How is your practice routine?

[Higon]

A ask that ´cause I have difficult to choose what to do when practicing. Arpegios? Scales? Hammer-ons? Songs? Dark Rituals? How many times? At wich speed?

Since I don´t have a teacher (and never found one), I need advice of how and what to practice. - Intermediate/Begginer level.

 

[Unregistered]

Umm, well, this is just my veiw (so noone take offense, I'm not saying it's the only way).

I had several years of theory so I'm partial to scales. I like to warmup to scales in different positions and patterns (on the neck). And do some agility exercises (i can give you some examples if you want) with scales that I'm fond of. I'd say start slowish, then build up to a speed before you get sloppy (if you practice at speeds that you play sloppy, you'll only reinforced that type of playing). I can work on them for hours, but 10 minutes is plenty.

Arpeggios are a decent way to practice string skipping, which is something that doesn't always come easily with finger players.

Then perhaps, technique. But if you do primarily finger plucking (and don't do slapping, etc.) then the scales are probably enough to cover this. I'm big on techniques, so I can get carried away and waste alot of time practicing a reportoire of stuff. I'll change things up, like slap a finger part, or vice-versa, or take a finger part and work it out in harmonics. You can do endless things here.

I've kind of taken to the idea of learning parts of songs and learning by ear. You can never underestimate a good ear (you can get away with no theory knowlegde and be functional, but a good ear is so necessary). And playing songs helps your sense of rhythm and timing, if you can't keep time your in trouble. Or possibly do things with a metronome, but songs are much more enjoyable. I always hated metronomes (which is not a good thing).

These are a few ideas I threw together, use what ya want.

 

[Unregistered]

One more thing. I didn't post it as a routine. I don't really believe it's good to make a personal practice too routine. I like to work on alot of things that appeal to me at the moment. Creativity is a large part of music, and I feel that regimenting practices too much suffocates your chance to exercise that creativity.

So try to make your practices productive, but keep them fun too. You really don't want to bore yourself with hours of stuff you hate (when you can use your brain to come up with something the does the same function).

 

[Higon]

(i can give you some examples if you want) with scales that I'm fond of

I would like that

So try to make your practices productive, but keep them fun too.

Yep... Acttualy I´m doing this: Technique exercises - Scales - songs. But it´s all too boring. I always skip technique and Scales and jump to play some fucking cool songs, but I sense that I can only play those songs. It´s not music, it´s mechanical playing =(.

And I don´t know when I should stop practicing that type of exercise. How I know if I´m good enough to change the exercise?

 

[Unregistered]

You can do scales like these (instead of strictly linear, so you progress up and down the scale using patterns):

patterns of 3: c,d,e, d,e,f, e,f,g, f,g,a, ect. (then in exact opposite order, the ascend back up the scale)

patterns of 4: c,d,e,f, d,e,f,g, e,f,g,a, f,g,a,b, g,a,b,c, ect.

pattern with 3rds: c,e, d,f, e,g, f,a, g,b, a,c, b,d, ect.

triad pattern: c,e,g, d,f,a, e,g,b, f,a,c, g,b,d, a,c,e, b,d,f, ect.

triad and scale pattern: c,e,g,f,e, d,f,a,g,f, e,g,b,a,g, f,a,c,b,a, ect.

there's alot more but i have to think of them.

I wrote them in the key of C, but you can apply them to any key, and by all means change up the scale pattern too. I play them in a single position up until I'd have to do a posuition shift, then play in reverse back down.

It's easier to see the pattern in tab, but it's alot of bother for me to type it out (plus im at work).

 

[Unregistered]

Theyre still very mechanical and non-musical, but it adds an interesting little change to them.

I've done them for a while, and I've been meaning to progress on to using them for other scales: natural minor, harmonic minor, ect. Not sure if they can be done using the pentatonic scales (maybe some of them).

Hmmm, I thought of some new ones. Progress up the scale backwards. But same basic patterns.

Like, pattern of 3: e,d,c f,e,d g,f,e a,g,f, ect. going up the scale

pattern of 4: f,e,d,c, g,f,e,d, a,g,f,e, ect.

You get the idea.

 

[Higon]

You get the idea.

Yup.

 

[Unregistered]

Theyre still just scales, but it breaks some of the monotony (and gives a different veiw of the scale) and they are more difficult to play than straight scales (at first, anyways).