Practising

[stingrayPete1977]

I don't think I would be interested in learning something from a teacher that didn't frustrate me a little bit during the lesson. The lesson IMO is just to show you what to try and learn before your next one, If it's not going to be hard what's the point? I'm not going to pay £x per hour to jam out twelve bars

Edited August 15, 2011 by stingrayPete1977

[uncle psychosis]

The trick is just to set the bar a *little* bit too high. If I try to learn something and find myself thinking "this is impossible" then I know its probably beyond my current level. If I find myself thinking "bah, nearly...next time...bah, so close....right try again....oooh, almost...." then its probably at an appropriate level.

[ZMech]

[quote name='Bilbo' post='1324354' date='Aug 2 2011, 03:18 PM']If you haven't got a knot of frustration in your stomach when you are practising, you are probably not learning anything new and should find something more challenging/demanding which does produce that visceral effect.[/quote]

Gonna have to disagree with you here bilbo. At the moment, my main practice has been playing scales and arpeggios over drones on my DB. Not really frustrating, as I don't mind getting the odd note wrong, but it's definitely been helping my fretboard knowledge. If I got overly worked up and frustrated whilst practicing, I wouldn't enjoy it, would do less, and therefore be a worse player overall. Perhaps it comes down to how annoyed you get at your own mistakes, as I just accept them as an inevitability when practicing.

[fatback]

I must be getting the frustration bit right cos according to my other half the language coming out of my practice room runs the full spectrum.

I maintain it's important to beat yourself up so as not to get complacent. Intonation screwups make for the most colour.

Is this normal?

[Mornats]

I struggle to practice sometimes. Most of it is down to not having any feedback (I don't play in a band) and also when I nail a piece, there's no record of it, no witnesses, nothing

So what I did was to start recording stuff. To learn scales I knocked up a bassline based on a scale and recorded it to a drum track (then added some guitar to it which was basically just me playing high up on a 5 string with a high C and adding distortion hehe). I could then listen back to everything I'd played and could spot errors, particularly timing errors which get missed when you're in the middle of playing. It also really makes you get tight in with the drums and you'll possibly learn a bit of theory along the way too. Remember that only you have to listen back to it so it won't be embarrassing!

It can also help reduce frustration a little. If I try to play someone else's song and I don't get it spot on with regards to how they play it then it can be disheartening. So I'll listen to a track and get an idea of doing something similar to it and more often than not it turns out radically different but it's my track, it sounds just how I want it to, I can add other instruments and turn it into a proper track and I can listen back to it and evaluate my playing. I love it.

All of the tracks on my soundcloud link in my signature came about from doing this. Base 12 on Mars came about when I was trying to learn the RHCP version of Higher Ground for example. Reolody was me trying some new techniques. The opening and closing parts are me holding down a bass chord and trying my hand at tapping. The verse bit is normal fingerstyle playing and the chorus bit is a bit of slapping on a basschord (slapping one note, popping two more at the same time). Oh and I chucked on an auto-wah effect as it hid some dodgy sounding technique! The entire track is just the one bassline and drums. When I record I usually record say the verse and take as many takes as I need to in order to nail it. I'll then copy and paste these / loop them and do the next bit. Once I'm familiar with the track I can then turn off the bassline and try and play the entire piece from start to end. The advantage of this is that I know how it should sound and I know that I can physically play it as I wrote it and played each bit in isolation so I know I can do it! You can always go back and rerecord the entire bassline in one go too if you want.

So, does anyone else do this?

[burno70]

If I'm learning something which is technically beyond me and tough to play I don't tend to get frustrated to be honest. The times when I get frustrated are when I'm learning something new that I should be able to play but cock it up time after time, I think that may be more of a memory issue however.

[BottomE]

[quote name='Mornats' post='1367677' date='Sep 9 2011, 02:19 PM']I struggle to practice sometimes. Most of it is down to not having any feedback (I don't play in a band) and also when I nail a piece, there's no record of it, no witnesses, nothing

So what I did was to start recording stuff.
So, does anyone else do this?[/quote]
I do what you do! Did you find it really painful at first playing back what you recorded? I did. It was/is a real wake up call for my playing.

