Practice routine that won't bore you to death

Rocker

Something that stimulates the ear/brain as well as strengthening the fingers would be a great help.  Scales etc. are a help but they become a bit numbing after a time.  Playing endless scales is enough to put me off guitar.  All help appreciated.  Thanks.

octatonic

Transcribe songs.

... but I spent years playing scales, arpeggios and finger exercises.
I didn't do it because they were fun, I did it because they work and nothing else really does.
You will have to as well.

William Williamson

Divide up into areas: chords and soloing, technique and theory - any time you come across something cool stick it under one of those areas. When you've come to practise pick something from each area and do that for 5-10 minutes?

paul_c2

Make scales fun?

Some suggestions:

1) Try to play every note in each position (there's 17 notes....) never playing the same interval twice
2) Try to play the scale up and down but with every group of 3 or 4 notes, a different rhythm
3) Try to play the scale ascending but diminuendo, then descending crescendo (and do it in time too)
4) Play a different scale up and down (eg a different mode, or something). Randomly swap directions, but play a different mode each time. Try to not play the same mode every time in 7 or something

Or.....transcribing......pick a song completely at random from your music collection and try to play along with it

Chords.....just randomly put your fingers damn well anywhere on the fretboard, in weird/unusual/never-done-before shapes. It will sound horrible!!! So, do it again a few times, until it sounds nice. Then work out what the chord is.

Barney

I like practising using arpeggios first then pentatonics over various chords then scales and the altered scale...im doing these over jazz standards and trying to link them without starting from route notes all the time ....i think its great practise and you can really hear the changes...arps and scales on there own are very boring 

viz

If you find scales boring, try playing good long tunes instead, for the main scales. Embellish them, play them in all positions, introduce trills, make up harmonies, taste them! Here are some examples:

Ionian: Vivaldi's 4 seasons Spring.



Dorian: Greensleeves (Vaughan Williams version)



Lydian: The simpsons (actually lydian dominant but that's ok)



Aeolian: Anything minor, really. Black magic woman? Rachmaninov's 2nd piano concerto, 1st movement. Or best of all, Rachmaninov's Vocalise. 



Melodic minor: Bach's Eilt, from St John Passion. 



Melodic minor 5th mode (Aeolian Dominant): Rachmaninov 2nd piano concerto 3rd movement - 'that' tune. It's really amazing. 


Choose really juicy, interesting long tunes. Rachmaninov is great because he really gives his tunes the time they need to breathe and develop. 

Rocker

When @octatonic you suggest transcribing songs, what exactly do you mean? This question may seem dumb, I often wondered what it means and what the result looks like. The type of noises I make are mainly in the Pentatonic, Major and Minor scales. I often resort to playing tunes on the guitar, waltzes and such like. Guitar is fun, I want to keep it that way and become a better player. If that is possible...

octatonic

Rocker said:

When @octatonic you suggest transcribing songs, what exactly do you mean? This question may seem dumb, I often wondered what it means and what the result looks like. The type of noises I make are mainly in the Pentatonic, Major and Minor scales. I often resort to playing tunes on the guitar, waltzes and such like. Guitar is fun, I want to keep it that way and become a better player. If that is possible...

Transcription can be as simple or as difficult as you make it.
As luck out have it I'm doing a 'learn 30 songs 30 days' thing at the moment, where I am learning a set of songs for a functions band I'm playing with soon.

http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/85579/the-inaugural-learn-a-song-a-day-for-a-month-challenge

To be technically correct a transcription is where you take something from a recording and then notate it.
The term is also used as a short cut for 'learning songs'.
In the above thread I'm not really transcribing- I'm finding the fastest way to get the songs in my head so I can go out and gig them.

As to whether it is fun or not- it largely depends on whether your idea of 'fun' is something that is fixed or not.
There will be an element of 'work' to this- my advice is find a way to enjoy it.

