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GMC Forum _ PRACTICE ROOM _ My Practice Log
Posted by: Iluha Dec 22 2007, 12:44 PM
Hey guys, Iv'e been playing guitar for allmost 5 years now, and I never once practiced with a schedual, only randomley when I felt like it, so I thought to myself: "Ok, so I don't like to sit alot of time and practice, but I also don't want to randomely improve because more than likely it will give me at best minor results, so what should I do?"
So I figured I should write down a schedual of pracitce, which won't be too long but will still contain all the technique/theory I want to improve, and I will try and follow it on a daily basis, atleast 5 days a week, and as an added motivation I decided I will write a log about it, in hope that it will inspire some people who are in the same situation, and don't have much time to practice or don't want to sit too long and practice.
So after using this week to examine many lessons on the site, I built a practice routine:
Short Overview:
warm ups/strech - 5 minutes
technique
---------
Alt picking - 10 minutes
------------------------
alt picking 1 - 2 minutes
alt picking 4 - 2 minutes
Thirds - 2 minutes
alt picking chops - 2 minutes
muris alt picking - 2 minutes
Sweep picking - 5 minutes(muris sweep)
tapping - 5 minutes(licks without picks)
theory
------
major scale - 5 minutes
key transfer - 5 minutes
improv - 10 minutes
Lessons
-------
Asturias - 10 minutes
B Major - 10 minutes
Vibrato 1 - 10 minutes
legato riffing - 5 minutes
TOTAL TIME
----------
1 hour 20 minutes
I wanted to give a in depth explantion on what exactly I'm practicing, but it will make this post TOO long!
So I will post the in depth explanation on my first update next saturday, but if anyone wants to use this alongside me, feel free to PM me for full details!
Good luck to me and anyone else wishing to follow this "method"! 
Posted by: Milenkovic Ivan Dec 22 2007, 01:50 PM
That's a good method if you can manage to work on one exercise 2 minutes. That's kind of short for me, maybe 5-10 minutes is more appropriate for AP.
Posted by: muntahunta Dec 22 2007, 03:02 PM
i was thinking of doing something similar, but i ended up practicing for the time i was going to write a log.... which is good 
Posted by: Kapto Dec 22 2007, 03:57 PM
I don't know about you guys but when I practice hours go by so fast and I have the feeling I've done nothing. I do practice alt picking, Muris sweep, Gabriel's rock lessons, scales, etc.. but there's sooo much to learn..........so far I'm not very happy with the results but time will tell...
Posted by: chast Dec 22 2007, 04:28 PM
Hey Iluha
I hope you will have some success and you know that I am going to read your blog 
Posted by: mattacuk Dec 22 2007, 08:48 PM
I agree !! No wonder I get eye strain after 2 hours alternate picking a day !!
Posted by: Iluha Dec 22 2007, 09:07 PM
Well the list is only a minimum list I guess, the times I wrote are the minimum I'll be working on each exercise, I might practice some exercise more, just as long as it wont get me bored
Posted by: Iluha Dec 29 2007, 07:49 PM
First Week
So, it's time for a first update, and I have to tell you, it didn't go too well for me this first week 
The main problem I had this week is that I got home everyday preety late, around 8pm and a couple of days at 9pm, everyday except for thursday in which my commander(I'm serving in the army right now) gave me a day off, so basicly I was only able to actually sit and practice on sunday and during the weekend which just barely makes my minimum of 4 days a week practice.
Another problem I had is that like Ivan noted, 2 minutes per drill did proove to be too short, and on top of that the wide variety of drills for alternate picking felt too tedious and unnecessery to me, so I changed it, so now it contains 3 drills instead of 5.
Also I found that I rather focus more on alteranate picking as I am really lacking in that field, while I don't use tapping so much so I decided that atleast for now the only tapping I will practice are the taps in Muris's Bmajor lesson.
So with these alternations in mind, my schedual now looks like this:
warm ups/strech - 5 minutes
technique
---------
Alt picking - 15 minutes
------------------------
Pavel's alternate picking 1 - 5 minutes
Pavel's alternate picking 4 - 5 minutes
Muris's alt picking - 5 minutes
Sweep picking - 5 minutes(Muris's sweep picking)
theory
------
C major scale - 5 minutes
Key transfer(A drill by my guitar teacher) - 5 minutes
Improvisation(this week I used the collab's as improv practice) - 10 minutes
Lessons
-------
Vinod's Asturias - 10 minutes
Muris's B Major - 10 minutes
Lavendell's Vibrato 1 - 10 minutes
Pavel's Legato riffing - 5 minutes
TOTAL TIME
----------
1 hour 20 minutes
As for progress wise, since I had little time to practice, I made little to no practice, I'm still playing all the alternate picking exercises at 40 bpm to strict alternate pick and get rid of my habit to allways use economy picking.
