Quitting My Job And Dedicating 8 Hours A Day For Practicing Guitar |
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Quitting My Job And Dedicating 8 Hours A Day For Practicing Guitar |
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Nov 15 2010, 07:44 PM |
Hi everybody,
This will be a long post so I put the idea in the title to get your attention because I really need your opinions and advice on this. On short: I want to save some money, give up my daily job and practice about 7-8 hours a day for one year. To me it's clear now, playing guitar is what I like to do the most and I never stopped dreaming that one day this is what I will do this for a living also. I know it is possible (even here in Eastern Europe) because I have lots of examples and I am willing to pay the price to get there, but for this, there is one essential condition: to be VERY GOOD at it. You don't need to be a guitar god but to be VERY GOOD at it. And here is the problem. I discovered this instrument (and all the related stuff) at 22 years old. Now I am 26. It's been almost 3 years now since I have taken practice seriously which means that I invested 90% of my free time to this. I tried to get to a an average of 4 hours a day for practice but, unfortunately these are after about 6-8 hours of programming which is what I do for a living for 6 years now. All this is starting to be really toxic because a have very little time to spend with my family and fiends, read a book, watch a movie and the list can go on and beside this, I kinda feel that most of the time was just wasted because you cannot really assimilate much after working a day in front of a computer. As a result: my skills are still pretty low. (you can check out my REC takes if you like: https://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_fo...p?showuser=8284 or https://www.youtube.com/alexandrugeorgescu) So, my plan is to save some money until around March next year that should last me for about 6 months, quit my job and start practicing 7-8 hours a day after a efficient agenda which I am sure I can find on GMC. Of course, to take some private lessons from a teacher in my town and there are some local bands which I can jam with. (I don't plan to practice alone for the whole time). So this will be the main activity of the day, just as I would have gone to a music school , and this way I will progress a lot better. I know I said 1 year in the beginning but the 6 six months will be a milestone because my fear is that I still don't know if I have real talent at this. All I know I that I like it more than anything else and I want to do this for the rest of my life. I keep blaming it on the lack of time and on tiredness but I don't want to lie to myself and figure out some stuff about me. (I am not in high school anymore, not even college so I it is about time . Anyway, if after 6 month of practicing like this I still feel that I am not too far from the level I am now, then.. maybe this isn't my thing after all, or maybe 22 years old it is just to late to start playing guitar. But if is the other way around then I will do anything I can to get another 4-6 month of practice like this. And maybe after one year I will have the necessary skills to join a let's say.. semi-professional band an develop from there on. And on. And oooooon, it's Heaven and Heeeell \m/ !!!. Ok, got a little carried away here . Anyway, rock and blues are the styles that I want to study. Would like jazz also but I haven't tried it before and I know that one year is not enough for this. I will approach it however. So, please tell me, am I crazy ? is this a good idea ? do you think that one year is enough to get to a decent level ? (please check my REC takes also before answering to this one so you can have an idea of where I am now). I know there are still lots to talk about, planing, etc but his was just the spark so.. please enlighten me -------------------- |
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Sep 27 2011, 01:35 AM |
I've read this thread in its entirety. I'm still unclear on what the end-goal is? Just to be a better player? Do you want to become a studio recording artist? Become a rock-star? I get the gist that you want to be a musician for a living, but that's a pretty huge playing field. You won't make money performing until you can either draw a crowd big enough to make you a commodity at venues or take up teaching/bar tending on the side
