I was reading an interesting article about a study that was done on practicing habits at the University of Texas.
You can read the article in its entirety if you want, but the goal of the study was to determine which, if any, practicing habits did the top performers exhibit?
In other words, if you put 17 very high level musicians in a position where they have to learn something and play it well the next day, what things to the best players have in common at the end?
Now some of the ideas don’t always apply to us as blues players… but many of them do and with a little tweaking fall right in line with a lot of things I always say about practicing:
- Don’t play it wrong… notice that the last 3 items on the list are basically: find errors quickly and correct them, slow down when you have to so as to not make mistakes, play the hard parts over and over until you don’t make the mistake anymore. Every time you play something wrong it gives your brain an option. And you don’t want your brain and fingers any option except correct. If you make a mistake, stop, find it, fix it, and continue. Do NOT start over and ignore it.
- Don’t use a metronome at first… using a metronome will keep your time steady, and that’s not what you want when you’re still learning a section. You need to know exactly what beats the notes fall on (count out loud) and you need to be able to slow down for difficult parts (so you don’t make the mistake in the first place.)
- Don’t separate notes and time… notice that item number 1 on the list is “playing hands-together” early on in practice. Now, we’re guitar players so that doesn’t make as much sense but what it alludes to is putting all of the music together at the beginning so that you’re building the whole instead of just assembling some parts. Many students say they are going to learn the notes first and the count later – that never works (nor does the reverse.) Start counting out loud with the first note you strike.
Now I’m no professor or anything… all of my suggestions come from my own (albeit extensive) experience teaching people just like you.
And while I don’t need anyone to tell me what is going to work and what won’t, it’s always nice to see an “official” endorsement of the things I see in the lesson room from day to day and year to year.
It’s particularly difficult for you if you’re an intermediate or advanced guitar player who never really got the hang of a couple of basic things and now you feel like you have to go back and re-learn those things… but in every instance where I’ve had a student who did that, it did not take that long and the improvements in their future learning were off the charts.
66 replies to "3 Steps To Better Guitar Practice…"
great advice Griff, since I’m crunched for time I’ll keep those pointers in mind.
OH BOTHER ! As WINNIE THE POO WOULD SAY. Well, I’m messed up. left shoulder rotator cup damage from a car accident. Can’t play bar cords, finger’s. are numb, had to be my left shoulder. DANG !
At 72, I’m screwed. I can play little cords, but when I try and do riffs, my fingers get stiff.
Have most of all your courses. Then, I will not give up. Thanks Griff. Benn playing since i was 12, Oue band in 1965 had a hit song on AM radio, played in Black Rose, For Cher, who I met when she was with Sonny.
BUT GRIFF GOT ME INTO THE BLUES. WE ARE BLESSED TO HAVE A KIND AND HUMOROUS AND TALENTED TEACHER.
May I have a link to that article, or a citation from the resource ?
TIA,
Doug Posey, DVM, BGU member
Follow up, Sorry, didn’t see it linked in the body of the text. thx…
Thanks Griff
Great advice Griff, hearing those things is powerful to me. I know myself that I’ll skip the counting off the bat. I noticed that when I do stop and count out loud like for example “blues speed building blocks” I’m able to go through the faster levels a little easier. Counting out loud is really a big help. Great reminder Griff thanks,
Alexander
As an archer this saying has always stuck with me and it fits with practicing the guitar also.
Perfect practice makes perfect.
If you practice wrong you just reinforcing a bad habit.
When it comes to counting, I was so fortunate to have been trained in music (trumpet originally) by my dad, who had been in the US Army Band. He waited until I was 8, then started my training. Daily we would sit, and he would sit and use a stick of some sort to keep time for me by tapping it against the music stand. Then he taught me to tap my foot, always keeping precise time. (though taught to tap my foot, I later turned to tapping my heel instead). Then, after about 3 years, I got a wooden metronome for Christmas, and found that I had no trouble keeping in time with it. I am now 76, and find that my sense of timing remains on the mark. I play upright bass, and use my timing skill to keep groups in time, even against drummers who are supposed to be the “time keepers”, but often aren’t. What I’m saying is, learn not only how to play an instrument, but work hard on that often not mentioned item in lessons – – Time. Sometimes, don’t play your instrument, but think through a song with the metronome on. Think through it again with your own foot tapping. Even combine the 2, until when you pick up your instrument, the only thing going on is that your foot keeps tapping away, especially in group play.
A note for you older beginners: i had played trumpet and rhythm guitar until age 61, when I decided to play upright bass. I routinely spent 3-4 hours a day, and in 6 months was ready to play gigs. (Routine is another key element to success). What I’m saying is, put in the time, you’ll do fine. Now the upright is my “other woman”, a companion that my wife allows me to go out at night with. How do you make an elephant fly? Start with the long zipper from an old upright bass bag.
