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Building Muscle Memory: Practice 6 Hours a Day???

#61
Interest and attention have a big role to play in learning - and retaining information.

If I'm learning a difficult song, I agree with Fergie - over a week I'll pick it up 20-40 minutes at a time, maybe 3 or 4 times a day on a weekend but only once a day during the week - but your brain will work out any problems you're having in the spaces in between.

I really like the "The Inner Game of Golf" (more than tennis) for identifying how to break things down (any physical activity) and focusing on body feeling is important - not just Zen woo woo stuff.

At a late age (47), having never played soccer before, I joined a men's indoor team and sucked. But I practiced close dribbling and ball control via Coerver vids 15 mins a day. One day (18 months later) I juked a defender and keeper with a Cruyff turn and passed the ball into an empty net. Shocked my team, but I had been cutting that turn into a 5' x 7' rug every day in slow mo. Now I have a lot of skill and can play with my head up.

Sorry for the detour. One last thing (queue Steve Martin "What I believe")

It's way more valuable to be getting reps playing with people and practicing than only playing alone, IMO. Join a band. If a song is too hard, fake it for awhile. Eventually you'll get to a spot where you can play it, and you'll have developed a repetoir of music instead of just a bunch of techniques.
 
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#62
Schlyder said:
I was the same during my time in college. Study music all day in classes, teach private lessons in the evenings, and then practice my own studies after that. 16hours a day for a couple years. LOL yes it is all about repetition, no matter the skill involved. To reach a high level of performance, you must put in the time/reps.
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I should have been clearer also. You don't have to practice the same thing straight through. My 8 hours was varied and not straight through. I broke my practice in to segments.
 
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#63
I taught sports for a very long time. Correct, there is no muscle memory. There is also no set magic number of repetitions to develop a state of automaticity wherein little or no conscious thought is given to set of muscle groups performing a repetitive task.
Learning is defined as a sustained change in behavior. In order for learning to take place, certain needs need to be addressed. Food, shelter, your wife not nagging at you while your practicing. If they arent met, those needs will supersede learning.

There are different types of learning and teaching that humans respond to. VAK. Visual - show me what to do. Audio - Tell me what to do. Kinesthetic - what does it feel like. That corresponds with See-er, Do-er, Think-er, Feel-er.
If youre an engineer and have a strong technical background, finding out why you would use specific fingering and click settings and what relationships to other strings and practices will have a profound effect on learning. If you are primarily a see-er, sitting down and watching a video of the practice will do far more than knowing the theory behind it.

Finding out what works best for you will accelerate your learning far more than just going at it for extended periods of time. Bio mechanical behavioral changes are the hardest of all learning changes for many reasons. But the long and short of it is this. Practice does not make perfect, Correct movement patterns repeated make perfect. In other words, 6 hours of practice is likely to result in 5 hours, 56 minutes of learning a pattern you dont want and 4 minutes of learning a pattern you do want.
 
#64
If you truly truly love playing bass what is the rush to learn something? There is no contest. You play for you.

Loving bass should be a lifelong commitment. A journey that takes you different places musically. There are no timframes. If you truly love playing bass it's like breathing. Maybe it's just me but bass really is more of an organic thing. It's an extension of who I am. It's more than something I just play. I'm 44 and started when I was 12.

Practice what you want how you want and enjoy making music rather than how long it takes to learn something. Enjoy the ride. Life is too short. If you love it enough know what I'm saying......
 
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#68
two fingers said:
So he's a really fast guitarist that .00000000000000001% of the planet has ever heard of.
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So what? I didn't declare him my favorite musician or guitarist or anything, just somebody that can play fast and presumably knows how he got himself there and how other people can get themselves there. I only like a few of his songs.

BassLover668 said:
Fast isnt all.
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Not saying it is. But its necessary in the music I love when it is necessary, if that makes sense. I don't write fast music for the sake of it being fast; sometimes it just is fast and demands the chops to pull it off if I want it to sound killer. Fast isn't all, but that's not going to help me become tighter at faster speeds.
 
