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Finding New Love For Playing My Guitar

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(@shredd-ed)
Active Member
Joined: 15 years ago
Posts: 8
Topic starter  

Hi,

After a year or so of locking my precious guitar away and letting the 9to5 job and mundane chores of life get on top of me, a few months ago I dusted the old girl off (guitar, not the wife...) and started playing again.

Having been stuck in a rut and losing all interest I'm amazing at how much time I am spending playing again. It's like the good old days. Maybe the last year has been lost or maybe it gave me the break needed to come back firing on all cylinders.

As you may notice, I'm a noobie on this forum. Having found you guys just the other day, I realised this is what I've really missed and where the motivation to play had disappeared to. Jamming with friends in the garage and just yadda yaddaring on about all things guitar.

Anyway, back to the point. Although, for me, playing guitar is all about having a bit of fun and enjoying the learning, one thing I really need to keep myself motivated is a little structure to my practice sessions. At the moment I just pick up the guitar and start strumming whatever comes to mind without any warm up or idea of what I want to achieve for the day.

So......finally getting to the point. Do you follow any structured practice routine and, if so, what do you recommend? Warming up with scales? Practising a song? Focusing on a specific technique?

Would love to hear your ideas. :wink:

Ed

Every time I pick up my guitar, 4 hours of my life just disappears.

It's like being abducted by aliens, but in a good way... :o)


   
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(@scrybe)
Famed Member
Joined: 16 years ago
Posts: 2241
 

Hey Ed, welcome to the GN forums! I gotta say I really like your signature. :D

When I get the peace to practice properly, I tend to work on a few electric guitar pieces, a few acoustic guitar pieces, some scales and arpeggios, some improvising and some composition. I also do some sight reading and theory work. But I rarely do all of these daily. The past week i've been lucky if I get through one of these per day! But I do as much as I can, and keep changing things up as I find I learn better if I tackle something new in a lot of small chunkcs with breaks where I do other stuff, than if I spend hours working on one song.

There are a few GN articles on developing your own practice routine you might want to check out via the mainpage. I'd link, but I'm typing by phone and linking is a major hassle that way.

Hope to see you around the forums, and if you have any more questions I'm sure there'll be someone on here with a suitable answer (that's been my experience anyway).

Ra Er Ga.

Ninjazz have SuperChops.

http://www.blipfoto.com/Scrybe


   
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 Cat
(@cat)
Noble Member
Joined: 16 years ago
Posts: 1224
 

Gidday from Oz, Ed...

Staying interested...as opposed to just "practicing"...is tough on the brain. Boredom's responsible for all sorts of life's travails. I trek/run/stumble across my rainforest property every day. My footfalls pick up a cadence and I begin to cough out some sort of riff. yep. Sounds rather silly...but I MAKE IT A POINT to visualize all that over again once I pick up a guitar.

Whatever floats yer boat, I guess!

Cat

"Feel what you play...play what you feel!"


   
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(@vic-lewis-vl)
Illustrious Member
Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 10264
 

Well first of all, welcome to GN, Ed!

Hmm - structured practise sessions - I think there are a couple of articles, written by well-respected forum members/musicians (Tom Hess, for example) on how to structure your practise time. Go to the home page, and search the lessons from there. You should be able to find a few links from there.

Me? I practise songs I know that I want to be able to play at an open mic - and I practise my own songs. I've got over a hundred of them that I want to record, so I have to keep playing a few of them every week just to keep them in my memory!

I really don't have time to practise scales and such - all my practise time is devoted to keeping up to the standard I'm up to now, and finding new songs to pique my interest, and running through the ones I've already got that need improving. Unfortunately, nearly all of them need a lot of work!

:D :D :D

Vic

"Sometimes the beauty of music can help us all find strength to deal with all the curves life can throw us." (D. Hodge.)


   
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(@dogbite)
Illustrious Member
Joined: 19 years ago
Posts: 6348
 

same as Vic here. I work on songs. each song has things in it that gives me many 'aha!' moments.
I'm trying to remember when I was first starting out. since I started guitar to play the songs on my 45's
I think I always learned guitar by playing songs.
now, when I pick up a guitar my hand goes to the neck and forms a chord or something. like it has a mind of it's own.
I'll hear the notes and typically hear a song because of the tone, the notes,something . I will work on it using techniques, like bends, hammer ons, pull offs, etc. lots of times I find my self realizing 'that's how they did it'.
I do play scales , major, minor, modal because yer supposed to. I guess it helped, because I play in several open tunings.
each one helps me understand the standard fret board. oops. I stray.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=644552
http://www.soundclick.com/couleerockinvaders


   
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(@chris-c)
Famed Member
Joined: 19 years ago
Posts: 3454
 

Hi and welcome Ed,
, I realised this is what I've really missed and where the motivation to play had disappeared to. Jamming with friends in the garage and just yadda yaddaring on about all things guitar.

