My Spring 2012 Practice Sessions

Russ

Blues Newbie
My Current Practice Sessions
Everyone has different amounts of time they can practice. Some work and have active family lives. Some are retired and have more time than they want. And of coarse there are varying degrees in between and all around this general statement. I don’t always get the opportunity to practice every day or even multiple times per day. I usually get 15-30 minutes a day to practice. As a matter of fact, it sometimes helps my learning curve when I miss or skip a day of practice. I believe it gives my hands a chance to rest and my brain to enter information into long term memory. If I struggle with a lesson, I tend to excel if I skip a day. So here, I thought I’d run down my practice session just for comparison. I honestly started getting a little board with the BBG songs, so I figured I needed more complicated things to learn. Don’t get me wrong. At this point (May 2012), I’m still having issues with 5th string chords, but I’m getting there.
One thing I would like to throw out there for everyone to absorb is this. Don’t get too hung up on sounding exactly like Griff’s recordings. He is a professional with high quality equipment. In comparison, I have a small practice amp, a camera with a video feature, a guitar to computer USB that doesn’t record the true quality of my guitars and a free copy of Audacity. Work with what you have and accept it until you have the funding to do something else.

1)      My practice sessions start out tuning my guitar EVERY time because I live in MN and the moisture variations just require it. Otherwise, I get people telling me I’m “sharping” my notes by pressing too hard, etc.. I just figured this out recently from reading a post response of one of my recordings. As much as I think about guitars and moisture level, I’m a bit embarrassed that it took me all Spring to figure that out.
2)      After tuning, I practice my musical alphabet.
A B C D E F G G F E D C B A
3)      The actual practice starts out with Blues boxes 1 and 2. I may only be in BBG, but I already owned BGU and figured its never too early to start learning more than just Box 1. Box 2 only took me about 3 days to get into long term physical and mental memory. Anyway, I go through box 1 forward and back a few times. Then I do the same with box 2. I’m not to the point where I can play any of the box notes without having to go through the whole shape. I do want to get there.
4)      Now, I do my neck note practice. I am up to 2 notes and I also throw in the string’s octave. Forward and reverse. I couldn't get the tab letters to match the numbers from the writing screen to the posting screen, but you get the idea and you can move them around if you want to copy them or anything.

   C G  E    C G   A    C  G  D      C G     C G B      C  G  E
   8  3 12

E-----------------------------------------------8-3-12
B-------------------------------------1-8-12
G------------------------------5-12
D-------------------10-5-12
A---------3-10-12
E-8-3-12

5)      Now I play my current lesson as many times as I can before my chord hand starts to hurt (many wrist injuries). As of this writing, it is Pleading the 5th with 5th string chords. I’m getting close but I’m not quite there. If I’m really frustrated with it, I will go back and play one of the other lessons like Brown Eyed Squirrel or Muddy A Blues, etc..

By then, I’m out of time and have to do something else.
 

Russ

Blues Newbie
By the way,
One of Griff's biggest suggestions is to do everything while counting. Every time I try to do the neck note practice with a beat, I freeze up and get totally lost. I am well aware I should not move forward without being able to do this. I simply can't help myself. Now that I've admitted it to 5 thousand people, maybe I'll try a little harder  :-[ .
 

MikeS

Student Of The Blues
Staff member
Russ, you are not alone. I'm embarrassed to say that I can't count either. I can get by and I can play solos in a band situation. I can sing and play (sometimes even play licks while singing), but if I try to count something falls off. I'm afraid that one of these days breathing will be the thing I forget to do while playing and counting.
 

johnc

systematic
It's great that you are maximising what time you have Russ and it is just a good thing to retreat to when you need to zone out of the everyday rush.
The counting out aloud while playing is very beneficial so I hope that you can persist with it.  I am not great at it either like Griff but I do try and it helps me out a lot when learning something new.  I think it just needs to become part of every practice session and when listening to music on the radio when by yourself or whatever try counting along.
When you are practicing the boxes or just strumming, count out loud in time. Do it in quarters, eighths, sixteenths and triplets if possible and tap your foot on the quarter notes while counting out loud. Do it without your guitar and be comfortable with it, then pick up your guitar and do simple stuff at first.
Do this very slowly and concentrate on it for a few weeks and I promise great things will happen.

Among others one song in particular where it helped me and Mike may relate to this was the intro for "Take It Easy" - Eagles
For some reason this was throwing me and putting me out of time because I was thinking for a long time that the accentuated strums were on "[glow=yellow,2,300]1[/glow]" in my head but after I counted it out properly I discovered they are on "[glow=yellow,2,300]&[/glow]" 1. 
Being a song we almost open every gig with I always made sure I counted it through and yes you would see my lips moving right through the intro no matter how many times I played it.  Had to do it.  Another one was "Highway To Hell" - AC/DC because the drummer would throw me out the way he counted himself  in, the guitar starting first with Riff starting on " 4 & 1" and the drums coming in after 4 bars so I had to stay locked in to my own count so it didn't go off the rails  :eek:
 

Russ

Blues Newbie
Thanks John. It is difficult to practice things I suck at  ::) since I'm the only guitar player in the house. I don't know enough by memory to jam practice with anyone, so Griff is the only one I practice with (like so many others here). I do the best I can to count and have found that counting is helping me in the 2nd lesson of BGU. I find it very difficult to come in on the second beat instead of the first,so counting is critical. I'm working on it.  :)
 
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