I play the sweeping lesson at 90 bpm, I can play it faster just not perfectly clean yet.
I got a good grasp now of the C major scale on the low E and A strings, so this week I'm adding the D string and hopefully the G string.
I think I'm getting better at improvising, check out my take in Ivan's blues collab, that's a pure one take improvisation.
On Astuarias I only practiced it for one day because I had to change the strings on my classic guitar and playing it on my electric is just too painfull, so I'm practicing the first 3 bars at 60 bpm.
On B major I made some progress, I can play everything at the speed of the lesson(70 bpm) but not perfectly cleanly on some parts, so I'm practicing the tapping in the 5th and 6th bar at 60 bpm, the sweep at 56 bpm, and the 9th bar at 40 bpm because it's alternate picking and I don't want to economy pick it
On Vibrato 1 lesson, I made no progress at all, because I havn't practiced it at all my fingers were too soar for it! hopefully I'll start practicing it this week
And finally on Pavel's Legato riffing lesson I can play the last part(13 bar-end) quite nicely but still not completly clean so I'm just practicing it in lesson speed(100 bpm) the other parts of the lesson I'm practicing at 60 bpm.
As I said, I hope that this week I'll have more time to practice, and hopefully I'll make some progress so that next week I can record and actually show how I'm doing so far
Posted by: PlayAllDay Dec 29 2007, 11:33 PM
Good on you Iluha, I'm enjoying your 1st prgress report and look forward to reading more. You have a great approach.
Posted by: rokchik Dec 30 2007, 05:02 PM
Great approach Iluha!
I've been keeping a journal for a few months now and I find it helps me a lot....especially when tracking progress. As you have also noticed it helps you see what aspects of your playing you need to spend more time on and also how to restructure your practice routine accordingly. I enjoyed your first update and look forward to seeing how you progress.
rok
Posted by: Iluha Dec 30 2007, 05:06 PM
I've been keeping a journal for a few months now and I find it helps me a lot....especially when tracking progress. As you have also noticed it helps you see what aspects of your playing you need to spend more time on and also how to restructure your practice routine accordingly. I enjoyed your first update and look forward to seeing how you progress.
rok
Exactly, it also helps my motivation to actually practice, seeing how I progress!
Thanks, I'll try my best to update every week
Posted by: Iluha Jan 5 2008, 06:07 PM
Second Week
So this week was better, though far from perfect, but much better and I made quite some progress.
The biggest progress I made is in the Alternate Picking department, I got rid of the habit to automaticly economy pick! and once I got rid of it my practice bpm jumped from 40 to 90! I can also play it at about 110, but still not perfectly clean so I'll stick to 90 and work my way up.
So what kept my week from being perfect? Time, once again, I barely made the minimum of 4 days a week, Mostly because of New Year's Eve, I got home quite late at about 7 pm, was only 30 minutes home before me and my friends drove to a house we rented for the night, and you can only imagine the hangover I had on tuesday 
and on sunday it was kinda the same story, I got home only at about 6:30 pm, and than at 7 I drove to a concert(it was an hour drive). so basicly I practiced on Wendsday-Saturday, and even THAT wasn't perfect!! so there was again some sacrifice this week
The sacrifice this week came in the theory departmant, I havn't practiced the Major scale at all, nor did I practice the key transfer(F Dorian - G# Dorian) at all.
In the sweeping I moved up to 100 bpm, and I think I might stay at this speed for a while to get my muting right.. Maybe a 4 bpm increase till next week if all goes well.
Oh and finally, I decided to drop learning Pavel's Legato Riffing lesson for now, after seeing I REALLY am lacking in the rythm department, so I decided to go with something a bit easier for now, though I only made this decision today so I still havn't practiced it at all, the lesson I put instead is Gabriel's Muse Style Lesson.
As for the lessons, I hardly practiced them so I didn't really make progress only progress in how clean I play in my current bpm. only significant progress I made is in Muris's Bmajor lesson, I can play those taps at full speed now, only got the final alterante picking to work on.
