This article introduces new PartTimeMusician.com writer JP Montgomery. JP is a guitarist/bassist who will be contributing from time to time on a variety of subjects. JP’s hobbies include playing music, listening to music, and hanging out with his girlfriend…but not necessarily in that order. :-)
Sitting alone in a room with the door closed and drilling all-too-familiar exercises is no fun for anyone. When I started playing guitar (and later, bass), I wanted to get rolling as quickly as possible. Who doesn’t?!? And once I got to a basic level of playing competence…well, I still didn’t want to waste a lot of time with boring exercises. Here’s what I do.
Warm Up with Scales
Well, that sounds boring, doesn’t it? You have to know the notes, but playing them doesn’t have to be a drudge! Add some pep to it, change up the rhythms, slur (winds), run patterns of notes, etc. Mix it up! This gets you warmed up, reinforces your scales in your head, and keeps things from getting lame. :-)
Play some Challenging Music
After you’re warmed up, grab some challenging music from your stack and get busy. Whether it’s new music (for sight-reading, technique development, etc.) or just a piece you’ve been working on that remains just outside of your reach, this is the time to tackle it. Push yourself, but have fun with it. Work on that new chord, practice the riff your favorite lead player or bassist throws in during the best part of your favorite song, or whatever. Imagine yourself playing it for your buddies next week – that always gets me going!
Grab some TABs, Plug in the Tunes, and PLAY!
This is the dessert portion of the practice session. Plug your iPod into your amp via Line In (Editor’s note: See earlier article Really USE your practice amp for tips on this, especially if your amp doesn’t have a dedicated Line In plug), grab some tablature or sheet music, and just kick it! If you know the music well, experiment (remember those grooves we were talking about earlier?). If it’s a new piece you’ve been dying to play, just work your way into it and live in the moment! There is just something about playing along with your favorite artist/group that really gets the juices going. In fact, you may have to make yourself put down the axe once you’ve gotten to this point!
Simple as it is, it keeps me driving forward. Give it a try! Life doesn’t always have to be hard, you know. :-)
Peace,
JP
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Practice. It can be fun and therapeutic at times…and it can be pure drudgery at others. We all want to play well, but how much practice is enough? How much is too much? Can there even be too much?
Well, yes. According to a paper published in the Journal or Neuroscience, practicing is important to developing skills of a cognitive and/or physical nature…but “osmosis learning” – or as Professor Harold Hill referred to it in the classic musical The Music Man, the “think system” – contributes greatly to mastering a task. In fact, actual practice time can be reduced greatly if the reduction is accompanied by an equivalent increase in passive learning (listening to relevant material, etc.) – which is quite effective, even if the passive learner is doing something else at the same time!
The practical upshot is this: make your practice sessions focused and effective, and listen to musical selections that contribute to your musical growth as well. Rather than try to find an hour every day to practice, accept that some days you’ll be lucky to find 15 minutes of available instrument time…and fill in the rest with selections from your iPod. As a trumpeter, listen to Wynton for 45 minutes. Or Maurice Andre. Or Al Hirt. Violinist? Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, or Hillary Hahn? Or maybe David Garrett. You get the idea. :-)
While there are no shortcuts to playing better, there is a difference between “working hard” and “working smart”. We shouldn’t be afraid to put effort into becoming better at something we love, but we should do what we can to enjoy the journey as well. If it happens to be a more effective way to learn, all the better!
I just returned to town from a several-day business trip, and the absence from home, family, and instruments made me think about the many things in life that take us away from our playing obsessions…whether for short time or long. How do we as Part-Time Musicians (PTMs) cope?
Trips like this are a rarity for me, thankfully. Many twelve-hour days in a row, punctuated with a couple of all-nighter work sessions, tend to take their toll! Enough so that I intentionally did not pack a trumpet mouthpiece, finger exerciser (for guitar/bass), or anything else to help me “stay on the instrument” sans instrument. I knew this would be an intense trip, and I wanted to keep a sharp focus. Now that I’m back, there is some ground to make up musically, of course…but so what? It isn’t the end of the world. :-)
Within a few days, I’ll be “back”…and where rough spots remain, I’ll enjoy the effort it will take to polish them. This is one thing that really came home to me during this trip: no matter what life throws at us, no matter what detours come our way, we should enjoy the journey. Life is meant to be lived, not to be stressed. Music is a key part of that enjoyment, and while we should all strive to improve each day, it should be an enjoyable effort, not a burden.
We all take up music for different reasons, but I’m confident that at the heart of them all is NOT the idea that music is work. How much more could we accomplish if we just allowed ourselves to have some fun?!?
I ran across a video a few days ago that demonstrated beautifully the impact that fun has on us as human beings. We’ve discussed this on several occasions (see Five Secrets to Rapid Improvement in Your Playing for a favorite example) but a picture is worth a thousand words…and moving pictures significantly more. 8-) Check it out!
The best thing about this video from the perspective of a Part-Time Musician (PTM) may be that it holds the key to getting the most from our shared obsession. No one would argue that taking the stairs involves less effort than riding the escalator up to the surface, yet people chose to take the stairs. Why? Because it was fun. Even with more work involved, it was fun!
Studying an instrument takes effort, and there are days we all consider quitting. It takes time, it takes work. Yet it can be an incredible amount of fun if we allow ourselves to make it so. Practice, yes…drill, yes…strive, yes! But don’t forget to have fun with it, too. You may be surprised at the improvements you see.
I’ve loved this anecdote and its associated quote since I first heard it years ago. I never had the privilege of meeting Don Pablo, but we did get to visit the Casals Museum in San Juan, Puerto Rico a few years back. It’s small, but well worth seeing if you get the chance. (Side note: the picture below is one my youngest took of a painting there.)
But back to the topic at hand. Here is today’s quote:
When Casals (then age 93) was asked why he continued to practice the cello three hours a day, he replied, “I’m beginning to notice some improvement.”
If you’d like to read more about Don Pablo Casals, a good place to start is here. In the meantime, keep playing, and keep watching for signs of improvement. You’ll never stop seeing them if you don’t stop looking!
Bass Guitar, General, Guitar, Learning | JP January 22, 2011 | 
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But back to the topic at hand. Here is today’s quote:
