I think what you want to practice are a bit of these three categories: 1) the mechanics of playing (right/left hand technique, posture, wrist angles, being relaxed as possible, etc); 2) ear training (which I neglected as a result held myself back); and 3) learning the language and vocabulary of music as it applies to the music you want to play.
1 just makes you able to play what you want to play.
2 connects what you want to play to what you're hearing most efficiently.
3 just matches what you're doing to what you want to do-- if you want to play jazz or 'jazzier' you need to see harmony/melody/phrasing in different way than you might get in college 1st or 2nd semester class looking at 4 part harmony with all the roots doubled. If you want to play like John Lee Hooker, studying Gershwin might not be the most efficient way to get into it. All roads lead to Rome, or maybe all steps rise to Parnasus, and Hal Galper said nothing you practice is wasted; but the end of day you probably want to turn what you're practicing into something you can use with the people you're playing with. I was lucky in that I used to practice some weird sounding stuff compared to the kids I played with when I was learning, but I was able fit it into the classic rock and blues we were playing. Some liked it, some hated it. Some still hate it.
But start taking apart the music you want to play and be sure to work on that in addition to technical stuff. I recently jammed with a guy who I guess had reasonable chops or mechanics but we're improvising and jamming but a single chord played in different inversions stopped him in his tracks. All he could play was The House of the Rising Sun, Stairway to Heaven, and the most cliche BS blues you'd play at the beginning of a Hal Lenard book, and a lot of Bach I think. He came in knowing we're supposed to be playing fully improvised music but he's ready for a cover band 13 year-olds in 1976 would start or a great solo recital for a classical teacher. But at the end of the day we had no use for each other. Just make sure in the midst of all the technical stuff and abstract patterns and solfeggio (if you do it), also prepare for the music you want to play. I think it is best to balance those 3 categories.
I never used it, I don't think I ever heard of it, but I am going to check it out. Ear training has always been the thing I neglected most, that plus hygiene and manners. So, time to work on ear training. Thanks for posting.
cool, Farelli. I feel like we're on similar journeys here. Blitzer, may I ask how long you've been playing? It doesn't actually matter. I recently discovered technical things I took for granted and then let slip away, or talked my self back away from, are things I need to double-down on in my current practice. For me the big thing is remembering the amount of patience I had when I was first learning, to do the work. The obstacle I'm facing right now is to keep my wrist straight when I'm on the 6th or 5th strings. When I focus on it I can do it right, so it's just going to be a matter of putting that work in.
I will try to put up a video of my own showing the exercise I do that I stole from a Robert Fripp Guitar Player Magazine column, and the segue (hmmm, so THAT'S how it's spelt) from it into another exercise, but that might take some time.
But much better than that are these two videos of Pebber's that I found. I think there will be more that show it too, and if I find them I'll put them up too.
opps, it turns out I can't share a link. The one video I'm taking about is called "Technique - THUMB BEHIND NECK" and the second one is called "LEFT HAND Technique Basics - start here!"
So, the thing I would do is what ever position you start at, like I say 7th fret- 10th fret on electric, 5th-8th on acoustic for me, make sure your hand is happy and can do it. I start on 3rd and 4th strings, thinking they are most like the other strings. to me 1st and 6th strings are least like the other strings. So I start on 3rd and 4th, just establishing where my fingertips contact the string and gently pushing them down-- cultivating light touch, plucking just hard enough to get a clean note. But, I have to stress that this exercise is as much or more my obsession than anything anyone else might find useful. I start out light, "triple pianissimo" and progress towards as triple forte as I can, which requires heavier than light touch-- but finding the balance every day is like to me calibrating the balance between my fingers. But start higher if you have to, 9th-12th if you want. Just establish what is ideal for you. Once you are practicing there and establishing the right way, move it down a fret, then again up a fret. Eventually you'll find how to do at the first fret. But warm up in that comfort zone and when you are warmed up you'll stretch more easily.
But I'm pretty certain if there's a question on guitar, Pebber's answered it on YouTube already, we just have to find it, or pony up and take on-line lessons or find him in real life and take lessons that way. As he says in the videos I shared above, this takes years and constant maintenance (the later part kinda just dawned on me)/
here are two pictures, I won't say either are perfect, but they're typical for what I'm talking about that I'm doing. It might not be clear, but my wrist isn't as straight as I'd like it to be, I didn't really take my time and find the perfect spot on the finger tip, I just kinda played around pressing my fingers into the strings, and let the rut in the fingers happen.
Thanks for the clarification and the second picture, I should've gotten it with the first one though. So, on guitar one finger per fret is ideal for the fingers. The frets where the spacing between them matches your fingers/hand size is also idea. You want your fingers rounded, not flat, in ideal situations. Most common scale fingerings should be pretty idea. But, something as common as an open G chord has my pinky looking like a contortionist. You have to just take your time, establish your "finger embouchure" and if you catch yourself varying away from proper technique, ask yourself why. I used to play a Sonata in C major by Diabelli, not exactly an impressive piece to play or anything, but it exposed a bunch of bad habits and my hand did all sorts of stupid things though a particular succession of chords. I didn't really pay it any mind till my teacher at the time caught it and called me out on it. I had to just slow down and play it right, eliminating the bad habit.