The Major dissapointment I had this week is that I was planning to record alot of things, and in the end the only thing I recorded was my part for the Rock/Metal Collab, which didn't come out too well, I think I just got tired from this week as it was really packed with activity for me.. Hopefully I'll get all those recording done by the end of this week!
Posted by: PlayAllDay Jan 5 2008, 11:53 PM
Youre still getting a lot done Iluha even though you are having the practise time frustrations.
It's great that you are mastering the Alt Picking - Gabe's Muse lesson will support that nicely too, Rokchik put me onto that lesson and I just love it.
Keeping this log is great and I love seeing how youre doing when you check in. Thanks mate!
Posted by: shellshock1911 Jan 6 2008, 04:35 AM
I used to have a strict practice schedule and for me, doing the same thing day after day after day for the same times and everything made me lose motivation pretty quick so I found that like an organized but still kind of random schedule works good for me. If you can do the strict one, more power to you.
Posted by: Iluha Jan 6 2008, 04:28 PM
Ah but this is where my plan is unique, I only follow it as long as it doesn't get boring, when it gets monotone and boring, I change things up making it intresting again
Thanks PlayAllDay! I'll continue updating every saturday
Posted by: PlayAllDay Jan 7 2008, 02:40 AM
Excellent
Posted by: rokchik Jan 7 2008, 04:59 PM
Gabriels Muse lesson is a great one Iluha. It will definatley help with the AP for sure. Can't wait to see how you've done this week.
Posted by: Iluha Jan 12 2008, 05:57 PM
Third Week, Getting close to a month!
Will I ever get a smooth practicing week?? actually when this week started I was positive this week I'll have smooth sailing, on sunday and monday I got home VERY early and could practice according to plan, but on other days, well that's a diffrent story
So basicly this week I only practiced during sunday and monday, I wanted to practice over the weekend but than I wrote this ballad and I just spent the entire weekend working on it, you can hear a part of it in the Uploads forum.
Despite all that, surprisingley I made some progress, I made my goal of being able to play the alternate picking exercises on 94 bpm, I can play the sweeps much more cleanly now on 100 bpm, and I think that by next week I should reach atleast 106 bpm.
In the theory department, I stopped practicing the key change exercise for the time being, I'm quite aquainted in it and decided it's best to put that time in the scale learning.
And speaking of which, I changed how I learn the C major scale completly, atleast for the time being, I now learn it by my much hated "box" systed, but with a small twist, for example instead of looking at the second mudlation as a C major, I'm looking at it as D dorian, etc. I will expand on this subject next week if anyone is intrested.
As for lessons, I decided I need to make a small change to make my schedual a tad shorter, I simply wrote to myself that for now the Asturias lesson, and Lavendell's Vibrato 1 lesson are optional to practice, I didn't make any progress in those two
As for the other two(Muris's Bmajor and Gabe's Muse Style Lesson, which by the way is harder than it looks), I'm quite close to learning them both completly and I hope that next week I'll record them to show you what I achieved!
Posted by: sam47 Jan 13 2008, 01:12 AM
This is a great idea! I'm not going to start out as indepth as you are just keep track of what ,when and how much I'm doing. It's a 100 page notebook so I'll start out seeing what I do in 100 days. If it works out (which I can't see whay it wouldn't!), I'll get another notebook. Thanks Iluha for the inspriation and motivation.
Posted by: PlayAllDay Jan 13 2008, 09:19 AM
Fantastic news about your progress Iluha - can't wait to hear your uploads!
Posted by: Iluha Jan 13 2008, 04:23 PM
Excelent idea man
I hope it will prove usefull, and thanks I allways aspire to inspire!and thanks PlayAllDay I hope I will be able to suply those recordings
Posted by: Iluha Jan 20 2008, 09:09 PM
First Month Summarize!
Wow it's allready been a whole month, how time flies, and what a perfect timing it was to have the last week of the month so great for practicing, I could practice everyday atleast the amout of time I wanted to!
