Most bang for your buck

personalnadir

What technique or practice routine has made the biggest difference to your playing for the smallest investment?

BenSirAmos

Learning a second instrument

CarpeDiem

Learning songs - it's not always a small investment, but it's improved various areas of my technique and timing.

personalnadir

BenSirAmos said:

Learning a second instrument

I took up learning drums to practice my rhythm. Always been the weakest part of my playing. A lot of bang, but a lot of buck too!

CarpeDiem said:

Learning songs - it's not always a small investment, but it's improved various areas of my technique and timing.

This is my greatest weakness. I know I have not invested in this over the years - I was exposed to the scales much too young. Have been 'improvising' ever since. Briefly flirted with the idea of a Peter Green song book as he is my favourite player. Might have to revisit this notion. Let me be a warning to others: don't teach kids the pentatonic! They might never learn another song ever again.

munckee

Playing along to songs rather than just learning it and playing by myself I think.

MrTee

Playing with others. Ideally better than you.

slacker

Playing in a band. I actually started playing bass in a band one day after picking up a bass. 

If you are learning to play in a band, do that.

CarpeDiem

You could learn a lot from learning Peter Green songs, and any effort invested would be worth it in learning things like feel, bending, phrasing, etc. Whilst I can understand your comment that learning pentatonic shapes may have constrained you, there are plenty of pro musicians who only play pentatonics. 

blobb

1st: Listening to bands I like i.e ear training.

2nd: playing with others.

Fuengi

Looper. Preferably with a good drum track. 

Lewy

I think the highest return for least effort for me has been arpeggio substitution. A whole world of clever sounding note choices just by playing something you already know in a different setting. 

personalnadir

Lewy said:

I think the highest return for least effort for me has been arpeggio substitution. A whole world of clever sounding note choices just by playing something you already know in a different setting. 

Thanks, when I first read this I thought: "I know arpeggios". Then I googled it and realised I didn't know "arpeggio substitution". That does seem like a super cool technique, I'm going to have to start giving it a go.

These videos (if correct) are sub 5 minute ways to get your head around them:

axisus

Alt picking. Found it very easy indeed.