How to spend practice time

Ultraspontane

Now that I've got my GJ-10, I'm spending 6 hours a day on guitar practice. Focused practice.
Even on Sundays.

The way I'm doing it is spending 2 hours on rhythm, 2 hours on gypsy picking, and 2 hours on learning repertoire. I divide those 2 hours up into smaller segments like 15 minutes on downstrokes only, 15 minutes on upstrokes only, 30 minutes on certain licks, ect...

I want to be a well rounded player that can play rhythm and lead well, and that knows a decent amount of songs.

Now that I am investing more time, I want to make sure I'm doing it the right way. Right now I'm still in the stages of learning and reinforcing muscle memory, so I spend these periods very focused on my movements and make sure I'm doing things properly (slow, relaxed, and accurate).

Is it good to divide up time evenly among rhythm, picking, and repertoire? Or should I be alternating between these three on different days (Like monday 6 hours of rhythm, tuesday 6 hours of picking, wed 6 hours of repertoire, ect..)?

I like having different things to work on in one practice day, but if it is more effective to spend the whole day on one area, I will do that.

And this is mainly directed towards the players that have achieved most of their goals as a player. I have this weird thing where I can only take advice from people who have been there and done that.

Musette

I'm far from an experienced player, but i think the best answer is whatever suits you best.

Why don't you try both ways and see which one do you like more and feel you move on faster?

David

Stackabones

I think you need to incorporate some jamming time in your schedule. The practice schedule you are keeping is admirable, but it won't amount to much if you don't start playing with others, either informally or at gigs. Practice may help make you proficient, but playing with (or for) others makes you musical.

The biggest lessons I ever learned were playing with other musicians. It would focus my practice sessions as well as test out what I could do in real time. Of course you've got to spend time in the woodshed, but you've got to get out every now and then and get some sun.

Ultraspontane

Yeah jamming will definitley be in my future. This routine isn't permanent. I just want to make sure
i have the foundation of good technique before I move on to other things.

BluesBop Harry

My 2 cents:
Work on rhythm as much as possible on the beginning. That will enable you to take part in jams and you'll get the sound of the changes and the rhythms down, that will help you when improvising by ear. Plus your right hand will get used to working with gravity and relaxing, you'll get a better soloing picking technique the better your pompe is.
With 6 hours I would spend 4 on rhythm and learning the changes of as many songs as you can, play along with records.
Can you play rhythm to a whole CD?

And the remaining 2 hours on picking exercises, lead melodies and soloing.
Afterward I would work as much as possible on ear training and developing the skill to pick out the chords to any song by ear alone.

After a year or so, when you really feel you have a good pompe down cold, you won't need to spend as much time practicing that and I guarantee you'll find the time and effort you put in will pay off when soloing. And every other player will love to jam with you!

If at all possible I would strongly recommend finding a good teacher... That will get you going a lot faster. Books and DVDs are cool but it's nothing like a real live person teaching you. A lot people think they can get to a certain point on their own and then take lessons but often they waste a lot of time "reinventing the wheel" or get off the path and by the time they go to someone they have more problems than they started with.
Anyway good luck and I hope my advice helps!

Ultraspontane

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

Harry: Rhythm is about the only thing I can do decently at this point. For a few months, I spent a lot of time just practicing the movements for le pompe. Now I'm working on developing a good tremelo strum to use with my rhythm playing.

I am finding some success already with this routine. I think I'll continue it. I'm making it a point to stay relaxed and avoid tension and embed good technique into my muscle memory. I used to try to rush things, now I'm putting in the necessary leg work.

BluesBop Harry

Ok. Since you feel you've already developed a solid rhythm foundation and assuming you already know the chord changes a lot of songs (A good list of must know tunes can be found at Gonzalo Bergara's youtube channel and Denis Chang's new excelent playalongs)... You won't need to work as hard on rhythm anymore, unless of course you want to become the next Nousche Rosenberg!
I'd say the next step would be to develop some lead chops...


I'll PM you some suggestions for working on soloing right away, they have worked great for me and my students

jackspoon

Hey harry, any chance you could pm me those soloing ideas? I'm at a similar stage and could really use some inspiration! I would be most grateful.

Jeff Moore

Your route towards becoming the musician you want to be, might start with being as useful to others as possible or it may be to develop your own voice. Nothing wrong with either nor some combination.
If you tend to want to invent things, I wouldn't hesitate. Whether or not the licks I practice are unique, I truly don't know, seems unlikely, but that's what I practice. Why not?, nobody walks quite the same as anybody else do they? Would be strange if they did?

There's a tension between Django's idiosycratic style and his virtuosity. The latter must have been borrowed largely?, the former he had to have invented at some level. His contemporaries don't sound like each other to much. I'm thinking especially of Aleman.
Sorry if I've moved off your question of how much of what aspect to practice, but I thought a different lens on it might be ok. I don't have an answer to your exact question anyway.

tacosandbeer

I have my students work on their rhythm playing and picking while working on repertoire. I don't see a reason to separate it into three parts. When they work on rhythm, they do it to a song. When they work on their picking, again, it's done to the changes of a song. It's easy to adapt exercises to songs. By doing something like this you end up working on repertoire by default. Mi dos centavos.

javier

tacosandbeer wrote:

I have my students work on their rhythm playing and picking while working on repertoire. I don't see a reason to separate it into three parts. When they work on rhythm, they do it to a song. When they work on their picking, again, it's done to the changes of a song. It's easy to adapt exercises to songs. By doing something like this you end up working on repertoire by default. Mi dos centavos.

I think that's a great point. I definitely don't like slowing the learning down if I don't have to. This is a great technique. I'll be trying this. Thanks.