#69
Dethlateer said:
So what? I didn't declare him my favorite musician or guitarist or anything, just somebody that can play fast and presumably knows how he got himself there and how other people can get themselves there. I only like a few of his songs.



Not saying it is. But its necessary in the music I love when it is necessary, if that makes sense. I don't write fast music for the sake of it being fast; sometimes it just is fast and demands the chops to pull it off if I want it to sound killer. Fast isn't all, but that's not going to help me become tighter at faster speeds.
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OK, sorry. To stick to your question, practicing 6 hours a day is dumb. Never mind that you can literally play guitar with virtually no pressure from your fretting hand. But doing anything that much will certainly cause injury over time.

Plus, I would bet you a ton of money that he never did/does it either. He simply said that in the video so throngs (meaning dozens) of speed heads would think he's even more of a rawk gawd than they already think he is.

"Duuuuuuuuuuuuuude. He practices 42 hours a week duuuuuuuuude! He's so aaaaaaaaaaawesome!"

(He does not practice 42 hours a week.)
 
#71
Dethlateer said:
Watched a video of a very tehnically able guitarist (Lucas Mann in his "Shards of Scorched Flesh" playthrough/lesson) and he sprinkles practicing advice in there.

There's a part where he says when you're trying to develop a technique or perfect a new riff etc. to start slow with a metronome (he reccommends 60 BPM although what he practices in that split-second example might as well be 120 BPM gallops but I digress) and practice NOTHING but that thing constantly for 6 hours a day (with 5-15 minute breaks) for 2 days and up the BPM by 10 every couple days and so on. He says this is one of the most effective ways to build muscle memory.

Firstly... 6 hours a day? Is that really an acceptable practice schedule? I mean I practiced the same thing today for an hour upping the BPM by 10 about every 10 minutes and my hands ached afterwards. 6 hours seems like utter overkill. Am i mistaken?

Secondly, such a long time at the same BPM? I've heard varying opinions such as "play it x times through at this bpm and if you play it perfectly then you can speed it up, if you can't then stay at this bpm" and the method I mentioned using with just raising the BPM at intervals I felt comfortable with. Is he right and I should stick to the same BPM for 12 hours worth of practice or can I get away with either of the other methods?

Also, side question; he mentions it being important when practicing to use the absolute least amount of physical effort possible when picking and fretting. I play finger style bass. Would this approach work well with finger style or should I just pluck with a normal effort? Is he wrong and you should typically practice with a normal or even emphasized effort? Thanks
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Everybody's got their way to get better. Sadly, I am hamstrung by repetitive stress injuries, so I have to be very cerebral about my practice, and have come to terms with the fact that chasing Stanley Clarke is not in the cards :-) but the overall concepts are sound: aim for absolute perfection slowly, and gradually speed up. I also add the element of making a conscious intention to get better every time I pick the instrument up, because I don't have "reps to spare." I will also write a "focus word" in sharpie on a piece of paper front of me when I'm trying to correct a bad habit or whatever, to keep reminding me of what I am trying to achieve, since I can't necessarily dedicate even an hour to a specific technique on a given day, especially when I have other material to learn.
 
#72
JimmyM said:
Jaco used to practice every waking minute in his formative years. Didn't seem to hurt him.
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Stanley Clarke says he put in 10 hours a day. Heh, this Lucas Mann guy's putting in a pretty half a**ed effort.
 
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#74
Schlyder said:
There is no such thing as muscle memory. Call it whatever you like, but your muscles are incapable of storing memory. I AM a golf professional. LOL I don't have an instructor. I AM an instructor. And I was learning from sport scientist/performance experts about peak performance and how to attain it. And yes you can swing a golf club automatically. By that I mean you are not thinking of the mechanical processes during the act of making the swing. You are not thinking of anything but your target. The process of thinking occurs during practice and your pre-shot routine. Once you are ready to swing, the mind is focused on the target only. Sometimes in peak performance people experience "the zone" which is an even deeper level of automatic .
Google search about motor skill learning, and peak performance studies.
Also there is also no such thing as Mojo. That is just superstition.
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I hate to bust all of the "no such thing as muscle memory" guys bubble. Here's a good description of what occurs. "Muscle Memory" is Real and Here's How It Works