Most of the time when people say stuff isn't fun it is because they are either trying to do stuff that is far outside their ability level and then trying to rush the process of learning it.
You can learn absolutely anything if you break it down to small enough chunks and then built it up piece by piece.

Give me an idea of a song you'd like to learn and I'll suggest how to approach it.

stratman3142

These days I generally focus on things I can use. I also like transcribing songs and solos.

Rocker

Thanks @Octatonic, a song that stumps me is Shadow Play by Rory Gallagher. I have the intro and the chords and am ok until the run up to the solo. Thirds sound wrong at that point and the solo stumps me. It is in D minor but I can't seem to get it into my head. When I hear Rory playing the song on CD, I can pause the song and continue la la'ing it accurately. But with a guitar in hand it is gone. No idea where to start. I had a similar problem with the solo of Folsom Prison Blues, some of the guys here helped me out and I have it now. Not up to speed yet but getting there. I play by ear and have difficulty relating tab to music. I try to get a song or solo into my head then most times I can work it out. The work is getting the song/solo into my head, the fun is trying to play it.

octatonic

I'll have a look at the Rory Gallagher tune and see if I can start you off.

Have a look a this video- it is in the thread I linked earlier but you might not have seen it as there is a lot of stuff in there.
It shows you how I learn material- pay particular attention to how I isolate notes and how I sing intervals and then place them on the guitar.

bingefeller

I practice a few things like this:

1)  Play some chord melody stuff from a tab book.

2)  Play some licks from a book written in standard notation and try to memorise them.

3)  Try to work on some chord melody type arrangements of my own.

4)  Learn a song (currently I'm working on learning the solo to Michael Schenker Group's Rock You To The Ground),

Rocker

Something that I find, I am not a gigging guitar player BTW, is that I need a break of a day or two away from the instrument every week. Keeps my playing interesting to me. I worked steadily on a few things recently, then took a couple of days break. Now keen to play again. You need other interests too or you become very anal about guitars. Things like top wrapping LPs etc start to skew your sense of perspective. Life is for living, guitar has its place in our lives. Just make sure it is not the only interest in your life.

Old_Swanner

The trick IMO is avoiding any practice routine that feels like a chore.  Getting to understand that effective practice is based in problem solving rather than repetition is the key to this.

Jalapeno

paul_c2 said:

Make scales fun?

Some suggestions:

1) Try to play every note in each position (there's 17 notes....) never playing the same interval twice
2) Try to play the scale up and down but with every group of 3 or 4 notes, a different rhythm
3) Try to play the scale ascending but diminuendo, then descending crescendo (and do it in time too)

<...snip...>

Playing any exercise against a metronome is a killer - but superb practice. 

Also Wisdom awarded to @octatonic for "I spent years playing scales, arpeggios and finger exercises" - as Larry Carlton says in one of his (very) old videos "Hard work will always get the job done".

Mix the grind with some reward - like learning a new riff/tune.

Danji

For me, I think of technical exercises as jogging and gym type work.  Basically keeping the strength up. I have a decent exercise where it's playing scales and arpeggios to a metronome a different key everyday, just go up in semitones each day. 

I practice improvisation by playing very slow, think tai chi. One note per bar, two per bar and so on, solo one chorus and comp the next.  

Other good things to practice are Bach's Violin Partitas and Sonatas, and the Cello Suites.  There's very limited rhythmic variation and thus a great exercise. 

Jalapeno

Jimmy Bruno recommends Wolfhardt's Violin Etudes.

My reading's not up to it though.

viz

 Jalapeno said:

Jimmy Bruno recommends Wolfhardt's Violin Etudes.

My reading's not up to it though.

They are great and not too difficult and much more musical than, say, Hanon.

Old_Swanner

Further to my comment above, here's my thinking on this subject in a recent blog post.  If you're moving forward and you know it, even the repetition side of practice is endlessly interesting.

https://www.oldswannerguitartuition.com/single-post/2017/04/24/What-is-Effective-Practice-On-Guitar