I got out in '88, and luckily for me there was a classical teacher who taught in the college I went to, but man GIT-- so cool.
I enjoyed reading your post, and as I return to seriously woodshedding on my instruments, I look forward to reading more what you (and everyone) post here.
are we looking at the pad of the finger? Is your finger nail in back of what we're seeing?
The line the string makes on our finger tips is something I obsessed over a lot, and still there would be pieces I would play where my hand would pivot around like Jackie Chan through a room full of falling plates, babies that need him to burp them, and star-throwing gangster-ninjas. I had to really pin down when I was pivoting it around for bad reasons and focus on getting it right, retraining the bad habit when I caught it happening.
This is what helps me. First thing I do is check my finger nail length. I can't play properly if my finger nails are too long and interfering with my finger's connection to the fingerboard. I straighten out each finger, and I push it into a table top, so that the finger comes down perpendicular to the table. If I hit nail, I clip. If the flesh of my finger tip compresses and I bottom out on bone (or cartilage, for the human-shark hybrids secretly among us) without nail interrupting, then that finger is good to go-- for now.
Now, when my fingers are all on a string like in a chromatic scale, the knuckles in the middle of the finger are further apart from each other than the fingertips. I've been told it is just a matter of each individual's bone structure. What this means for me is the outside of the nail on my pinky and index fingers need to be checked more so than the top of the nail, or the in side. So, I clip there if it needs to be clipped.
My point is that the nail will interfere with the how your finger wants to play on the fingerboard. (The exercise below I got from a column written by Robert Fripp for Guitar Player Magazine, back when floppy disks were put on turntables, before they ever went into now-outdated computers.)
Now, the warm-up I always did before playing (and before seeing Pebber's video that starts out with 2 minutes of picking on each open string) was to place my fingers on the 3rd string from 5th-8th fret on acoustic or 7th-10th fret on electric, and just touch the string barely with each finger. I'd gradually establish the line of contact that the string would make across my finger tip, then gently raise the fingers up and moving them to the 4th string, never actually taking my fingers off a string. Imagine when your tires are stuck in a rut on the road, and you go up over one rut to the an adjacent one, that would be analogous to going from the 3rd to 4th strings and back. I'll go back and forth really just assessing my contact and if I like where my finger and making sure I don't unintentionally mute an adjacent string. As I do this, I'll dig in more and more.
I'll also pluck the strings, and I look for that border between fret buzz and clean note which occurs at like the lightest of touch on the fingerboard and the lightest of plucking. Then I'd match the pressure on the finger board to the attack on the string with the pick (or p-i-m-a). That part for me is about establishing the balance between the hands. That also is a little beyond what you're asking about, but it was always a big point of the exercise for me. The exercise had 3 main points: establishing the rut in my finger that would be exactly where my finger would fret a note, establish the balance between the hands for light touch buzz-free effortless playing, and cultivate economy of movement in my fretting hand by not raising the fingers up anymore than needed (which I didn't go into above, but it involves playing e-g, a-c over and over 7th fret to 10th fret).
Your efforts should match your goals. That said, the videos on youtube of Pebber's where he's doing just picking for like an hour and a half, starting with two minutes each on the open strings, and the like hour long one on trills where you start of hammering on to strings one finger at a time, are what every guitarist should be doing. I got some warm ups from a guitar player magazine article written by Robert Fripp that I start off with, just placing the fingers on the strings and pressing them down evenly and slowly. The slur, ornament, and stretching book by Shearer was my bible for a long time, but I think Pebber's videos dovetail nicely with anything I learned or like should've been prerequisite for them.
This topic, and the thing about the "Caged" system that Tom Hess posted, really got me mad. I don't really care what he thinks about it. But in the thing he wrote trashing it, he says something along the lines that any student being taught it by a teacher is having their time wasted by the teacher. Anyone with any experience playing or teaching knows he's lying when he says that, and he is trying to undermine the relationship between a teacher and student. I can only think that he's trying to steal students from other teachers when he says that. He can not know why any single teacher is showing a student the "caged" system. He is taking advantage of new player's ignorance, by pretending any system you use to to get around the neck or visualize the neck or to map musical patterns onto the neck is ever meant to be any more than just a set of steps along the path of learning the fingerboard. I didn't learn the "caged" system, I learned the fingerboard via 7th chord inversions up and down the neck, arpeggios, and 3 note per string scales. But it's all just like sign posts on a road. You can put what ever sign posts on the road you want so long as it helps you learn the road. I just can't get past the way he insults other teachers for using that system, and I can't see any reason for it other than to undermine the trust students have in the teachers they're working with.
Hi, I'm new around here but glad to see an active guitar forum. Years ago I was somewhat active on the guitar player magazine's forums, but I don't even know if they exist anymore. I've been playing guitar and/or bass guitar since 1980. I found Pebber Brown's videos and eventually found this place. One of his videos came up in the right side column when I was looking at ... I think it was Strymon Deco videos. I was hooked instantly because I have always fingerpicked, paying very little attention to how to properly use a pick. I would use a pick to just whack the strings as hard as I can, otherwise I'd just use my fingers. But recently I decided I should more properly address using a pick, and his videos and the community he's built looks like just what the doctor ordered.
Wed Apr 22, 2015 9:59 am
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