Practicing Trends?

[Judge2003]

What's up

I really aim to improve my playing, but I feel that what I do to practice doesn't really help that much.

All I usually do is play or learn songs, usually above or at my current skill level. Or I just jam away to myself with a metronome until I find a combo of notes that I feel I should write down

A lot of you are much better players then I, so I was very curios as to what your practicing ruitines consist of

I know all(?) the scale shapes, I have a good understanding of music theory, but I really lack when trying to play improv and figuring out a good line under a melody.

So please help me, and thank you so much for looking.

[pklima]

Every day:

play some exercises from Simandl book 1 (possibly an octave up) to drill muscle memory for shifting

play some randomly chosen melodies from a jazz or classical fake book to practice playing more melodic musical stuff

improvise a walking bassline to one of the above melodies

[bluemeanies]

I usually alternate what i do each day from the day before so i'm not getting stuck in the same thing, but i usually do a number of scales, and a few short riffs. I went out and bought a learning book to get some songs i haven't heard, and a jazz book to help with a lot of my technique. With the riffs, i usually do them in different keys. I do it how it is in the book then move up keys and it really helps with tone aswell as getting all over the neck. After i am done all that, then i work on songs. Not only have a warmed up quite a bit, but i sound much better then if i jumped right into songs.

[The Clap]

Originally Posted by Judge2003

What's up

I really aim to improve my playing, but I feel that what I do to practice doesn't really help that much.

All I usually do is play or learn songs, usually above or at my current skill level. Or I just jam away to myself with a metronome until I find a combo of notes that I feel I should write down

A lot of you are much better players then I, so I was very curios as to what your practicing ruitines consist of

I know all(?) the scale shapes, I have a good understanding of music theory, but I really lack when trying to play improv and figuring out a good line under a melody.

So please help me, and thank you so much for looking.

I count listening as a great portion of my practicing. If you're got the shape and sound of things under your hands already, but are having trouble with improvisation, listening to new and different music/musicians can do a lot in terms of giving you new things to hear, and thus, play in improvisation. I find that my improvised playing often unconciously echoes the style of whatever music I'm really into at the time. Sometimes it can be easy to keep the same music around and listen to the same CDs over and again, but I find that my improvisational kit is only as diverse and interesting as the music I listen to. In additon to always listening, I like to practice playing at excrutiatingly slow tempos because it's generally more difficult to groove hard at slower speeds; and if you can make people tap their feet at half-tempo, you can spin their heads when it's time to burn.