Gimme 3 steps 🎼🎸lol was listening to Lynard Skynard and couldn’t help it
That was great. Very interesting and very helpful for me….
Griff: I have most of your blues products and enjoy them all…But I have a problem counting out the measures and following your logic for how to count out a measure.I even write them out on the music sheet prior to playing and prior to watching you sound the timing out and at times still run into difficulties. For instance If you are playing a slow blues measure which contains one quarter note followed by a series of triplets followed by two eight notes and a quarter note rest. Do you count this as 1- 2and ah- 3and -4 or since slow blues is triplets some other way. Please let me know.
thanks…Perhaps a video on counting would be helpful.
Dazed and confused
I agree with this comment. I wd also add that in some of your courses licks are taught with no backing track for context (How to solo like Bb King, for example). Just counting one-ee-and-ah with no music or clicker. Sometimes the lick is not even played first before jumping into the counting. With all the great guitarists who learned licks and solos by slowing records down and learning by ear, I think you over estimate rigid counting. I’ll add one more thought about teaching and learning online…Griff, start providing SoundSlice!!!!
And what might sound slice be for the uninitiated?
I find that a metronome that uses words instead of sounds helps me keep in mind where I am! (One,two, three,four) Voice Metrenome!
Growing up I took piano lessons and I was taught to count 1/8 notes as one-and, two-and, etc while triplets were counted as one-trip-let, two-trip-let, etc. I still use that method rather than Griff’s one-and-ah. Whatever works.
I count the triplets. I like to use a drum sampler instead of a metronome and turn the high hat up loud.
I was learning Bach’s Gavotte from sheet, and usually have no trouble with time signature, unless there are lots of dotted notes and rests (you know, where music breathes). So I had most of the piece down, but there was one phrase that gave me trouble because of the dotted notes, etc. So I used my ear to get through the passage until it sounded right to me. Some time later, YoYo Ma was on Mr Roberts Neighborhood (yeah, it was that long ago), and YoYo said he was going to play some Bach (at that point, I had learned about 3 of Bach’s arrangements for lute, transposed for guitar). Lo and behold, YoYo played Gavotte. When he got to the passage I had noodled together, I listened closely as he played the passage in the same phrasing I had worked out. Conclusions: sense of timing is critical, and while there is little substitute for study, a trained ear will get you through the tuff stuff.
All 3 rules are related, I find it’s about training your mind to play (or do) something without thinking. In my case, with a musical instrument, it’s to learn the sequence of notes first with counting so that I don’t have to stop and think/look for what is next.
Learning a piece note for note and learning to improvise need very different practice routines imho. I am interested in people’s (and Griff’s of course) opinions on this.
Gimme three steps, gimme three steps mister and I won’t play it wrong again.
It’s really difficult, inefficient and frustrating to attempt to learn multiple skills all at the same time. It’s efficient to learn each skill individually and then put them together. Learning both rhythm and finding the notes are like that for me. First I read rhythms and learn to count them out loud. Then figure out where the notes are. Then I put the two skills together. That is what I think works.
I’m still not good at doing both together and I’ve spent years trying to learn both skills simultaneously. Now I practice rhythm reading then I learn the notes, and only then do I try to do both at the same time.
I think it’s working much better. If I try to rush it doesn’t work. Slow is good.
I’ve heard it said that the mind can only focus on one thing at a time. Then one skill is learned so well that it is almost automatic, and then the same for the second skill.
Did John Brode (famous football player) have to think about where to put his hands when throwing a football, or where to put his feet when running?
I doubt that he did, instead he probably knew his fundamentals so completely that he could focus on the game.
Just my 2 cents.
I have found the linked Blog Bulletproof Musician a great resource for scientific studies that can be applied. What you describe in original learning of a concept – breaking up beats, notes, tempo as well as scales, boxes, modes, etc. are necessary building blocks. If we could jam for 10,000 hours we would likely discover much of what we need organically. And it is more efficient to get our brains around it by breaking it up or humming the melody of the break, and then playing the full piece at speed and in context of band or song. I am often tempted to get stuck in Drills long after I have grasped the concept, technique, song, etc. Once I have the knowledge I need to start playing music.
I was in a guitar workshop given by Tommy Emmanuel last month. He told us his essential tips: besides being in tune (#1), keep time always. He said he is always counting time in his head as he plays: “it will keep you in the pocket.” He said he uses his body as s metronome, always rocking or foot tapping. What was so impressive about watching him were his fundamentals, always big attention to the little fundamentals.
Thanks Griff, always good stuff! Hope your recording session was a blast and looking forward to see the outcome.
