I know the answer to all these questions is practice, practice, practice. But there have to be some ways that are better than others. I've been playing for many years and play in a band that gigs regularly. I play mainly electric - all the usual stuff - and like acoustic as well but it's the electric I want to concentrate on - I'm not interested in shredding. I can play most anything I need to do and it all sounds fine. But I know my limitations and I want to get better and although I understand the 10,000 hours approach I'd like to do it as quickly as possible. What ideas do you have for the best way for me to achieve this?
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Sounds boring, but I think you can only achieve quick results by setting yourself a clearly limited and focused task.
"Don't learn technique and then hope to find a musical use for it. Instead, decide what music you want to play and learn the technique that serves the music you've chosen."
And then practice, practice, practice with purpose and focus on your objectives. Playing stuff you can already play well is not practice and probably not improving your playing unless you're just checking you still can do it before a public performance.
But I expect you already knew all of this.
Good luck!
First of all, who’s playing do you admire then? I’d bet my instruments that they didn’t take any short cuts on becoming the guitarist/musicians they are. They will have listened, absorbed and learned so much music. So transcribe the players you admire so much.
The logical follow on is ear training. Being able to hear what you want to play before you play it and informing the ear with even just a little bit of knowledge. If you hear and know where good notes are, that will lead to stronger melodic possibilities.
It sounds like you’re fine with working on the ‘info’ but it’s how you ‘use’ said info that you want to work on right? If so that’s a mindset thing as much as anything and I find the trickiest part. Having the confidence to NOT do the usual flashy stuff is tough. But force yourself to be melodic as much as you can and play simple ideas to start off with. Better still, sing simple ideas and try to engage these with your instrument rather than letting your fingers run away with themselves.
Tighter rhythm? Much the same as above really. Transcribe some great rhythm players from tunes that have great drumming and play along to the records. James Brown stuff is a good start (Funky Drummer, Its A New Day etc). The parts are simple yet really lock in with the band. Better still, find a great drummer (and bass player!) to actually do this stuff with.
As other have said, having a tutor to guide you will really help.
Have patience and be prepared for you playing to feel like it goes down hill for while, that’s normal. It’s not easy but you kind of have to break things down into order to build them back up. Good luck!
There is no substitute for doing the work and putting in the time but many students practice the wrong things, or at least not enough of the right things.
It is impossible to overstate the importance of transcription.
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“Theory is something that is written down after the music has been made so we can explain it to others”– Levi Clay
@Brad - what's a good way to improve ear training? I can usually work out the chords and fairly simple solos to a song pretty quickly by ear. I'm not exactly accurate but it's been enough to get by - any tips here?