How do you practice?

[mingusitis]

As stated...for what duration? What exactly are you practicing and for how long? So many different things to work on I find it hard to get it all done. From learning a song to working on technique, to building up my improv skills, to learning my theory. What EXACTLY do YOU do?

 

[klokker]

I'm pretty song oriented. I have probably 100+ songs I've learned over the past year for the bar band, so I play though a few every day, maybe add stuff here and there. The praise band I'm in does 5 new ones every three weeks. I spend most of my time refining and learning new songs.

I have enough theory for what I do, never think about it. I also have a series of warm ups that take about half an hour. Probably half of that is getting super fluid and tight with Hannon warmups designed for piano, great for developing finger independance in the left hand. I bar with my index finger and practice hammer on and pull offs in various scale patterns up and down the keyboard. I've worked hard at getting fast down on the lower frets.

I do right hand warm ups as well moving back and forth from sting to string in different patterns. There's several hand position patterns I work on.

2 hours a day minimum. But most of it is refining old songs and learning new ones.

 

[skychief]

learn chord structure ( 3 & 4 note). Then write write out some crazy-sick charts which make no musical sense whatsoever. Play them on the fly.

Then when in a "real world" situation, anything thrown in front of me seems simple by comparison.

 

[JimmyM]

I warm up just banging around the neck for a couple minutes, then I do a handful of chord arpeggios for 5 minutes, then I work on music. These days I'm working on my reading a little more. I have to do a fair amount of sight reading on my gigs and I haven't quite been giving it the attention it deserves lately.

 

[GigJones]

As stated...for what duration? What exactly are you practicing and for how long? So many different things to work on I find it hard to get it all done. From learning a song to working on technique, to building up my improv skills, to learning my theory. What EXACTLY do YOU do?

I start out most practice sessions doing two-octave scales for whatever mode I happen to be working on that week.
This week is B-Lydian. I set the metronome for a desired bpm and play the mode in quarter notes, eighth notes, triplets, and 16th notes.

I then use the same mode and play the triad and 7th chord, over two octaves, using quarter notes, eighth notes, triplets, and 16th notes.

Next, I’ll either play the maj7, min7, dom7 7th chords around the Circle of Fifths (ascending/descending) or play every mode, ascending/descending, in every key around the Circle of Fifths.

Lastly, I’ll either work on transcribing a song, currently I’m working on Marcus Miller’s bass line on ”Either Way”
(Dave Grusin’s “Mountain Dance&#8221 or working my way through Mike Downes' “The Jazz Bass Line Book”.

My sessions usually last about an hour and a half.

 

[Picktastic]

I kind of just trade off working on scales and arpeggios or leaning and perfecting songs for the blues jam band. Probably about 2-3 hours a day 4-5 days a week with one 2-3 hour rehearsal per week which I count as practice.

 

[lowfreq33]

Most of my practicing is charting songs for gigs, then running them until I feel comfortable. I sing as well, so songs that I do both on get a little extra attention.

I've been playing about 25 years, and I have no desire to be a bass superstar a la Wooten, Marcus, etc, so honestly I don't spend a lot of time working on new musical concepts or running scales with a metronome. I'm more song oriented these days, and honestly if I have time to woodshed it's going to be vocals.

 

[ACalbass]

I separate work from practice,mainly.
If i have to work,all I do is to play the songs for the next gig.
For practice,I always take new things in any genre,one day could be a transcription from a sax/guitar solo or melody,another would be to adapt a certain song chords and melody to bass,it sometimes works wonderfully,sometimes it doesn't, but always help you to discover new chord inversions you could use for other stuff.
As silly as it could seem,trying to find things in other people's playing that you can adapt to your style became a regular practice routine for me.
The hardest the better,in my case,because of the challenge.(trying to play "some skunk funk" horns arrangements in bass is what i am talking about,as an example)

 

[mcblahflooper94]

The best way to practice is jamming. It's the true way of "practicing" and, a more appropriate word, "exercising" music. It's important to know scales, modes, chords, etc. but it'd be like practicing a foreign language by simply reading through and studying verb forms (she is, they are, we are, I am). This is all well and good, but you shouldn't need to bring your verb chart to speak to someone in a foreign language!

Buy the Music Lesson by Victor Wooten, it will completely change how you play and feel music. It did for me.