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Do you think you practice enough?

#23
I wish I had time to practice hours a day again, used to be 3 or so and I never got bored. Now with young child, an hour if I'm lucky. Playing in front of TV is not practice time. Spurts of 30 minutes is just no good either, I'll have to start staying up very late or getting up very early just to play. Probably up early because by the end of the day I'm beat.
 
#24
I have a stigma with the word "practice". I play at home alot, but I almost never see it as practicing. Its just playing.
Practicing is when Im working on something I have to do but may not be very good at yet and am not really into it.
 
#26
It goes in cycles. I've gone through periods where I practiced for hours every day, and probably will again. But that doesn't leave a lot of time for music creation. Recently I've been writing and recording a lot of songs. I work at it every day. My playing has improved, but my time and interest in practicing for sake of practicing is limited right now. I'm fine with that.
 
#29
I don't practice enough, never have. I do however know that it's not how much you practice but how smart you practice. You say you're not happy with your right hand technique? Find a right hand twisting note sequence and play it real slow. After a couple of days of playing the line cleanly, up the tempo by a few beets per minute. After a while you'll be able to play the line cleanly at a good speed and you right hand technique will be better in general... Boiled down - focus whatever time you spend practicing on your weaknesses.
 
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#31
Theozzycometh said:
Does anybody really feel satisfied with their daily practice routine? I know that we all hit plateaus, and I try to compare musical plateaus to working out. You'll stay on the same lifting routine for some time and make great measurable progress, then eventually hit a wall and switch some variable of your routine to break that plateau. But when it comes to bass playing I feel that I have hit a wall so hard that I can't even look at my bass without getting frustrated with myself. I have attempted to tab out a whole practice routine in text documents on my computer, like doing arpeggios in 3rds, 4ths, 5ths etc all the way up the neck of a given key. My theory and fret board knowledge is pretty on point, but I feel that my right hand is what's lacking. I'll slap and maybe accidentally hit the B string when I'm slapping the E and get angry and just put it down and go watch videos on youtube of people playing who are way better than I am. I guess my question is for anyone who believes that they have truthfully surpassed the intermediate playing level, and what they did to get to that point. I'm pretty sure the answer is just practice more... Maybe I need some kinda validation. Sorry if this text is jumbled I'm typing this after a fairly drunk jam :)
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No. Who has time? I'm busy posting to TB.
 
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#32
Theozzycometh said:
Does anybody really feel satisfied with their daily practice routine? I know that we all hit plateaus, and I try to compare musical plateaus to working out. You'll stay on the same lifting routine for some time and make great measurable progress, then eventually hit a wall and switch some variable of your routine to break that plateau. But when it comes to bass playing I feel that I have hit a wall so hard that I can't even look at my bass without getting frustrated with myself. I have attempted to tab out a whole practice routine in text documents on my computer, like doing arpeggios in 3rds, 4ths, 5ths etc all the way up the neck of a given key. My theory and fret board knowledge is pretty on point, but I feel that my right hand is what's lacking. I'll slap and maybe accidentally hit the B string when I'm slapping the E and get angry and just put it down and go watch videos on youtube of people playing who are way better than I am. I guess my question is for anyone who believes that they have truthfully surpassed the intermediate playing level, and what they did to get to that point. I'm pretty sure the answer is just practice more... Maybe I need some kinda validation. Sorry if this text is jumbled I'm typing this after a fairly drunk jam :)
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I practice less now than ever. I still feel like I get plenty of practice. Ive been playing a couple decades now gone through all kinds of practice routines but the music I play is very simple. I'm not playing speed funk or prog metal or anything. I used to practice more just so my hands didn't get so tired during longer shows, but I started using a compressor about a year ago and think over the last year my right hand has really lightened up, not attacking the strings so hard these days. I also think one of the things that's benefited me and probably cut down on my practice time is I listen to music a lot more now than I did when I was younger.
 
#33
I use to practice 5 hrs a day play out on weekends and still thought I wasnt practicing enough ,whenever I heard someone else play I always thought they sounded better. Probably wasn,t so but it was a good thing . I remember the first time I saw Jaco play at Seve south as soon as I got home I grabbed my bass and I was trying to do everything I thought he was doing, very inspiring. One day I was walking down 6 ave I stopped him he offered to give me lessons unfortunately I didn,t take them however I did go watch him whenever he would play and each time I new I wasn,t practicing enough.
 
#35
I swing back and forth on this. There will be some weeks where I get home from work, pick up bass and play till I go to bed; literally. Other weeks I'll only play for maybe an hour three times during the week. That's just me solo. My band has two 4 hour practices a week, on top of gigging / recording. So I get quite a bit of bass time every week on way or the other.
 
#36
Theozzycometh said:
Yeah but I'll watch a documentary on Jimi Hendrix or John Frusciante talking about practicing hours a day... I mean how? How do you keep entertained for that long EVERY day. Yeah some days i'm feeling it and will tear shi* up on the bass then sometimes days go by and i haven't even touched it
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i practice 1.5 hrs every night and usually 2-3 each on sat/sun.

Its easy for me - kids are grown up and off in college. Its freakin cold and snowing out. It's either practice or start the remodeling/painting my wife wants done.
easy choice.
 
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#37
Short answer: No

After spending more than a decade in the Army I floated from job to job trying to figure out what to do with my life. I was playing in bands as much as I could, always having music to practice. I was taking lessons again. I was really developing as a musician. Then I finally figured it out, I ended up working as an Emergency Medical Technician in busy city here in New Jersey. I loved the work. So I enrolled in a paramedic program, which is a three year academic program with over 1000 hours of clinical time working in the emergency room and on the paramedic units. Between work and school I usually get a day off every nine to twelve days.

I had to quit the band. My practice time has dropped off to a mere hour or two a week. When I do practice... or just jam along to my iPod... I can feel the rust. Last week I played some odd meter stuff and it just "felt wrong".

I am in the home stretch of school. I will sit for boards later this year and (hopefully) begin working as a medic. With the higher pay and 12 hour/4 days a week work schedule I should have a lot more time for music. I made this choice, and I am happy with it. But being so disconnected from music has been really rough on me.

After boards, I plan on finding a teacher again. I'd like to find a band to knock the rust off with. I have a plan, I'm sticking with it.
 
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#38
Reading your post I am not sure whether the issue you are sharing is the amount of time you practice or the fact that you feel you can easil bring yourself down when practice does not work out. We all have good and bad days, some days nothing seems to work... A good thing in that case is to just put down the bass and do something else before coming back to it... Or pick up another instrument. These days I am teaching myself guitar and drums, and since the way of playing bass, guitar and drums is very different, there is little chance I will feel like I suck at these 3 instruments on the same day :D
 
#40
How much you need to practice depends on so many things. It depends on whether you play professionally or for fun. It depends on what gigs you have coming up. It probably also depends on how long you have been playing.

I play in a band right now and usually just run through the setlist when im at home. At practice, we usually run through the set if we have a gig coming up. If things get slow, we work on writing. Right now we usually practice once and run through the set but then other times we just work on the new song.

Every once in a while I get together with just the drummer and we jam out.
 

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