How do you balance your practice time?

[BassPun]

Starting taking bass seriously about 2 months ago cause playing sax in my apartment at night might get me shot. Tracking my focused practice and I'm about 105 hours in, spread across the 2 months. What's becoming a problem is that I'm getting to the point where I feel like I need way more time than I have to dedicate to each aspect of my playing.

I have usually about 20 hours a week (sometimes more) that I can dedicate to practice time, coming down to about 2-3 hours on weeknights, and 8+ on the weekend days.

So, if I assume that I only have the minimum (2 hours), right now I might structure it something like this:

- Warmups/Technique/Scales/Patterns (30 minutes)
- Sight Reading/Notation/Books (30 Minutes)
- Jazz Standards/Walking Bass Practice (30 Minutes)
- Song Learning by Ear/Transcriptions (30 Minutes)

When I have extra time, I divvy it out to what feels most important (right now that's song learning.) The problem is that, yes, I feel like I am making small incremental gains over time with this, but it feels glacially slow. I know, based on my current connections from playing sax, that my fastest path to gigs is through learning the set list to a wedding/event band corporation. Unfortunately, I've only gotten about 10 songs down in 2 months because I have to balance learning these songs against everything else. Luckily though, I have tried to front load and learn all of the hardest and busiest songs first, so the further along I get down the set list, the easier it should get.

A solution could be dropping reading practice to 2-3 times a week only, and use all of the extra time for song learning. I just can't see myself slacking on technique and scale practice because of how much I've gotten out of it.

Any of you guys have this issue? How do you solve it?

 

[Bob_Ross]

I'm getting to the point where I feel like I need way more time than I have to dedicate to each aspect of my playing.

If it's any consolation: ^^^That never changes!

- Warmups/Technique/Scales/Patterns (30 minutes)
- Sight Reading/Notation/Books (30 Minutes)
- Jazz Standards/Walking Bass Practice (30 Minutes)
- Song Learning by Ear/Transcriptions (30 Minutes)

Since you say you've only been playing bass seriously for 2 months, that seems like a fine division of focus...for now. What I think you'll discover is that as you become more comfortable on the instrument, the time you'll need to spend -- and the time you should spend imho -- on that first category will go down. Way down.

Also, depending on how seriously you want to focus on Jazz, you may find it valuable to not consider those last two categories as separate areas of focus. You can work on your jazz standards & walking by learning songs by ear, and the bonus is that that will more closely approximate real-world gigging opportunities.

 

[ryco]

2 hrs a day every day is great! especially if you have a day job.
Maybe an hour before going to work and an hour+ in the evening.
I'm retired with lots of time but still break my time into a morning and and afternoon session.

Personally I'd change this schedule to 20 minutes "Warmups/Technique/Scales/Patterns"
and dedicate the left over 10 minutes to "Song Learning by Ear".

Keep reading = the more you do it the faster it gets. You'll be sight reading pretty quick and it becomes something you just do, instead of something you work on. Sight reading standadard notation is a really good skill to have. Learn treble clef, too

HAVE FUN!!

 

[pmatz2]

If it's any consolation: ^^^That never changes!




Since you say you've only been playing bass seriously for 2 months, that seems like a fine division of focus...for now. What I think you'll discover is that as you become more comfortable on the instrument, the time you'll need to spend -- and the time you should spend imho -- on that first category will go down. Way down.

Also, depending on how seriously you want to focus on Jazz, you may find it valuable to not consider those last two categories as separate areas of focus. You can work on your jazz standards & walking by learning songs by ear, and the bonus is that that will more closely approximate real-world gigging opportunities.

Since your overall goal is to learn songs : you could probably combine the last three sections - as your working on your reading , read songs rather than just sight reading exercises

 

[LarryGK]

OP- Man I thought I was reading about myself right down to the genre you play and other details! In my view being into bass coming from 25 years of jazz trumpet (past), this is what I am doing but add taking from a pro. Currently Danny Mo a Berklee prof. But 2 hours a day with that split will get you there and you are right: so many may get by with finger patterns etc without knowing the notes they are playing or why. I'm old school that way and think you're segmenting correctly. But yes, at the end of it all it is about the song and in the case of jazz add writing you own solos to start once you are ready for that. Simple changes to start, etc. Good luck to you. We all start somewhere.