Very interesting Adam,

Thanks for letting us in on your journey.

I'll listen to the sound clips when I get home later on.

Cheers buddy and all the best for the future

Phil

Best of luck with everything Don't burn any bridges btw on the freelance end. You never know when you will need a bit of scratch

Todd

Cheers guys.



Yea so it was varied - I would generally plan 8->10 hours of exercises (I write out the plan for the day in the morning - I'd get up at 5 to 5:30 am and figure out what I wanted to do in my exercise book and then work through it throughout the day).

Each day I would just decide that day what I was doing - I didn't have an overall plan week by week as such - I just worked on what I felt I needed to at any given time. Mostly it's technique stuff, all the typical things - alternate picking, sweeping, economy picking, 1nps picking etc. I have a fascination with great technique and I wanted to achieve great technique as a bed rock of what I want to do with the instrument, so I threw most of my time into that.

Exercises themselves would be either bits of scale fragments or passages from songs, bits and pieces off of guitar magazines (mostly grabbed from the web).

Most days I would have the guitar in my hands more like 10->12 hours in total, because I'd spend a bit of time between exercises either trying to nail something I didn't get right or trying out new things, playing songs and just noodling around.

My hands would get really tired at the end of the day, maybe every 2 to 3 weeks I'd have to take a day off because my hands felt numb from playing too much, especially if I had a gig coming up.

I also didn't play much on weekends unless I had a gig (I was averaging about 1 gig a week for most of the year) except for the odd bit of noodling or learning songs for a gig.

I feel I didn't really improve at all during this time - my biggest problem is still that one moment I'm playing flawless fast runs and sounding great, then the next second I'm in the wrong key and I can't remember what I'm meant to be playing and my hands freeze up. It's not related to difficulty of the piece or passage - I struggle to get through a 3 chord punk song without playing in the wrong key at somepoint (usually I hit a chord a fret too low or something - I don't think I've ever played a song the whole way through without screwing up at least once!)

All that stuff about play slow over and over to a click - that worked great for building speed, but even after thousands of repetitions my hands just will not learn to play things the same each time - and I don't mean like just a little variance, I mean they completely forget how to play haha.

So now I'm still moving in that direction - I feel I need to finish what I started just to see it through, but I'm trying to spend more time creating simpler music instead, as I don't feel that I will get the chops to write the music I intended.

But meh I'll just get on with it!

Sorry I missed this question!

Ah so I wasn't really 'measuring' - before I started this intensive thing, I had already done about 5k hours of practice almost exclusively using a click, concentrating on an optimal cross-over of speed and accuracy.

I'd play things really slow to the click and gradually build up the speed over the days/weeks/months (depending on what I was doing). I never really wrote this down, I just kept a mental note of roughly where I was at (you get stuck at shelves where you can't break a certain BPM for a while so trust me when I say it's easy to remember lol).

But I found that after a while, speed and accuracy both topped out, with accuracy a long way behind. I don't think this is down to simply 'you didn't play clean and accurately at a low speed enough' - I did my time there that's for sure - I have found that my accuracy is poor regardless of the speed at which I play.

What I think I have come to understand through all this is trying to boil down the quality of your playing to a number like BPM or to some perceived accuracy on a given day is kind of futile - there's so many moving parts involved and most of them are mental. Not only mental - but completely invisible to you, I have no idea what my brain is actually doing when I play I'm left guessing as to why things are not coming together.

Like anything, it just takes wads of time. They say 10k hours to get any level of "Mastery" on something and that includes downtime for the brain to process during sleep. So roughly 10 years from the starting point. It's a long slong and there is no way around it, which is what makes playing an instrument, and playing it well, so special imho. Can't be faked or bought. Gotta be earned. Sounds like you are well on your way to earning it! As you learn, you will change as well, what you want, what you want out of it, what you want to play, it will all change. It's a multi year process so change is natural. It's ok to push yourself, just make sure you are enjoying it along the way. if you stop enjoying it, what's the point? If you want to play slower stuff, or without a methronme or learn covers or write your own material, great all of it will lead you to becoming a better player over time. The most important thing is just to not quit. Just keep at it. You will grow and change along the way and come out the other end a better musician and hopefully grow as a person along the way Few things teach patience and humility, not to mention perseverance, like learning an instrument

Todd

In my experience, which at this point in my life and career I have no problem saying "is vast", I will say that it takes a solid 10 years of dedication (10,000 hours or not) to just be competently mediocre. What I mean by that is after 10 years of working hard in a dedicated fashion you should be able to write a decent song, play a decent gig and record a decent track. It may not be brilliant but it won't suck either.

*I'm not talking about youtube phenom adolescents that have learned a couple of pieces by rote and parrot them back like a trained monkey (mixed metaphors intentional). I'm talking about actually making music (or art in general).

This post has been edited by klasaine: May 1 2016, 02:38 PM

This is really interesting and puts a lot of things into perspective.
I guess many of us are "fooled" by the young kids who can play anything. Just look at Tina S, she is incredible, and does anyone remember Thomas McRocklin?

