Hot answers tagged practice
16
You need both ear training and music theory.
Ear Training
By "ear training", musicians mean the ability to identify musical intervals, chords, scales, etc. It means developing your relative pitch as opposed to perfect pitch. Perfect pitch is the ability to hear a tone and be able to identify what note it is ("is it a C# or a Bb?"). Relative pitch is the ...
15
This is common for mainly two reasons:
Most musicians are clueless about gain structures, electronics, and acoustics.
It is easier to turn one knob up than every other knob down.
The solution:
Wear ear plugs, use in ears, or just live with it. Chances are you can't change these people. If you feel you can then try to reason when them.
The situation ...
11
Well, repeating anything is going to make you better at it. If it's simple enough that you don't have to pay attention then you could absolutely do this; you're just "burning in" the pattern even more. Key, though, is that if you're doing it wrong you'll just get "better" at doing it wrong.
One you get beyond basic fingering permutations though I think ...
10
When you practice playing an instrument, you are practicing playing that particular instrument.
If you were a brass player, for example, you would NEVER want to spend all of your time practicing on a crappy instrument with wonky tuning and then do the gig on your $3,000 horn. Even if you sound pretty good on the crap instrument, you would be changing too ...
9
Most classically trained pianists can gloss over arpeggios (and all their assorted variations) because their teachers made them do the repetitions you're describing beforehand. More generally, when you see pianists pick up complicated figures quickly, it's usually because they've seen them before, either in exercises or pieces they've already learned.
Along ...
9
I think the key is muscle memory. The only way to improve this is by specific repetitive movements. In your question you state: "quick interchanging between my 2 and 3rd finger." Presumably there is a song you are working on that requires this, so the part you are having trouble with, do that move over and over again until you no longer have a problem doing ...
8
I want to remind you that Isaac Albéniz was a pianist, and "Asturias" was written for solo piano. Albeniz never published any music for guitar. There are now many different transcriptions of Albeniz' pieces for solo guitar, duet guitar, trio guitar, you name it, made by any number of transcribers.
So I say to you: If it's too hard for you to play that chord ...
8
There are a number of great ways to practice any given pattern. Taking the rhythmic skeleton of your passage, you can apply 3 different Duple-based patterns, each with two 16ths and an 8th. Modifying the rhythm of each triplet thusly helps to develop 3 overlapping schema for each possible way to group 3 notes. Note, it's better to think of these, not as ...
7
Even if a large orchestra in rehearsal is not getting a verbal count-off, the meter is stil getting set up by the conductor visually--it's just that in many cases the conductor won't bother giving more than a single cue because the ensemble doesn't need it. Certainly if it's fast asymmetric and mixed meter music, you'll see something a bit more active from ...
7
Vocal cord nodules are benign (noncancerous) growths on both vocal cords that are caused by vocal abuse. Over time, repeated abuse of the vocal cords results in soft, swollen spots on each vocal cord. These spots develop into harder, callous-like growths called nodules. The nodules will become larger and stiffer the longer the vocal abuse continues.
Some ...
7
I used to have the same problem as you do, so here's what really solve it for me.
I used a funk guitar method: Funk Guitar: The Essential Guide.
Start with a very comfortable tempo (~70/80bpm max), block the string, and play sixteenth notes (hence, 4 notes per beat). Tap every beat with your foot, and count the time out loud (that's very important). Do ...
7
For me, my speed is directly related to coordination between my two hands. As a guitar player, this is my fretting and picking hands. So coordination exercises are important.
As for speeding up, I've found the best way to ramp up speed is to practice slowly and deliberately for a while, then try a few runs at a speed slightly faster than you are comfortable ...
7
If you wait to truly master something before moving on, it will take literally forever to make much progress. Once you've learned something fairly well, it's good to take the next step. It's also good to come back to things again and again. I've found that with most learning, it's a process of 2 steps forward one step back. This let's you keep learning ...
7
I'm no expert.
From what I understand, the idea isn't to make your hand stronger. The idea is to play so relaxed that playing a long time feels like a breeze.
So don't work on tempo until you've got the relax thing down.
The relax thing will only get burned into place from slow exact careful practice and (many) good night's sleep(s). Practice is the ...
7
The USB guitar link is for recording your guitar into a computer. Useful, but not relevant to your needs here.
To play something like a CD player through a guitar amp, it is sometimes enough to connect the headphone output of the CD player, to the instrument input of the amp. You will need to turn the headphone volume right down, and turn down the ...