You say your area is dry in terms of musicians. Then you need to relocate. No sense in living on Gilligan's island if your only audience are trees and only band-member options are monkeys. Start making connections online. Research music hot spots and go there. You say you can't sing - you're gonna need singer, so find one, which will likely necessitate your moving if hooking up with local music stores and instructors can't lead you to someone who sings. Same goes for the rest of the band. Without stated goals, it's hard to make recommendations on this type of thing. If you don't have any concrete goals for you, then it's difficult to prepare a regimen to meet that goal. If all your asking at this point is what should your practice regimen be, then I'd say grab a pen and paper, write down those basic things you need to do daily, add to that regimen a chunk of time devoted to improvising over different kinds of backing tracks, and time devoted to music composition / decomposition. Composition meaning writing songs, and decomposition meaning studying songs that have been written - what makes them cool, what makes them popular, etc., and of course learn to play them. If I had 8 hours a day, I would be in a music school learning to read and write music. I'm not a huge music theory buff, but I see the importance of being able to read and write music. But my goal is pretty straight forward - become a gigging studio musician. Money and fame are not my goals - I treat it all as a personal goal to see how good I can become at something I love. It's the challenge that pumps my nads So what's your end game? Hi everybody ! Sorry for not posting anything here for so long. It was because I didn't really know what to write. Now I need all the help I can get Let me tell you first what I did so far. I felt that it was most important for me (when I started ) to work on my technique. Was an easy deduction: there was no point hoping to do all that I planned in this thread, until I am not able to do level at least level 4 RECs. It was simple as that. So I picked lessons that contained techniques elements that I wasn't able to do and studied them intensively. I don't know what to say.. I see that I have progressed since I started but I feel that it should have been a lot more. Maybe I was overestimated my self at the beginning.. Please tell me what do you think.. honestly (this question is addressed to the instructors mainly ( which saw may progress in the REC takes Also in the last three months I invested about 2 hours a day in acoustic guitar playing along with vocal training. Was also an easy deduction: there is no point of talking about being a guitarist/musician if you cannot pick up an acoustic guitar and play some Credence, or some Beatles, or something like that . Maybe this was a wrong deduction.. I don't know but this is what I felt and what a lot of musicians told me. Well.. I'm far from liking how my voice sounds (although I can pretty much hear when I am out of tune and I can correct myself) and regarding the acoustic playing, I plan to record some covers that I like and post them in the practice room so you can give me some feedback. (Just acoustic with no vocals for the moment ) What do you think of this ? I am trying to create a repertoire that I can do when, you know, somebody tells you to just pick up the guitar and play something. I am trying to do some Beatles songs, Hendrix, Credence, some romanian bands etc, but since I am alone and cannot do vocals.. it's driving me crazy. To be honest I have became obsessed with this.. Anyway, regarding this, I will start some vocal training with a vocal coach, in the "traditional" way because I just don't have enough energy to do it with online lessons. Please tell me your thoughts on this too Regarding the "band" aspect.. well things where are pretty bad. The guys that I was supposed to sing with where not serious at all and it turned out to be just a waste of time so I dropped it. Actually, trying to form a band here were I live is just a waste of time. First of all there are no drummers in the house (there are a few but not available due to reasons that are not the subject of this post) and beside that there are not enough serious people.. well there are a couple of bands that the are professionals and, you know, I can just watch. What I mean is that there aren't any individuals (of a close age to mine) that are willing to do be involved in something like this so we can grow together and learn from each other. I did some jam sessions with some of the "pro" guys, that there were very helpful but there are something like once a month or so.. Don't know what to say about this.. Now I want to write down what I plan to do for the next period: - continue with the REC takes, there are enough technical aspects that I need to fix. - learn a lot of licks (and also create my own) for my improvisation - start composing some riffs, rhythm, you know, something that I can call my own stuff - start vocal training with a coach - so I can hopefully sing the songs that I like - join some collaborations I think. Regarding the financial aspects things are OK. If nothing goes majorly wrong, I will be able to continue like this for another year starting from now... but don't wanna talk about this, just keeping my fingers crossed So, PLEAASSEE ! give me some advice.. sometimes I am really scared that I don't know what I am doing, or just wasting the time, and I cannot afford to screw all this up ! I hope I was coherent enough because it is late and my stomach hurts from my friends wedding yesterday -------------------- The more I practice, the more I wish I had time to practice!
My Band Forum: http://passionfly.site/chat |
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