How To Track Your Improvements..., ... and get some new motivation. Options

[Keilnoth]

Today I wondered how I could track my improvements. People often get bored because they cannot "see" their improvements and here I am trying to propose some solutions :

- Check your metronome speed with a not so easy exercise. The idea here is to choose one exercise and to increase the metronome speed while learning it. I am personally trying to select a not so easy exercise and not only 1 2 3 4, 4 3 2 1. That way I am sure I am improving my picking accuracy and not only my speed. As it is useless to practice the same exercise during 10 hours a day, I am playing it every few days for a few minutes and re-check the speed every few weeks or months.

Checking only every weeks or months is a much better idea than checking everyday. Because by seeing no improvements on an everyday basis, you will quickly loose your motivation. They use the same rule for diet programs. If you weight yourself everyday, you won't see any change but if you weight yourself every week then you will have lost some weight.

- Replay old compositions and hear the improvements. That's probably what I am going to do as I am not a shredder. So what I am trying to do is to tab (very important, otherwise you will forget how to play them) all my compositions for the collaborations and try to record them again every few weeks so I will directly hear my improvements. Perhaps I will have learnt some recording tricks as well and discovered some new good tones and that's part of the progression.

That's pretty much all for now. Do you guys have some other ideas ?

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[lcsdds]

Today I wondered how I could track my improvements. People often get bored because they cannot "see" their improvements and here I am trying to propose some solutions :

- Check your metronome speed with a not so easy exercise. The idea here is to choose one exercise and to increase the metronome speed while learning it. I am personally trying to select a not so easy exercise and not only 1 2 3 4, 4 3 2 1. That way I am sure I am improving my picking accuracy and not only my speed. As it is useless to practice the same exercise during 10 hours a day, I am playing it every few days for a few minutes and re-check the speed every few weeks or months.

Checking only every weeks or months is a much better idea than checking everyday. Because by seeing no improvements on an everyday basis, you will quickly loose your motivation. They use the same rule for diet programs. If you weight yourself everyday, you won't see any change but if you weight yourself every week then you will have lost some weight.

- Replay old compositions and hear the improvements. That's probably what I am going to do as I am not a shredder. So what I am trying to do is to tab (very important, otherwise you will forget how to play them) all my compositions for the collaborations and try to record them again every few weeks so I will directly hear my improvements. Perhaps I will have learnt some recording tricks as well and discovered some new good tones and that's part of the progression.

That's pretty much all for now. Do you guys have some other ideas ?

My routine consists of 3 components......cover tunes, technique practice and composing. I actually made a spread sheet where I listed all the excercises I play for my technique workout and I put an Actual tempo that I can play them at and a goal tempo. That way I can check it weekly for improvement. When I reach the goal tempo I find another lick I want to play up to speed. GMC is full of licks I can't play up to speed......

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[Marcus Siepen]

Record yourself. As often as possible. And listen to yourself then Recording can brutally show you your flaws, but they can also clearly show improvements, so record some takes today, and record them again after practicing them for a while you will surely hear a difference.

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[audiopaal]

Record yourself. As often as possible. And listen to yourself then Recording can brutally show you your flaws, but they can also clearly show improvements, so record some takes today, and record them again after practicing them for a while you will surely hear a difference.

I agree

I record myself playing all the time, after metronome.
Usually to record riffs/ideas I've made, and songs as well..
When I go back and listen to recordings done a year ago, I can hear a crazy difference
And recordings as you say. tells the truth.
You can hear mistakes right away

So it really helps, and this keeps me motivated as well because I know I'm getting better!

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[Pedja Simovic]

Recording is essential part of improvement. You also have to be realistic and be very self critical. This in my opinion is very important in order to improve.

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[Ivan Milenkovic]

Yep, recording may be a pretty good way to track your progress, since you can listen to it later and see just how much you advanced. Video recording, or audio recording, doesn't matter, just record. I once pulled out old tapes that I recorded when I was starting to play, and man it sounded horrible. I couldn't believe how much progress there was made, we usually tend not to see this progress.

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[Marcus Siepen]

Recording is essential part of improvement. You also have to be realistic and be very self critical. This in my opinion is very important in order to improve.

Yup, thats very important too, to be honest with yourself, it doesn't make any sense to "lie" to yourself, face your flaws, only like that you can work on them.

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