7
Trills are (unfortunately) one of those things that only constant repetition will aid.
Your body is not naturally used to the movements required for trills. When you constantly practice them, your brain will eventually pick up on the movements and it will become natural to you. Note, by "constant", I don't mean a two hour crash course session playing ...
6
My experience is strictly from playing the piano, but despite the difference in the specific motion required, the approach to building speed is the same.
The short answer to your question is, "Don't do it".
It's tempting to use the metronome to push yourself faster, but this strategy doesn't work largely for the same reason that this strategy doesn't work ...
6
The number one thing you should worry about is developing your ear.
That's probably 70% - 80% of a professional musician.
So...
Transcribe songs you like (and some you don't) and practice them, especially the parts that give you a hard time.
Use a metronome for songs that are too fast. Play them slow and gradually increase speed.
6
Well, as there are many students learning many different instruments each with their own individual challenges, I feel that I may not be to fully answer this question. However, I will give my best shot. These are not in order.
Bad technique habits. Especially for self thought players, bad habits formed earlier may hinder or impede technical proficiency ...
6
I usually warm-up with a slow-blues I found in a magazine years ago. Here's a video. Can't really notate more, because it's never the same after this.
It's pretty easy to change the drone to A for the second verse and then pop a B7 and do a lick to turn it around. It's really hard to make your fingers slow down for this. But it really sounds nice slow and ...
6
The issue of learning quickly and then playing "by ear" isn't so much of a problem, since every musician, after reading and practicing from notation for a particular piece of music, will "chunk" it and no longer be reading every single note on the page. Even when sight-reading for the first time, a pianist isn't going to read "C-E-G", they're just going to ...
5
Here's some philosophy on lip slurs. I haven't played this book in particular, but as a brass specialist I can talk about lip flexibility in general; it's the same thing.
The ultimate goal of this is to have a clean transition between any two notes in different partials. This is the same whether you are trilling between two partials in a high register very ...
5
Weighted keys offer a different kind of response to the touch of a finger since they have more stationary momentum. This helps connect your physical action to the sound itself, which results in what seems like more expressive piano playing.
The other thing you are experiencing is the difference between velocity control for either instrument. If both the ...
5
I've had the same problem, but I managed to get mostly rid of it.
My first step was to be able to accept my style, when you're playing you have to know that you're not going to play the music you listen to, and if you're not used to the idea it can lead you to think it's bad just because it doesn't sound like what you enjoy listening.
My second step was to ...
5
If the time signatures match, you can play any tune to any rhythm. There is no right and wrong, only what you feel sounds good.
Debussy to a disco beat? Led Zeppelin to a reggae beat? They've been done successfully.
I suggest you choose a tempo first, then go through the 180 rhythms one by one to see which works for you. That sounds like a lot of work, but ...
5
The short answer is both! The long answer is that any way you practice has to have a clear focused goal. When you practice something by itself(one hand or foot), what is the reason? If it's purely a matter of executing that single component, splitting it out by itself may be enough. But if coordination is the issue, then practicing individual items may ...
4
My 2 cents : if you are a guitarist, and want to dramatically improve your playing, take drum lessons.
It might seem surprising, but after one month you won't play guitar the same way. At all.
The idea is to litterally add another dimension to your playing style.
Piano or another "harmonic" instrument won't make so much different. Additionally, I don't ...
4
The stretch from 8 to 12, while barring all strings is indeed tricky.
Depending on the song and the emphasis on certain notes in this chord, I would not play the complete chord. I would focus on playing the notes which are most emphasized.
I'd try:
%8/T.X/X.8/1.9/2.8/1.12/4[C7]
$8.X.10.9.8.12
This will strain your fingers less, and keep the high E note ...
4
Perhaps the most obvious thing to do would be to consciously decide to take breaks at specific intervals. Then you can set a time-limit on it. The 5min per half-hour (or whatever pace you decide) of free play will be sweeter for having anticipated it. I can be a frequent reward for diligence during the work portion.
Edit: I found some psychobabble to back ...
4
At first this happens because you are concentrating so much on your hands that the rest of your body can move in sympathetic ways - not just gurning faces, but you find some guitarists twist their bodies, arching their backs - not always deliberately :-)
Once you have learned the 'muscle memory' to a level that playing is automatic, the gurning reduces and ...
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