[Mornats]

[quote name='BottomE' post='1368053' date='Sep 9 2011, 08:46 PM']Did you find it really painful at first playing back what you recorded?[/quote]

Hell yeah! But the beauty of it is that only you have to listen to it I still cringe at some bits in the tracks I've put on soundcloud but it's all part of learning...

[BottomE]

[quote name='Mornats' post='1369216' date='Sep 11 2011, 11:02 AM']Hell yeah! But the beauty of it is that only you have to listen to it I still cringe at some bits in the tracks I've put on soundcloud but it's all part of learning...[/quote]
lol you are right. At least only we know how sh*t we can be sometimes. On the upside i believe my playing has gone from strength to strength because of it.

[Blademan_98]

[quote name='Mornats' post='1369216' date='Sep 11 2011, 11:02 AM']Hell yeah! But the beauty of it is that only you have to listen to it I still cringe at some bits in the tracks I've put on soundcloud but it's all part of learning...[/quote]

I recorded a 2 minute track and posted it in the recording section.

Absolute rubbish but I do enjoy playing

Nobody's listened yet so perhaps everyone already knows how bad I am

[BottomE]

[quote name='Blademan_98' post='1369581' date='Sep 11 2011, 05:01 PM']I recorded a 2 minute track and posted it in the recording section.

Absolute rubbish but I do enjoy playing

Nobody's listened yet so perhaps everyone already knows how bad I am [/quote]
Gonna try and find it l8r when the kids are in bed

[Leemarc Ferguson]

Frustration plus motivation is definitely the key keep to on wanting to practice and learn. If you don't feel frustrated its probably too easy

[Bilbo]

See. Leemarc agrees so I must be right. Off to grit my teeth at a Bach Cello Suite now.

[Wylie]

[quote name='stingrayPete1977' timestamp='1312406031' post='1326231']
I'm always busy playing for fun at either a rehearsal or gig so I only really ever play at home for a reason which will either be learning tracks for a gig or at the moment trying to improve my reading/theory. Bit of frustration then a lot of satisfaction when it clicks
[/quote]


What he said.

[AndyBob09]

I've been playing bass for 8 years now. For the first two years of this, I practiced and practiced and practiced and I got good. I got very good, very fast because I practiced lots. For the third year, I practiced a little bit less. This was due to turning about 16, starting to notice girls, starting to drink a little, bass was pushed to the side a bit. But I still practiced and continued to progress. During my 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and most of my 8th year of playing, I've practiced only a little bit. This was due noticing girls a lot, drinking a ton more and practice was really, really pushed to the side. However, in the past few years, I've been PLAYING (rehearsing and gigging) for about 12 hours a week. Brilliant. In my head, I was progressing as a player because I was throwing myself around a lot of different band scenarios and playing with lots of different musicians and for the past 2 years, I've been making an alright living out of music.

6 months ago, I started to take a much bigger interest in practice again. This is due to losing interest in girls and alcohol as much. Or maybe just due to taking a bigger interest in practice.

Without a doubt, I can say that my playing has once again started progressing. These days, I'm tackling tunes that are complex and opening my mind to a ton of concepts and what not and a lot of the time, I'm in my practice room frustrated. I'll get so frustrated that I need to walk away from it, make myself a cup of tea, have a biscuit and come back a bit more chilled but ready to tackle it. If you're working on something though, break it down. Right down. If you're working on a frustrating piece, aim only to get 12 bars done that day. Maybe less. And if you achieve that, you should go to bed happy because you've reached that small goal and the next day you can get up, revise what you've done and go on.

I think this shows the difference between practicing and playing. Look back at your progress. If you're not progressing, you're not practicing. You're just playing.

[Wobler]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vms_6_TSQuc&feature=youtube_gdata_player
this is an example of someone pushing the boundaries......lol

[louisthebass]

[quote name='Wobler' timestamp='1324145066' post='1471296']
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vms_6_TSQuc&feature=youtube_gdata_player[/media]
this is an example of someone pushing the boundaries......lol
[/quote]

Have only watched about 75 seconds of this, and can honestly say I've never got to the point of cussing & blinding if my practicing hasn't gone to my expectations. My attitude is "okay, it's not happening - time to call it a day for today, let's see how tomorrow goes" (this is rare).

Improvement doesn't happen overnight - it takes place over weeks & months if your practice is planned & efficient.