Put Your Practice Videos Here

paulmcevoy75 · November 15

Since there has been a lot of talk about getting better here, maybe it's interesting to post some videos of real time practice. I do find when I have a camera on and I might share it, I'm a bit more focused. I haven't done it in a while. For a bit of time I was streaming my practice sessions on Twitch. No one was watching but it didn't really matter.

Here I'm working some Book II CVH licks and a few of my own over What Is This Thing Called Love. The triplet licks don't land nicely on the beat and I'm working through that. Mostly they are licks that I know well but I tend to rush them.

Anyway, it's probably against the Geneva convention to make someone watch this but maybe someone finds it interesting. Record some practice and post it here?

For some reason the backing track keeps skipping at one part, didn't help. I am using CVH's very long backing tracks but in Amazing slow downer to get them to a good tempo for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGhYZRZKzvY

Buco · November 15

Jimmy Grant heard you

https://www.youtube.com/live/MYJhPQ_8c70?

Buco · November 15

This is me learning the Django intro to Undecided. Down to 50% tempo, slow and deliberate.

https://youtu.be/AnvObpQdLp4?

This is around the time I decided I'm also going to pay more attention to visualize things. So I close my eyes and do my best to see my fingers move in my head. I'm convinced this is a huge part that separates naturally gifted and prodigies and such, from the rest of us. It's their ability to visualize things. Martin Taylor talks about visualizing. I'm pretty sure others can do that too. And I don't know if that's something they were born with but I know that they become so obsessed with an activity that that's what they think about all the time. And they can clearly visualize the instrument and the fretboard and their mind is their virtual instrument. You hear that about visualizing in sports as well. But much more often, in sports, you hear that it's something people work on and practice. So I figured I can do some of it too.

I was really surprised to find out how with things I'm very familiar with on the guitar, if I closed my eyes and tried to "see" it in my mind and where my fingers are going, I had a lot of black holes. Then I'd pick up the guitar and instantly play the part. But I couldn't visualize it. Try it yourself, see if you can do it. Even with chord charts, pick a tune (but not Minor Blues) and see if you can follow chords in your head. It's not as easy as you might think.

And then I get it up tempo using my Two Minutes Practice strategy.

https://youtu.be/o0GGjnSPEYM?

And here's the results

https://youtu.be/Og9KmM6jmkw?

Not perfect but not bad.

In any case when I learned it at 50%, I was convinced that there's no way in hell I'd be able to approach Django's tempo, around 220 bpm. Like, there's just no reason to even try. I figured I'll play it around 180 bpm, which is totally fine too. After a few days of working on it in these small chunks I noticed that I can play some of those at Django's tempo. So I said well let's try to practice it and see what happens. And it kinda happened.

Which is my whole premise of this strategy, if you can play 2-3 notes at tempo, then eventually you can play the whole thing. But sometimes have to convince myself into doing it.

paulmcevoy75 · November 16

https://www.djangobooks.com/forum/discussion/comment/123646#Comment_123646

Sounds great man. Tempo is nice and fast.

You might find this interesting. Sort of the opposite take to a degree. I think both are important but I'm trying to build my speed.

https://youtu.be/craA3CLqvkM?si=S_qJO2_bQyAbaJG6

Buco · November 16

Yeah I watched it when it came out. There's my comment buried in there somewhere that I remember when he had Andy Wood and Andy was really surprised to see his picking technique changing depending on whether he's playing (the same thing) fast or slow.

I agree with Troy in general. Only thing is there are many pieces of the puzzle that need to be already in place for this to happen. Which may not be there depending on the experience. At that point this approach will only bring frustration.

My approach does the same thing. To build for speed. This is what the second video shows. It's only the first two minutes where I practice slow. The rest is at 230 bpm. Practicing at tempo but in short phrases, a few notes at the time.

So it's not that different from Troy. Except when I'm learning something new I start slow. I believe we need to start slow so the lines are solidified in our head. And now I've added the element of visualisation as well. Then I just jump to full throttle, no increments in between. It's not a hard-fast rule but generally that's how things work for me.

I don't think practicing at tempo is an issue in general. But I think you do need to have a clear vision of what you're practicing for. I think there has to be quality input going in, in order to get the good quality outcome. If I'm shedding something at full throttle and I'm not hearing quality input, that means either of two things: I'm playing too fast or I'm playing too many notes. If I'm not feeling the whole thing, I slow down. If I'm noticing it's the specific point that need to be fixed, I isolate those. For example at 2:00 of the second video. At one point that phrase was even shorter. Because I wasn't arpeggiating cleanly the very end of the phrase.

