Getting feedback from others is awesome - often other people are able to pinpoint problems you might not notice yourself.
However the flip side is that others do not know what your exact goals and ambitions are, so you cannot rely only on others to shape your style and playing.
From my experience I can say that recording my guitar practice and jams are a great way to then check it our and analyse my playing, my strong and weak points and even the creativity of my improvisations. Sometimes this also helps me to start working on new songs since I find good ideas there that I work more later, but the most important thing is that listening to myself without playing at the same time is great to analyze and then improve my playing.
Are you able to analyse yourself objectively?
Self analyzing takes a bit of consciousness on playing in general. I have heard a lot of folks being even a bit irritated because someone told them that they can improve things in a recording. It's all a matter of how realistic you are with yourself and your playing:
- are you IN TUNE?
- do you have good timing?
- do you have groove?
- are your bends in tune?
- is your vibrato expressive and matching the context?
- is your playing clean and controlled in respect to the context?
These are some questions that I would ask myself whenever I need to be honest with my work from a purely technical perspective.
I'm very objective with me. I have high expectations from me and this makes me to analyze my playing in the harshest way. Maybe that's why for me excuses like "I had a bad day" or "I was so tired"....it doesn't exist in my vocabulary. Lately I analyze every single note from my playing. This means a lot of time spent for this.
Also I like when people want from me more and more and more. That's why I love my mentoring thread because Darek know very well how I work, how ambitious I am and he is very harsh. We can work for the same bar 1-2 weeks until everything will sounds great. When a lesson sounds good, we start to working at details. This is the most important thing to get where I wish. The fact that we are in the "No Mercy" program and all the notes must played and sounds perfect it's the best thing that could happen to me ever
When I sent him a take, I write where I see that I made mistakes. This means to judge all my playing very, very, very objective and to see behind. It's about technical mistakes not wrong notes. It's something like: the vibrato for one note was a little aggressive, I not played with a strength picking and the sound it's not how it should be, things about angle of the pick for a certain note and a lot other tiny details. All these are a huge help to became better.
Last week was awesome because I found alone a solution about what should I do to fix something. I realized where was the mistake and I knew which is the step back that I must make to solve the problem. When Darek told me that I made a smart thing and I didn’t tried to break the wall with my head, was a damn happy day for me I knew that I made a step further and this push me to want more from me. I know maybe for other persons this not means too much, but for me was that impulse to believe that someday I will be able to fix all these things alone. Just judging my mistakes and analyzing my playing very careful and very objective
So, as a conclusion I'm objective and very cruel with myself
One that I could add would be: am I using my time in a productive manner?
A lot of folks have BIG question marks in respect to this one - but I say:
If at the end of your practice session you can put your hands on what you did that day:
- a new lick
- a part of a song
- understanding a concept
- raising the accuracy on a certain phrase
...and these are just a few examples.... it means that you spent your time in a good way
How many of you are worrying about not spending your practice time productively enough?
Self-analysis is so important because without it you'll never grow.
Here's an ex. I had very little self awareness when joining gmc and after the first rec. take I had comments like your timing needs work. I didn't understand. I felt that my timing was pretty good except for a few hiccups. I never asked what specifically about timing did I lack. It took probably a year of opening up and asking questions to get to a point where I'm always self analyzing. I know I'm out of time, I know when the sequence doesn't add up and I get a real big cheesy face when my down beats line up as I'm playing. I see my foo tap, the backings snare pops, my note lands right on beat and I know why my timing is on or off.
I've primarily worked on technique and timing here so that's all I can really self analyze at the moment.
I record and analyze myplaying, although I do not always see al the little mistakes I make. I try to be as objective as possible, even though it's hard sometimes to realize that I 'm trying to play something precisely correct, practicing for weeks every day and still to find out that is not exact.. But hey, guitar playing is a lifetime of learning they say..
Nice words Cosmin and Jeroen. The journey is everything when you dedicate your life to an infinite thing... and music is infinite. Le's enjoy the journey!
Well, there was this song called 'Amazing' played by YOU tell me what band that had a verse saying:
'Life's a journey, not a destination and you just can't tell just what tomorrow brings!'
Most definitely Tennaceous D
I'm still mindblown after last night's concert with Alter Bridge tho...I will write a thread when I get home later today
Just downloading the movies The sound ain't that great, but it's something Hope you guys will like them..
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