These brilliantly gifted youngsters make us "normal" folk feel like slow learners when we're not really, they are the exception.

Thanks again for sharing this Adam, we can all learn from your journey that first and foremost has to come enjoyment and pleasure, speed of progress is second place.

Your experience has made me think more about not getting frustrated when something seems to take me forever to crack. I only get an hour and a half most nights to practise so I realise I'm not doing too bad.

I wonder at what point the amount of practise becomes counterproductive.

Looking forward to more discussion on this fascinating subject

Well said It really is a life long thing. It will take all the time you can make for it, just like any other relationship. Some players get better quicker, some get to writing better songs quicker, some folks take longer. Every player, every person is different.

10 years seems like forever sometimes, and some folks don't start playing until they are in their 30s for 40s. Point is, it just takes time, and quite a bit of it. So make it something that you want to do, no matter what that takes. If you can just keep at it, you will get to where you want to be Be patient with yourself. Also, sometimes, life gets in the way. I've dedicated quite a bit of my life just to playing guitar at the expense of other parts. I'm not married, I have no kids, no girlfriend, etc. I spend money on gear and not much else, I spend time playing guitar as much as possible and trying to come up with challenging bits for our weekend vid chats.

Such dedication is probably a bit extreme, but all I've ever wanted to do is play guitar so that's what I spend time on

Yea I agree with this - I think I'm gonna have to just keep on going over a much longer period of time, maybe after another 10 years I'll finally be able to play the same thing twice without it sounding wildly different lol. Only one way to find out!

I am happy that I'm writing music finally - I'm on my way to putting something out into the world rather than just shredding alone in my room. Though I'm still doing that, too!



I do find my tone is also quite muddy when I'm playing fast stuff, I find it hard to get clarity, not sure if it's technique or my equipment or just the video encoding eating the sound and spitting it out, lol.

Any tips for that?

This post has been edited by AdamB: May 11 2016, 06:56 PM

muddy tone or not, that's damn good playing mate

And you reckon you're still "very intermediate" ???????

Mate that playing is sweet, I'd sure love to be able to do that. Nice one Adam

Nice, I can recommend working on rhythmical articulation but not aware of any (modern) books that can teach you without someone else's help. I did find one of I worked on for free on internet, too soon for you but bookmark it for future use; https://archive.org/details/completemethodfo00bona

Ok thanks for clarifying - I understand what you wanted to achieve and how you worked on it.

It seems you were looking for technical progress, and that's what you got - although not completely consistent. And that is normal even after a year of intense practicing.

My only objection to what you did - is that having one day off every 2 or 3 weeks with this kind of 10-12 hours routine is not enough. The average person would run a serious risk of injury. Even if you are aware about thing slike stretching, posture and physical exercise - I would recommend one day of rest per week.

Also - I think that if you did not notice any progress at all - you would have been really discouraged by this routine. So would you agree it's rather a matter of progress not meeting your expectations? This can be a good thing if you deal with it in a constructive way.

About:



It's the same for me, I find that 'brute forcing' your way to perfection is nearly impossible. So my solution is to not play anything (anymore) that is not musically stimulating, if my mind can feel the music in what I am about to play, it is rare that I mess up. However If I try to play something just to showcase a shred technique, I will mess up 50% of the time.



I agree with the 10 years requirement in general, if we consider many people are not smart about their practicing. I definitely think that smart practicing can shorten this time considerably.

* Many people think they have to wait several years before they can start playing with other students/ musicians. This is a major mistake slowing down progress.

* When we notice progress in some areas as a beginner, we tend to start thinking in the lines of "I am more gifted in some areas than others". Regardless of whether you believe in natural talent or not (I don't!) - this attitude is a major obstacle for progress.

* So just as with weight lifting, it's a matter of constantly hitting your musical muscles from new directions. To maximise progress you should expose yourself to new musical elements *every practice session*. You can still keep a steady routine, but you should alter it every day - otherwise your progress curve will level out. It is a very common mistake for people to stick to an old routine just because it worked when it was new. The key is to make sure your routine always is fresh and new, I believe this is super important, and it will increase your progress pace exponentially.

All these points are much more mentally demanding than the average 'metronome + learn a new song' type of routine. But they make your practice sessions much more time efficient, thus allowing faster progress with the time you have at hand.

Yes that's basically it - what I want is to become a much more confident player, so that I can go to play a fast shreddy run live without having to worry about the 50% chance that I'll mess it up. But instead I gained a little more technical prowess, but still can't use it live.



I think you may be right - though I don't hear music in my head like other musicians say they do so I don't really know how to relate to what other musicians talk about when they say to 'feel the music'. I am very external with music - I have to hear it before I can process it. Nothing comes from within first for me - I have never been able to imagine the sound of an instrument in my mind first. I've done a lot of ear training to try and gain this but I feel that it's just a fundamental part of how my mind works that I don't think like that.



Yes this is something I definitely suffer from - I tend to fall into patterns of practising the same stuff over and over. I'm making a concious effort to change things up more, but it's not easy! What I need to do is start branching out into playing more varied material (and going back to learning songs that have difficult parts in - I haven't learnt anything new here for a long while!)