Being a martial arts instructor I've seen it first hand. I had a guy who had trained in our discipline 20 years previous. He came back and he was given to me his first night back. As I slowly went through the first kata (form) he followed me, watching me intently as we went. When we were done I asked "You did everything I did, right?". "Yes" he replied. I said "No, you did everything we did 20 years ago". The kata had been changed, but despite his rapt attention, his previous training took over.

No, muscles don't have the capability for "memory" on their own. But coupled with the brain, they can perform tasks that they couldn't have without previous training. Call it what you will.
 
#76
Isn't there a notion of that it takes just/at least/at most 10.000 hours to get really good at something? Whether it be music, actor, sports, arts, whatever? Any skill? I don't know but I sure didn't spend 10.000 hours for my driving license... :D I spent 20...thousand...:D

WisdomGroup - Chicago Ruby on Rails. Web Apps. iPhone Apps. iPad Apps.


Outliers (book) - Wikipedia


Throughout the publication, Gladwell repeatedly mentions the "10,000-Hour Rule", claiming that the key to achieving world-class expertise in any skill, is, to a large extent, a matter of practising the correct way, for a total of around 10,000 hours.

How you spread out these 10.000 hours daily and weekly, or yearly is up to you...
 
#77
Steve Vai, Al di Meola, and especially jazz piano great Oscar Peterson had 12 hours sessions each day. Oscar Peterson had 12 hours of pure practicing and warming up, for about three years, and then for the rest of his life he just played music, and sessions, and jams, and tours. Never ever warmed up again, or practiced. Because if you have had your honing years behind, you should be able to keep yourself that busy with just playing real music all of the time so you don't really need to get back to any practicing or honing. Practicing and re-honing and warming up is just if you have to be forced to not play anything (real music) for extended periods of time, and to some, it can be a day, or overseas flight travel. If you keep yourself busy with playing just "real" music it's just what you did when all those marathon woodshedding days got you at in the end. You just need to play after that.

Of course, not anyone, especially not any beginner, can start off by that idiotic 12 hour regime. You have to slowly get to it, so your callistenics is built up, so your hand and fingers can take that much "abuse". The key to be able to cope and get the stamina of 12 hours marathon practicing is to learn proper fingering and everything else the right way from the start on. As fast as you have the slightest DIY/home grown solutions to your fingering or hand position, the RSI will slowly creep up on you. You will just get cramped up and lactic acid, and tendonitis yada yada..

- - - - - - - - -

And when you come of age (like some of those shredders now, like Steve et al) the cells doesn't regenerate and recover at the same speed at your joints, tendons, and cartilage. As well as not to 100 percent anymore! So you must have longer breaks in between playing, so your muscles can recoupe, than you had in the younger years.

Me myself doesn't start to sound any good (on bass) at all, until after maybe 2 hours of playing time, regardless of I am practicing or playing real tunes, from start to finish. It takes a while for the calluses to build up, and then when they start to get numb enough, is when I can take more and more chances, and speed up my playing without getting too many clunkers. I do stretch before and after though.
 
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#78
Quote, anecdote from that book, which may play a certain important insight to this thread:

"Practice Makes Improvement

In 1960, while they were still an unknown high school rock band, the Beatles went to Hamburg, Germany to play in the local clubs. The group was underpaid. The acoustics were terrible. The audiences were unappreciative. So what did the Beatles get out of the Hamburg experience? Hours of playing time. Non-stop hours of playing time that forced them to get better.

As the Beatles grew in skill, audiences demanded more performances – more playing time. By 1962 they were playing eight hours per night, seven nights per week. By 1964, the year they burst on the international scene, the Beatles had played over 1,200 concerts together. By way of comparison, most bands today don't play 1,200 times in their entire career."
 
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