And my progress? showed just as well, so I thought I'll show my development over the first month:
1)Biggest development I achieved is in the alternate picking department, reaching from 40 bpm to 120 bpm on Pavel's Alternate Picking Lesson 1(Jumping from 110 to 120 in the last week), from 40 bpm to 70 bpm in Pavel's Alternate Picking Lesson 4(only the beginning of it, jumping from 60 to 70 over the last week), and from 40 bpm to 60 in Muris's Alternate Picking Lesson(only a small portion of the lesson, and though it's a small jump in bpm it contains quite tricky alternate picking patters)
2)Another good development comes in the sweep picking, jumping from 90 bpm to 106 bpm(jumping from 100 to 106 in the last week)
3)I am able to play Gabe's muse lesson at full speed, but I'm not satisfied with how it sounds recorded yet, so I will first record using the first backing track(I think it was 95 bpm) and hopefully in a week or two I will record with the full speed 112 bpm backing track
and last but not least 4)I am getting closer and closer to mastering Muris's Bmajor Intermidiate lesson, only left is to work on those last picking runs.
That as long as gaining more and more experience in recording, losing my "stage fright", I feel that I made quite some progress and can only hope to continue progressing at this rate in the future!
I would like to say thanks to anyone who continues to read this, and I hope some of you are inspired by this because this is my main goal with keeping this log public.
Anyways thanks guys and gals and I will see you on the next update next week(with the first recording(s)?)
Posted by: Paul Coutts Jan 21 2008, 06:40 AM
wow, some serious development there.
I've been renewing and revising my practice schedule for ages now, and I've just settled on one.
But this really gives me confidence in the fact that repetitive consistency is the order of the day for development!
Cheers
Posted by: PlayAllDay Jan 21 2008, 08:02 AM
Great to see you got a good week Iluha - can't wait to hear the recordings. Your speeds have improved remarkably fast!
Posted by: Iluha Jan 21 2008, 05:35 PM
Once I got rid of the habbit to automaticly economy pick, my speed jumped
Posted by: Iluha Jan 27 2008, 08:46 PM
5th week, shortest update ever
Well this last week was really bad timewise, I got home late everyday and so I allmost and didn't practice, only things I practiced here and there were alternate picking and Gabe's Muse Stlyle Lesson.
In the alternate picking I noticed that when playing at 120 bpm I was sometimes inconsistent and playd off beat, so I dropped the bpm to 114 and started alternating between 114 and 120, and I can say that it helped tons as I'm getting close to playin in a consistant rate at 120 bpm.
And on Gabe's lesson, well here's a recording! my first upload in the log! I made some mistakes, I started offbeat, made a small mistake at the beginning of the 3rd section(00:19) and had trouble with the D chord(man it's hard to pull my pinky while down the D chord!), and plus my sound is bad I'm not sure where that fuzz is coming from, is it from my guitar? or maybe my BOSS Micro Br? or maybe it's just the effect's settings?
There is a benefit to that I had such a long week, and that is that I accomplished alot of work and this week should be preety much work free! so if all goes well and no sudden things pop up I should have more than plenty of time to practice this week!
Posted by: Gabriel Leopardi Jan 27 2008, 11:55 PM
Well this last week was really bad timewise, I got home late everyday and so I allmost and didn't practice, only things I practiced here and there were alternate picking and Gabe's Muse Stlyle Lesson.
In the alternate picking I noticed that when playing at 120 bpm I was sometimes inconsistent and playd off beat, so I dropped the bpm to 114 and started alternating between 114 and 120, and I can say that it helped tons as I'm getting close to playin in a consistant rate at 120 bpm.
And on Gabe's lesson, well here's a recording! my first upload in the log! I made some mistakes, I started offbeat, made a small mistake at the beginning of the 3rd section(00:19) and had trouble with the D chord(man it's hard to pull my pinky while down the D chord!), and plus my sound is bad
I'm not sure where that fuzz is coming from, is it from my guitar? or maybe my BOSS Micro Br? or maybe it's just the effect's settings?There is a benefit to that I had such a long week, and that is that I accomplished alot of work and this week should be preety much work free! so if all goes well and no sudden things pop up I should have more than plenty of time to practice this week!
Hey Man!! You really learnt this lesson!! It sounds very good played!! Great Job! About the recording.. have you recorded it by line? You should use a mic to record your guitar... it would sound better.
Keep on rocking!
Posted by: rokchik Jan 28 2008, 02:00 PM
Great work Iluha!!!
You've made some great progress and you've pretty much nailed the Muse lesson....said before but I'll say again one of my fave lessons here at GMC . I know time can be an issue but you seem to be making the most of what time you have, keep up the great work man. Looking forward to the next update.
rok
Posted by: Iluha Jan 28 2008, 03:56 PM
Keep on rocking!
