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Practicing Vs Playing
I’m curious on what side of the fence others are on this topic. Where do you spend most of your time? Practicing or playing? I’ll throw my personal perspective out there.
The first year I started, I was trying to learn from YouTube videos, a couple of books, and was in utter frustration and my fingertips HURT! Well, I decided to search out a teacher. On the advice of a local guitar shop, I started lessons. This guy was a task master, and had me doing very, very basic stuff, and was all about practice, practice, practice. He had me spending 90% of my time on drills, practice, etc, and only about 10% actually trying to learn songs. He would not let me advance to something else until I had perfected what we had been working on. I was 61 at the time, and at this rate I would be dead before I learned anything of real value to me. And my relationship with my guitar started feeling like a chore, and I would hesitate wanting to practice. I left him after a year or so.
I went a few months just struggling, and ended up finding another teacher. Well, he was the polar opposite of the other teacher, and wanted me spending 90% or more of my time “just playing”. And if I wanted to, I could work on drills. Well, the next year and a half my progress skyrocketed as I was actually having fun, and was OK if I played something a little crappy. He encouraged that, and wanted me to embrace not being perfect and being OK making mistakes. His opinion was we pickup up the guitar wanting to play songs, not to just sit and practice. My prior teachers opinion was you can’t get good without practice. Both I think are valid.
Where do you all spend your time, and what have your experiences been? We all seem to learn a bit differently, and one size does not fit all. I’m looking forward to some others perspectives.
Kyle
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4 Replies
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Good Question there Kyle! I started out practicing then I practiced at playing….then after being here for a while I overcame a challenge by making PLAY my practice. This was maybe six years in. I realized I could let go of my fear of doing it incorrectly (don’t want to make a bad pattern or, practice wrong you play wrong, both completely self limiting) and realized what made the magic. It was/is dopamine. It was why I could play a wrong note 100 times and then play it right to never again play it wrong. It clicked…that would be the dopamine. So I started following that. My progress went faster than it ever had before. It led me to where I am now where I make play my practice. Even scales become a universe to play within. : ) I would have to pay attention now to figure out how much time is strength training and how much time is on the field. (The Fretboard field that is)
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Kyle man, love the question! I think there has to be a balance to some degree but I’ll be honest. I spend much more time playing than I do with so-called drills. I actually don’t think I’ve ever done a drill, or maybe I have and I just don’t see it as being a drill per se. I practice different types of strumming or attempting finger picking or finger style trying to learn different versions and I guess a drill would be me doing trying to do the finger style over and over and over typically getting nowhere ha ha. Also. Learning to transition between chords is a form of drill that ai do. Any new skill learned involves practice before it becomes something that just becomes natural to do.
My guitar teacher is simply awesome. He and I have a great relationship and there’s a balance between practice and playing. He’s never questioned TAC or felt threatened by it, and we supplement the lessons here sometimes. I feel that TAC is more my practice whereas my guitar teacher allows me to play more. There are times that we slip back into things such as doing more theory or if I’m struggling with something he’ll give me some suggestions to be able to do something better and it might involve some form of drills, I guess you would say, but I don’t necessarily see it that way because I’ve gotten to the point where I pick up things so quickly that it doesn’t feel like a chore. There have been times he’s actually said it’s gonna be really boring. You just need to do it over and over and over and I found that I don’t have to do it for very long before it becomes muscle memory, but I can understand the monotony and boredom of doing such things so That would be a complete turn off. If that’s all there was to learning the guitar. In fact I don’t think I’d be playing at all if that’s what it were.
My teacher often will pull me back a little bit just to show me the proper way of doing something because left to my own accord. I would just be out there like I am so often but just slap playing something instead of using the correct chords or timing using a metronome – Things that make a difference in what and how I’m playing something. Now I will say that I could probably benefit from more of those drills, but I decided a long time ago that I’m not in this for anyone else I’m playing for myself and for my own enjoyment And if anyone else just happens to be within hearing distance and likes what they hear then that’s an added benefit. I don’t plan on getting rich or famous or doing any type of pain gig. The most that I do is an open mic or going to a song circle at a jam club And I know I’m not that good and I know that my vocals aren’t that good and it’s just something I’ve had to swallow my pride on and put it all out there good and bad, and I just know that I’ve gotten better because of it.
I was about to quit guitar probably going into my second year at the end of my second year because I didn’t feel I was any good and I wasn’t making progress and I started to lose enjoyment and just wasn’t having fun. It felt very monotonous; it felt it was taking more and more effort. I was going to actually stop after a meet up that was happening in Florida with a few of us that had met through TAC. A list of the songs that we were going to play was sent, and I decided to spend probably three weeks working through the songs and just trying to be able to play some of them. All of a sudden things just started to click and I found that I was able to play quite a few of the songs And I started having a lot of fun. I think some of the people at the meet up were surprised at my playing on several of the songs. I haven’t looked back since. I just found such a joy, and I literally have hundreds of songs that I have played. It just keeps getting easier and easier. I’m still not the greatest player and I still have really horrible vocals, but I’m working on them, but my joy was all of a sudden being able to play the songs that I had picked up the guitar for.
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@jumpinjeff , @Loraine , thanks for your perspectives. That’s kind of what I like about TAC, is I can get my 10% of practice in everyday, and then spend 90% playing and trying to put it all together. Like Loraine said, a good balance. And jumpinjeff is absolutely correct, playing is practice.
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In my journey before TAC I worked a couple of other online programs. These instructors knew what they were doing, excellent players. But there were a lot of drill type lessons, things to practice as much as possible and perfect, before moving on to the next lessons. Guess what, discouragement accompanied by boredom soon set in and I involuntarily quit all those programs. TAC is entirely different, lessons are short and fun. Even if we are doing a drill it’s more like “playing” guitar!
I think we have to guard ourselves to be too much in practice mode. Practicing a skill is fine as long as you are enjoying it, but you can easily slide into frustration due to that perfectionist little devil we have inside. When I am trying to learn a picking pattern or a new (barre) chord I try to keep my practicing at it to short periods (I would say 3-10 minutes). I might do several such sessions in a day. I’m semi-retired and certain days don’t need to leave my home; on days like that I could pick up my guitar 10 or more times and I might go through parts of the daily challenge or just spend a few minutes working on a skill. You might call this practicing, but I avoid doing it for long periods.
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