That what it means when I said all anyone has to do is to fix what doesn't work. You completely isolate the trouble spot. You don't play anything else, nothing more or less. You just fix that one spot. Whatever it is; arpeggio, triplets, melody, tricky chord, improv phrase...

Fix what doesn't work.

paulmcevoy75 · November 17

I just watched the whole of the Troy Grady video...it's good. It always makes me laugh though. With Troy, I want to ask him "hey man, do you know any songs?" If he's in a band, does he just play really fast licks but there aren't songs?

I think the Paul Gilbert "sixes" lick has GJ potential.

I was thinking of what you were talking about with visualization. It isn't exactly the same thing, but I'm realizing a lot of times when there is slop in my playing, it's because I really don't know where my fingers go. Mostly left hand stuff. It's like my subconscious can do a fairly crappy job of playing the notes,particularly at a slow tempo, but when it speeds up,I really need to be very clear where each finger goes and how it sits on the neck (things like is it on the pad of my finger or the tip, the angle of my hand, etc) And then practice that at increasing speed till that replaces the old slop.

Not exactly visualization although that might help, but not letting something slide and "just let my fingers do it".

And maybe that's different, left hand vs right. It's maybe easier to burn through with the right hand in the way TG talks about, but I think with the left hand, it might take more care and time. Not sure.

voutoreenie · November 17

Paul, when practicing do you sing your solos and single note lines? Regardless of tempo, imo that can be key into connecting ideas together while adding a bit more "soul" to all the predetermined phrases and licks we're using in any given tune. I probably sound like a broken record because I've brought this up a bunch of times in other threads but I really do think it's crucial both for improvisation and as an ear training skill builder.

Should add when I say "sing" I'm not meaning like full on Bensoning, it's usually internal for most players (although I'm one of those weirdos that lets out some noises if I'm really feeling it lol). Hell, I usually play worse at gigs when I'm not remembering to sing my solos, which is usually because there's something distracting about the gig when it starts that causes me to lose some degree of focus.

paulmcevoy75 · November 17

https://www.djangobooks.com/forum/discussion/comment/123660#Comment_123660

I don't generally.

Right now I'm trying to get my rhythm to be solid and swinging in a strict sense. It is a huge weak point for me. My practice is sometimes not hugely musical because I'm really just trying to build a grid of swinging eighth notes. And I'm noticing here how uneven and rushed my triplets are.

For me singing right now seems like it would add another thing to keep track of.

The weird/interesting thing to me is that if I sing the lick without the guitar, my singing is perfectly in time and relatively swinging. I think somewhere along the way I let the mechanics of the guitar control my rhythm and that's what I'm trying to correct.

I need to post an update to this because it sounds like shit ;)

paulmcevoy75 · November 17

I should say though, I am open to me sounding like shit when I practice. I listened to the Jimmy Grant thing above and he sounds consistently good throughout it and he's playing whole pieces...I wasn't sure what he's practicing. In the thing I posted, I'm trying to play these phrases I don't have down in perfect time and failing but it's the motion I'm trying to get...to initiate the phrases in a random order in time. If I play each phrase over a few times the time is much better but the challenge to me is to be able to anticipate the phrase right before I decide to play it and then play it in good time.

I guess point being, it sounds like total shit here but I think that's part of the process.

voutoreenie · November 17

Right now I'm trying to get my rhythm to be solid and swinging in a strict sense. It is a huge weak point for me. My practice is sometimes not hugely musical because I'm really just trying to build a grid of swinging eighth notes. And I'm noticing here how uneven and rushed my triplets are.

Nah that makes perfect sense and I totally get wanting to grind out consistency, especially rhythmic.

Somewhat of a tangent, but I feel like the physical aspect of learning this style sometimes gets underplayed as well...since I'm far from athletic, it really dawned upon me when first switching to rest stroke that right hand/forearm stamina and building it up was going to be an issue as well, which directly impacts proper technique. I say "stamina" because while I don't think you need a set of pipes per se to play GJ/rest stroke, you certainly need to practice enough that your endurance/stamina can hold up to playing 2-4 sets at a gig. Likewise, also a good reason to stop practicing when the consistency starts falling off because that's when compensating and bad habits start to set in, at least for me (which is another thing I've had to mentally reinforce to myself because although getting sore while playing guitar can be a thing, feeling actual pain means you're doing it wrong...and that was me sometimes at first with rest stroke).