Thanks Gabe! yeah I recorded by line, because my amp is well, crap
but I know you can record in high quality using line in, just listen to Marcus's and Muris's recordings, could it be a problem with my guitar? maybe the pickups needs to be setup?
Posted by: Iluha Jan 28 2008, 03:57 PM
You've made some great progress and you've pretty much nailed the Muse lesson....said before but I'll say again one of my fave lessons here at GMC
. I know time can be an issue but you seem to be making the most of what time you have, keep up the great work man. Looking forward to the next update.rok
Thanks Susan!
yeah I'm trying to make most of every second I can spare, so far it's working out great, I hope it will continue like this!
Posted by: Iluha Feb 3 2008, 09:13 PM
Another Week Goes by
Like I said in my previous update, since Iv'e done so much work, this week I was home quite early everyday! managing to get alot of practice time! but the progress... well, it's actualy preety good but on one area it isn't at all, here's what I think happens.
If you watch the show "The Biggest Loser" You'll know that some weeks they lose insane amouts of weights while on other weeks they lose close to zero, and that's despite working in a consistant rate, so I think the same thing is happening to me right now alternate picking wise.
I'm still stuck at the same bpm's in my alternate picking exercises, most noteable is Pavel's Alternate Picking 1 lesson in which I stepped back from 120 bpm and worked on 100 bpm trying to get more consistant and even in my picking, my stability has improved but only a bit and I worked ALOT on it.. on Alternate Picking 4 I'm still on 70 bpm working on getting my pinky more independant as right now it drags along my ring finger. However in Muris's Alternate Picking Lesson I did have quite some progress, finally losing the habit to economy pick the pattern I'm practicing, jumping in bpm from 60 to 80 bpm.
And on the other areas, my sweeping as defintly improve and I can sense alot of progress, muting strings without even thinking about it and improvement in hand coordination allowed me to move from 106 bpm to 115 bpm, and last but not least is Muris's B Major Intermidiate lessons in which I'm REALLY getting close to mastering, just need a bit more work on the small tapping lick in bar 3 and that final picking run, I just need to memorize it and it will be that much easier!
You might have noticed I havn't said anything about theory study in the past few updates, well it's because I just don't know what to say... I'm continuing my current method of learning all the major scale positions on the neck and I'm still using the collaborations and just jamming with my friends as improvisation practice, so if you wanna check out how better I'm becoming just check out my entries in the collabs
Yup, that preety much covers the last week, from the next week I plan on making this log a bit more intrensting by uploading a weekly recording of a lesson or a solo which I can learn rather quickly, just for fun and possibly a video explaining my approach on learning it, I hope you will find it intresting and fun!
Posted by: Iluha Feb 9 2008, 10:43 PM
Some Progress Finally!
Well another week went by, and timewise it was great I had alot of time, and I used it very wisely!
So I'm gonna keep it short and just list my progress:
Pavel's Alternate Picking 1 - I moved past my 120 bpm barrier and now I'm playing it on 126 bpm.
Pavel's Alternate Picking 4 - I had alot of trouble with this one as my I saw that my pinky just wasn't independant enough, so I slowed it down to 60 bpm and practiced it that way the entire week, and now I can play it alot easier on 74 bpm, so I will stick to 74 still for the time being.
Muris's Alternate Picking - Jumped to 90 bpm!
Muris's Sweep Picking - A small progress but still progress, I moved from 115 bpm to 120 bpm.
Muris's B Major Intermidate Solo - I'm so close to finishing it, I completely learned the tricky tapping I had trouble with before, and now all that's left is to fine tune the picking at the end.
As I mentioned last week, I'm gonna start making a weekly recording of a lesson/solo I could learn rather quickly to try and get rid of my stage fright bug, so for the first week I honoured our new instructor Carlos and I recorded he's first lesson and you can find my recording here: http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_forum/index.php?showtopic=11740.
Posted by: inertia Feb 10 2008, 04:02 AM
That recording sounds great, I thought that was a very good first lesson from Carlos.
Posted by: Iluha Feb 10 2008, 05:38 PM
Thanks! yeah I agree, it's a very nice clean solo!
Posted by: Iluha Feb 21 2008, 06:26 PM
Well I'm back, I havn't updated the log last week due to some problems with my internet.. it worked VERY slow and didn't let me post anything on the boards :x
So on saturday I'll probably post a double, and hopefully more intresting update, plus two recording because I couldn't my recording from last week either.
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