It has been discovered that it takes 16 correct actions to replace one incorrect one so this makes it much more difficult to correct something that was learned wrong. And who’s got the time for that?
Our brains are computers. Practice is programing.
Playing is running the program with heart.
hi griff,
you say don’t separate notes and time.
With my students to first do a short study of the notes or chords that they are working on; then map out the rhythm i.e. ( 1 a2 &a 3 &a 4 & ). Then I have them work out the rhythm vocally, it is usually not vocalized in perfect time at first. I encourage them to say the rhythm even though it is imperfect. I know through repetition the rhythm will smooth out. While spelling out the rhythm we work out the pick direction. I have been teaching many years and would appreciate any comments. thank you…dave
Yes, whenever possible do the time first, or along with the notes. I often have my students do rhythms vocally as well.
What is meant by vocally doing the rhythm?
That’s quite a good question. If you’re only practising the notes you’ll be actually be picking but doing it vocally , what some teachers suggest for vocal practise without the guitar is to get your foot tapping, like foot down for beat one, and it comes up for the ‘and’ or the ‘and a’ , then foot down for beat two etc. in the normal way. Then let’s say the music says you just have three simple quarter notes(crochets) for beats two three and four. So when your foot goes down for beat two you would say da, and again for beats three and four. If there were eigth notes inbetween you could vocalise da mm, da mm, da mm. But you would hear the rhythm before you get started picking on your guitar. There wouldn’t be much point in looking at the music page and going ‘one and two and’ to the end of the bar without picking anything, because you wouldn’t be practising where you were going to put your notes. I have never been very happy with numbers and find this method better even when picking. The only thing is you must know exactly where you are in the bar at all times doing it without the actual numbers. Most of us always know where beat one is, so if I tap my left foot for beat 1, right for beat 2, left for beat 3 and rigt for beat 4, because I always know instinctively where beat is, I know if my left foo’ts not on that beat one, it’s on beat 3. It may sound like a load of BS, but I can vouch for the fact that it works. But there again I’ve only been playing for 58 years, a short time professionally.
Hi Griff,
These guides are always a good refresher. I always make sure it is right even if I start our and make a mistake. I start again and again.
Good work Teach.
Michael- Sydney Australia
Amen! Amen! counting is so very very important. I’ve come to believe it’s the absolute #1 requirement in order to advance from a noodler with a collection of licks to an actual “player”. And especially if you’re not a singer it’s something you MUST do. I still struggle with incorporating the count into much of what I play but I always work on it.
This is very interesting! It reminds me of a technique – known to be successful in error correction – called Root Cause Analysis (RCA). The best RCA practitioners tend to be the best at getting things to work as intended.
Good advice as usual, cheers griff
Thanks for the three steps.
Thanks for your many, many great suggestions and teaching tools.
It is possible to teach an old dog new tricks!!!!
I save a lot of the videos you send and use them often.
Still the 2 major things for me are timing and hearing the chord changes from major to minor and vice/versa.
I ll keep plugging away.
Charles
Yup your right again, sometimes I find myself trying to get ahead of myself on the solos especially #2 in B Minor, but for me I keep practicing that solo, I will eventually get it right.
thanks Griff for all your great advice 🙂
I needed that! Trying to come back from a stroke is hard…..but it’s coming
TOP man Griff.
Love your teaching methods; you have such a great way of explaining & demonstrating. Always look forward to the informative & encouraging emails. Ta very much!!
Thank you Griff for creating a path of least resistance for practice. That appears to fit into just about anything you would like to learn. Thanks Again, You Nailed it for me.
I played and jammed with other folks for hours upon hours almost every day then stopped about 30 to 35 years ago. After thrashing about for way to long trying to play like I did before during days past, I started practicing just like you explained it. To make a long story longer, your method works. It is spot on.
Thanks Again
Neon
John L.
You are correcto mundo- Everything you say is so.. I have been a player for years and these tid-bits are what keeps it happing. You Rule…
Thanks Griff,great imformation….
Thanks again Griff, great bit of advice.
Great pointers, even when learning to sing a song while learning to play a rhythm part on the guitar.
Just getting to the end of my BBG lessons and I’ll have to admit that the counting out loud is very difficult…It’s like learning to pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time (remember trying that?). Just need to keep at it and eventually it will come (as I did with a couple of the lessons that I thought I’d never be able to do, but amazed myself when after hard work got it! As Griff always says – PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!!!
Hi Griff, articulating the scenario of learning that by normal nature allows us to learn things but then reminding us all the when we blew off something we did not think we needed had only extended the time before we actually do have to learn.
For me it was sight reading. I am still painfully slow, but I can actually sight read now. Yes it is hard as an older person now but I want to accomplish that
Harm………….:)
The article just says what you say all the time. Good stuff.
