keep in mind.

Enjoy the Process!

I received this great advice from Danny Mor­ris, a pro­fes­sor at Berklee, after com­plain­ing about how awful I was at orga­niz­ing my senior recital and it has stayed with me every since.

What I have taken this to mean is, that we should enjoy the process of learn­ing and cre­at­ing, and not be hung up on find­ing the answers and com­plet­ing the jour­ney. There is always more stuff to know, so that feel­ing of com­ple­tion can be fleet­ing and empty. I remem­ber spend­ing hours vex­ing and wor­ry­ing about my pro­fi­ciency exams in col­lege and think­ing that “once I take this test it will all be over and I will feel so much bet­ter,” but, once it was all over I felt kind of bummed out. I wasted my whole time wor­ry­ing and freak­ing out and the end result was that I’d have to do it all over again next semes­ter! If I had been focus­ing on the jour­ney of learn­ing some­thing new about my instru­ment I would have ben­e­fited just as much (if not more), and pass­ing my pro­fi­ciency would have just been inci­den­tal (which, in ret­ro­spect, it was).

Just try and have a good time!