This I partially disagree with - I think it's a very personal thing to the individual. To be clear; I did have more time off than you might think (I didn't play as much on weekends - I'd maybe have about 3 to 6 hours of playing for gigs unless it was a really heavy weekend where I had three gigs to do, and when I did decide to practice I just learnt songs rather than running drills), though I actually found that increasing my workload made my hands feel healthier;

To elaborate - back when I was playing 4 hours, 5 hours a day or so, every couple of months I would get a shooting sharp pain in my wrist and I'd have to stop for a few days. I did worry that I was ruining my hands and that going even further (to 10 hours or more) would just destroy my wrists and stop me from playing. But actually I found the opposite - I now never get pains in my wrist and my hands feel like they move easier than they did.



What is that?



Cheers, like I say I can play fast but it's not very accurate - I could never play what I did in that video live because I wouldn't get past the first like 5 notes without freaking out and making a glaring error. Also my hands just don't move anywhere near that fast live. Also for some reason - and I dunno whether anyone else finds this - but when I play live everything sounds out of tune for some reason - I have to keep checking my tuning but it's usually fine.

This post has been edited by AdamB: May 12 2016, 10:05 AM

With the way I phrased this, it might sound like I am hearing some magic music in my head that is guiding me through the deep realms of improvisation bla bla bla. But that is not the case. I am pretty sure you can hear exactly what i am hearing:

* start a backing track

* now before you actually play something, take a second to think of what you will be playing (ie a lick or pattern etc) .

Now what you just did, is what I refer to as "hearing in ones head". Please let me know if that feels ok to you? Can you do this?

Its just like sight reading but instead of singing the notes you read the timing of the notes. Best working alone is, open a metronome and tap the tempo with your right hand too. Name every note "ta" at the right time they're written.

You may not use crazy timing in your compositions but if you advance in this study you'll be able to play really tight. We studied a few famous jazz musicians once where we slowed the tempo of the song and noticed even then they had perfect timing.

Just remembered steve vai also has a lesson on that but its more for learning not practice; http://www.vai.com/tempo-mental/

Fine playing Looks like you are using the neck pickup, it's just naturally more muddy and less trebly than the bridge pickup. If you want to keep the yngwie ish tone of using the neck pickup, but want to get rid of some mud, then it's down to your signal processing after it leaves your guitar. One easy trick is to simply use less distortion. As your fingers get stronger, you'll find you don't need as much as you used to. Also depends on what you are using for distorting the signal. Thus why many folks use a clean boost to get more definition out of whatever they are using. E.g. putting a tube screamer with gain at zero and volume some where between 6 and 10, tone knob to taste, to boost their amp/preamp/sim without allowing it to mud up

Todd

OK So I can play to backing tracks - but I always have to start roughly in the same place (somewhere within the minor pentatonic patterns). I can't 'hear' what it's going to sound like first so I usually try to start on the root, 5th or 3rd of the scale (though I can't always tell whether it's major or minor by hearing so I have to play first so sometimes I hit a bad sounding note to start off). From that point on I can sort of feel my way around so long as I move in a step-wise fashion. Other than that I have to revert to running patterns, and they don't always work (I find it hard to stop myself playing the same phrases I always use - even when they don't work in the current harmonic context).

I find playing to backings really hard. Whilst I don't 'mess up' when I'm improvising (I find improvising really easy and non-stressful), it rarely sounds interesting because I'm just sort of on autopilot.

Though I'm more interested at the moment in fixing what happens when I try to play something 'correctly'. I.e. I have to play a solo that's the same each time, or get through a chord sequence without forgetting the chords part way through.



Ah yea I've read that before when I was in my worshipping Steve Vai phase lol. I will start trying out more interesting rhythmic ideas (I find counting 8th note triplets really hard where they cross the beat, so I'm working on that today).



Not so fussed about a yngwie sound, I just use this guitar as a backup - it's a fake strat I bought for a couple hundred quid from a guy on ebay. All my other guitars are either in funny tunnings, in need of repair from being played to the point that the frets have worn out or have electrical problems from being gigged hard.

I like the neck pickup on strats - I love that warm thing you get around the 12th fret. But yea for some reason with lead playing my tone is always muddy - I think partly it's the distortion like you say, I think you're right there, and partly my playing lacks clarity.

I find if I back off the distortion I can no longer play fast. I've been trying to fix it by playing speed picking stuff on my acoustic, which after a while I can do, but it never sticks. By that I mean I start off not being able to do it on the acoustic, then a couple hours go by and now I'm handling it OK. But the next day, back to square 1. So frustrating.

Because of this I'm not so sure it's a strength thing - but I don't know what else it could be. Mental block perhaps?

Finger strength is KEY so try to do some drills using only one hand. Turn down the gain a bit and just use your left hand to play and mute with your right. Eventually, the right hand becomes a tone choice only, not the primary way to make strings move

Todd

Ok fair enough - it sounds like you know where you want to go and are ready to put the time into it. I'd say just keep going! B)