Is Your Practicing Even Helping? (A softer approach to creating effective practice habits)

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Eight Metal Strings

Күн бұрын

Пікірлер: 21

@jeremywho2289 7 ай бұрын

I’m only on 6 strings but this was great info for me! Thanks!

@guilherme50997 7 ай бұрын

Great content!

@DomLapointe 7 ай бұрын

You truly are a gift Super good points First win will be when I can focus for 10 minutes straight while practicing 🤦🏻‍♂️

@eightmetalstrings 7 ай бұрын

10 minutes is the perfect place to start! It definitely takes time to build up the focus - like a muscle. Thanks for the kind words Dom!

@guiterslayer6013 7 ай бұрын

I definitely like the approach of this video it such great resource tip on practicing routine

@eightmetalstrings 7 ай бұрын

Thank you! I'm glad my information is useful to you :)

@nxsleepr 5 ай бұрын

"Beginner on guitar here! I've found you to be a great resource as I try to learn the 8-string. It's definitely much harder to find resources or know what to practice. I have my own goals, but I'm curious: if you were in my position, what would you do to speed up your learning, especially if you had a lot of time on your hands? My current practice routine includes some scales, 'Bleed' by Meshuggah to build endurance, and the spider walk exercise. I feel like I'm improving, but I'm trying not to neglect other areas. Thanks!

@eightmetalstrings 5 ай бұрын

Hey! It's an exciting place to be in, early on. Lot's of potential areas to discover. I would definitely be putting as much work into learning triads as I could if I were you. Eventually, they were one of the biggest keys to unlocking the instrument for me and I wish I drilled the triad inversions earlier on. Besides that, have fun! Nothing more important than that in my opinion. Learn as many dope-ass songs as you can get your hands on. A teacher is always a good resource as well to help guide the learning, even if you aren't doing weekly lessons. An occasional check in can do wonders to help you keep on track. Best of luck! I'm excited for your guitar journey.

@nxsleepr 5 ай бұрын

@@eightmetalstrings I was considering setting up lessons with you, but at the moment, I don't have a way to send my guitar audio since I'm using amp sims and headphones. But I've ordered some speakers, so in the future, I'll try to reach out. Thank you for the advice; I'll look into triads now!!!

@eightmetalstrings 5 ай бұрын

@@nxsleepr No rush, get set up and comfy! I look forward to hearing from you in the future, hopefully!

@EulogyfortheAngels 4 ай бұрын

20 year player here: along with your scale practice, research and play a range of chord positions that accompany those particular scales. Early on I heavily underestimated how much chord practice would make your hands far more fluid. Chords teach a different kind of finger independence because the clusters of movements are different. Scales build your mind-to-body relationship for: *positioning your hand over the fretboard parallel for maximum range. **thumb positioning on the back of the neck as an anchor. ***finger movements + range. ****accelerating both hands' coordination. *****control of and consistency in how you hold your pick. Tiny fractions of movement of the pick in your fingers can make you miss notes or be off time as you speed up. Galloping triplets can accidentally become 2 notes instead of 3, and fast alternate picking can get awkward if the pick starts shifting in your grip. A pick that grips your fingers well is so handy, because a vice grip is not good for healthy playing. Please train your pinky - tons of highly technical music require it. Also take any scale you practice and set aside a run where you skip every other string. String skipping can foster creativity because your not locked into predictable scale runs. It also promotes greater finger and hand control overall. Chords will build your mind-to-body relationship for: *thumb position variance. Examples: thumb-assisted chords (mainly for 6 string), and treble and/or bass sides of the fretboard for chord positions. Different chords will force your thumb + hand to be closer or further from the neck + fretboard. **rapid shifts between multiple fingers' positions, like going from a C to a G chord without using bar chords. ***teaching your hands to use specific fingers while not using others or relegating unused fingers to play additional notes. ****teaching your picking hand to strum clusters of notes and jump to where you've added any additional notes. Those combined are partly how bands like Polyphia, Animals as Leaders, Alluvial, etc can rapidly and efficiently swap between arpeggiated runs and chords, or play them simultaneously. Becoming adept at scale and chord positioning will teach your hands to leverage both given any musical context. Hopefully this helps!

@nxsleepr 4 ай бұрын

@@EulogyfortheAngels Wow, thank you so much! I'm definitely neglecting chords, as I have never found any songs that enticed me to really learn them, but I'll definitely try to include them in my practice from now on. As for my pinky training, it has been a lot tougher than my other fingers, but I used to think I had to include my pinky in soloing, so I was learning songs a lot slower than usual. It was really a double-edged sword, but it really helped looking back at it. I'll keep your message posted somewhere close by to remember and look back at it the next time I'm able to practice. Thanks so much for your time!

@NeuroApathy 7 ай бұрын

What exactly does a soft sensibility mean? Do you recommend using a fretwrap or something similar behind the nut while practicing?

@eightmetalstrings 7 ай бұрын

Basically to be kind and patient with yourself. Trying to get past that aggressive improvement culture that teaches the most important thing is to be better without thinking about the ramifications that that stress takes on your body. Self care first :)

@Tury1799 5 ай бұрын

I'll try to make this question make sense, I've come across a few videos and people mentioning "mastering a exercise". What in your opinion do you consider an exercise mastered? Is it playing a certain bpm for so long without errors? I hear things such as 120bpm is the accepted tempo for all note speeds, so whether it’s 8th or 16th notes, 120 bpm is where you want to get to for a exercise to be considered mastered? Is all this "mastery" of an exercise even necessary? Overall I hear things such as perfectly played 5 times, 10 time and even 5 minutes(lol) where the goal is 120bpm. When do I stop working on an exercise and move on? When do I come back to an exercise? Some insight on how I practice: I like to follow a method of starting slow and increasing 2bpm once played correctly 5-10 times, while doing the jump to an increase of 15 bpm and come back down.

@eightmetalstrings 5 ай бұрын

Hey @Tury1799. Great question. I feel like I will have to make a short video to answer this one since it can be thought of from so many different points of view. There is a big "it depends" at the beginning of the answer. It depends on what type of exercise you are working on. Also, your currently level, and your goals. So there is no easy guideline to mastery. For myself, I rarely master something the first time I practice it (meaning the first 3 months). I will do the most I can until I hit a wall, stop working on it for a while, then come back to it for another few weeks. Repeat this until it becomes second nature and emerges in my improvisation without me thinking about it. I understand that is a fairly high standard for mastery though. If all you want to do is be able to play a riff at full speed, my requirements change. For something like the Woven Web thumping riff I just put a video out about, I practiced it until I could pick up the guitar and play it cold (rather than working the bpm up to full tempo over the course of 20 minutes). Hope that helps a little bit and gets you closer to an answer. Not an easy question.

@Tury1799 5 ай бұрын

@@eightmetalstrings Thank you for your response! Third paragraph is a real big help and helps put things into perspective, staring from cold is very good too. I will definitely be taking this approach. Thank you for all the personal time you put into your videos to help us all out, I greatly appreciate it. Keep up the grind!

@DanielBobke 7 ай бұрын

I tried to give you some $$ to buy the practice checklist, but it would not take my card...any issues with your Buy Me a Coffee site? I am in the US if that matters...

@eightmetalstrings 7 ай бұрын

Hmm, perhaps there is as you are the second person to say something in the past while. It's working for me in Canada, making sure I enter a value in the box before hitting "get this," but I'm not sure beyond that. Would be a customer support issue at that point I think. Thanks for letting me know!