Many of us are told to visualize the outcome we want to achieve.
For a learning guitar player, we may want to visualize ourselves sitting there calmly banging out Eric Clapton riffs as effortlessly as EC.
It is easy to forget, when all you see is the end product, that along with being immensely talented, Clapton has been at it for fifty years.
Visualizing yourself at the final destination leads to immense frustration. It held me back for years, leading to complete abandonment of my desire to play guitar.
Now, as a player once again for several months, I try to visualize what Clapton would have been doing for the first three months. I’m not exactly sure what that would have been, but it’s far more encouraging and less frustrating than beating myself up because I can’t play like present day Clapton.
I like Griff’s videos and blog for the reasons that he stresses having realistic expectations and self-patience, even though I am learning to play the mandolin (smaller neck=physically easier/walk-before-you-run concept), so a lot of the guitar-specific elements of the videos are not useful to me. When I saw Griff’s video about Throwing the Ball, or about how a baby learns to walk and talk, however, it became clear to me that my biggest barrier was misplaced perfectionism and starting over from the beginning when I bungled a change from the V chord back to the IV in a simple twelve bar blues chorus, or any one of the other constant mistakes I made.
Watching the video of Chick Corea having what for him was a bit of a struggle with a Bach piece, really brings the idea of what it takes to learn into clearer focus. We hear the perfect recording and do not get to see the process, and then we get upset when we do not instantly have the same result.
Griff is right: It truly should be “Playing.”
That’s really a correct observation and I did the same mistake, going for stuff that are out my reach. As an analogy, when you teach your kid to drive, you don’t show him or her a Nascar race and say; see that’s the way to do it!
Hey Griff, great tips. Thought you might like this clip, it shows the practice technique for one of the greats, Chick Corea! Even he has to SLOW DOWN on difficult passages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na8W-rIUzQw
That video was very helpful, and encouraging, A.J., Thanks!
Great advice. Nothing more to add to what’s already been mentioned by the previous responses. I do admit that playing & counting is hard, but it can be overcome with a lot of practice, much like anything else we do. Thanks Griff.
the Texas article was interesting but seemed to jump all over the place…I like your three basic steps…great use of the KISS principle…later.
cowboy
btw, I always make it a point to check out your daily email…some of the best info I’ve heard…
I couldn’t agree more…
Great advice and I do count when I am playing, but what I have difficulties with is, if I do not count loud whilst I am playing. I can read and play the notes but find it incredible difficult to keep the timing, if they are 8th or 16th notes. Any idea how I should practice?
yeah guess its time to put the pieces parts i have been missing together and start playing off the charts. sounds easy right well could be but time is so short . pratice time and time again same cover tune . best to have a sample of the tune even better a piece of written music . there is so much info out there . bending towards original stuff best to follow a chart the 1 4 5 and the 5 1 4 the 12bar blues f and g sharp . because that is how it is done correct .
Griff, with your guidance the past few years , I have improved a lot. This is a great reminder of how to excel even more. Thanks again Griff. Mike Z.
Thanks Griff for the reminder, take it slow, it takes awhile for the fingers to respond to the brain or is it the other way around?
‘leaving the brain and fingers no option’
is, to me, THE essence of practice
do it right slow, in slow time, and everything becomes right
you’re a teacher with vision Griff
I’m happy to be one of your students
Thanks Griff, the first one really hit home with me. Sometimes I do play it wrong and let it go. Then as I improve on the piece the wrong part stays with me. It is not always that noticable, but it is to me and then if I don’t play the piece for a period of time. The wrong part really messes me up and it’s like I have to re-learn it all. The best thing would be play it all right from the beginning and then if you leave it for a while, when you go back you know what is right, how it should sound and it’s easier to pick it up again.
Thank You Much Griff. I know this will help. But it just reminds me of the old saying practice does not make perfect, Perfect practice makes perfect.
Looks like it always comes back to that “Counting Out Loud” thing! I’ve been with you since the beginning and this “Counting” thing has been a part of every lesson. Nothing I do seems to be as hard as being able to count out loud and play. On the other other hand, the only things that are right are right because I learned them “Counting Out Loud”
I continue to struggle but continue to work on it.
I remember a demo you did at BGU Live in which you played all of the right notes out of time and it sounded real bad. Then you played all of the wrong notes “In Time” and it sounded surprisingly good!
Thanks for all that you do!
Sound advice Griff.
Learn it right the first time, correcting ones mistakes takes more time and grief than getting it right. A bit of advice from retired carpenter who has all of his fingers and loves to play.
My name is Bill England. My middle name is John. The guitar has played me for years. I play nothing and nothing goes unplayed, ya dig?