For my money, you nailed it right there. In my experience, the reason why so many people drift away from playing is that they've got nobody around to hold up the other end of the conversation. When the jamming and the yadda yadda dries up (or was never really there) then the opportunity to be both part of the audience and also part of the performance disappears too. Even a senile old natterer like me gets bored talking to myself eventually... :roll:
Anyway, back to the point. Although, for me, playing guitar is all about having a bit of fun and enjoying the learning, one thing I really need to keep myself motivated is a little structure to my practice sessions. At the moment I just pick up the guitar and start strumming whatever comes to mind without any warm up or idea of what I want to achieve for the day.

Me too. I just noodle happily away until I strike something that I either want to find out more about, or get interested in improving. Or if something starts to work nicely then I'll certainly get interested in developing it a bit more, and perhaps finding out why it worked, or what else I could learn from it....
So......finally getting to the point. Do you follow any structured practice routine and, if so, what do you recommend? Warming up with scales? Practising a song? Focusing on a specific technique?

No - I've never had such a thing as a practice routine. What I do looks random and unsystematic but why should that bother me? I'm still here, still playing, still improving, still enjoying myself, and still learning. That's all that matter to me.

Some weeks I might try and write a song for Vic's SSG forum here (well worth a shot, if you haven't looked already). Most days I might spend some time on learning some changes, bits of a song, dropping in on some friends for chat and/or a bit of a strum, etc. But nothing that looks too official or like work... :wink:

Bad role model really... :)

Cheers,

Chris


   
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(@twistedlefty)
Famed Member
Joined: 19 years ago
Posts: 4113
 

Welcome to GN!
I hear a song and can't put it down until i can play the chord changes, or until i give up and focus on why i am having trouble. this is usually followed by a day of trying to defeat the obsticle that kept me from smoothly playing the progression or whatever the problem was.
then i usually dive right into small lead parts, fills, arpeggios or whatever is needed to satisfy my version of the tune.
if i get that far and haven't been distracted by another piece of music yet, i attempt the whole thing again and add vocals.
i know it's not much of a system, but it works for me and keeps me interested.
i call it OCG, (it's not really a disorder)

#4491....


   
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(@shredd-ed)
Active Member
Joined: 15 years ago
Posts: 8
Topic starter  

Hey,

Thanks for the warm welcome and the well-thought out answers.

I kinda guessed that developing a practice routine or schedule was not really going to cut it as a motivation to keep playing but clearly just noodling along does really work either. I need some goals which don't turn into a trial.

Probably what works best for me is to keep with learning songs I love. If there are bits I'm struggling with, then find out what scale or chord I need to learn to perfect it.

Anyway, rambling now... Cheers guys.

Ed

Every time I pick up my guitar, 4 hours of my life just disappears.

It's like being abducted by aliens, but in a good way... :o)


   
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(@hornfinger)
Eminent Member
Joined: 15 years ago
Posts: 23
 

I find YouTube an invaluable resource for keeping fresh - there are so many song lessons on there, if I ever get bored with what I 'know' already, I simply hop on there and find something new to have a stab at. I recommend Siggi Mertens' stuff for acoustic/rhythm, and Marty Schwartz/GuitarJamzDotCom for a mix of acoustic and electric: he has some great blues lick mini-lessons as well as many, many song lessons.

And of course there are loads of songs on Guitar Noise to try. I sometimes practice scales but I think songs and licks give you just as much benefit while being a lot more interesting to play. 'On the job' training if you like :D And the lessons here on GN build in a lot of little extras that you don't get on YouTube.


   
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 Nuno
(@nuno)
Famed Member
Joined: 17 years ago
Posts: 3995
 

I use books for structuring my learning. I follow a specific book at time until I finish it but I also use other books with songs at the same time or I try to guess songs or collaborate with others in songs.

Usually books are written by teachers that know how to structure the work to achieve the goals. You can practice scales but it is better if somebody tells you the scales that you must practice in order to use them in a specific music. Books also include lessons on technique that will useful.

As I said this way is also compatible with learning songs by ear (or with YouTube videos). It is also important to practice the "ear" and it is fun, too. And when somebody asks to you for a song you can play real songs and not only 'studies'.


   
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 geoo
(@geoo)
Famed Member
Joined: 19 years ago
Posts: 2801
 

When I start wondering if what I am doing is wrong I think about two things. I think about my old guitar teacher that practices the daylights out of scales, blues licks, etc in a very methodical way and then I think about the scroungy looking 15 year old kids that he teaches. They both play better than I do and one thinking theory, while the other is thinking fun. I figure as long as you are in between those two methods and continue to play then you will get better no matter the method.

I am like you. Took the last 6mths or year off and now I am ready to play again. Not regretting putting it down either cause i needed the break.. but man am I glad to be at it again.

Welcome back to your guitar.

“The hardest thing in life is to know which bridge to cross and which to burn” - David Russell (Scottish classical Guitarist. b.1942)


   
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