Sunday practice day

snarf

making guitars wish they were still trees
I, also, am lucky most days to turn more than 20 or so minutes into real practice. My weekends are where I sit down and try to get in several 30 minute sessions. After getting to talk to Griff at the workshop in Allen last week, my current goal is to increase my blues vocabulary. So here's what I'm going to work on in the near future.

During the week when I only have 20 or 30 minutes total, I'm going to pull out the warm-ups from BSBB and Level 1 exercises. What I've worked on so far, Level 1 seems like I should be able to breeze through it, but I want to be sure and take the time to work through it correctly and don't rush it. In fact, I put it into the Practice Generator to be sure that, even if I think I'm doing a bang up job on it, I get at least 10 times through on it...even if I feel like I have it after 5. That way I am sure to have the licks under my fingers and in my head so that I remember them when I move on to level 2.

On the weekends, I'm going to continue the BSBB regimen and add to it picking a single lick from somewhere (this weekend will be either SRV or Billy Gibbons - haven't decided yet), and work to learn that lick. Then pull out the jam tracks and play that lick until Mrs Snarf is standing in the door of the music room with that look that says "play that lick again I dare you!"
 

sdbrit68

Student Of The Blues
you know @snarf I use an excel sheet for the same reason, actual a few of them

all my courses are listed, when I do it once, I highlight it in yellow, twice, purple, three times blue, four times green 5th time red.......then I have once a month dates listed for 12 months to go back and do it once a month again. I mean the entire DVD

then I list songs I want to learn, by name, then intro, verse, chorus, solo, outro and do the same thing. The color recognition is a huge help for me. If I see a ton of one color, I know I need to go back and focus on a small amount of thngs
 

JPsuff

Blackstar Artist
I've been working on "Landslide" by Stevie Nicks / Fleetwood Mac. It's always been a minor favorite of mine and I went to the beer store a while back and it was playing on the radio - that darned song was stuck in my head for weeks afterwards :) So I guess I'm supposed to learn it lol.

I'm playing it on 12 string acoustic, fingerpicked. Haven't played much 12 string in the past so it takes some getting used to. The verse of the song is actually pretty easy, the chorus is an entirely different matter though. I really need to memorize it - I've got sheet music spanning the entire width of my desk and it's just kind of ridiculous.


See, THAT'S the kind of practice I'm talking about.
The kind where you get something in your head and you just totally focus on it until you nail it.

To me, practice like that has a purpose and an end result in mind as opposed to just sitting down and running scales or doing other repetitive exercises. I think that if you're focused on something then the facility to play it will come as you learn it and the things that would ordinarily just be part of some regimen will develop more quickly because there's a sort of "finish line" you're headed towards.
 

MikeS

Student Of The Blues
Staff member
you know @snarf I use an excel sheet for the same reason, actual a few of them

all my courses are listed, when I do it once, I highlight it in yellow, twice, purple, three times blue, four times green 5th time red.......then I have once a month dates listed for 12 months to go back and do it once a month again. I mean the entire DVD

then I list songs I want to learn, by name, then intro, verse, chorus, solo, outro and do the same thing. The color recognition is a huge help for me. If I see a ton of one color, I know I need to go back and focus on a small amount of thngs

I'm having trouble visualizing it. Could you post an image of a little of it?
 
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