How to improve the most important skill a musician needs?

[Knavery]

I find this extremely weird. So when you're practicing a song, do you just start at the beginning after your first mistake? Or do you just carry on after a measure or two?

When I'm learning a song, I try to play through the entire thing making many mistakes along the way. I make a mental note of where my problem areas lie and then I work on those pieces individually until I have them nailed down. Then I try to play the entire song again--rinse and repeat.

 

[superheavyfunk]

I'm sure this has already been mentioned (I didn't read all 5 pages) but even if it has, it's worth mentioning again:

Stopping every time you make a mistake reinforces it. Basically, you're creating the habit of screwing up the same part. The best thing you can do is to keep trudging through the whole song and then afterwards isolate the part that you're getting wrong and work on that separately.

This will make it much easier to then add that part back in once you get it locked. Good luck!

 

[Grinderman]

 

[vmas]

To paraphrase Eddie van Halen:
If you make a mistake, smile, and make it again so the audience thinks that you did it on purpose.
If I make a mistake during practice, I will play through, then make a notation of the mistake either on the sheet music or in a notebook. Writing it down helps me to visualize and remember the mistake.
I find most of my mistakes come from either loss of focus or being so into the groove that I forget where the band is in the song.
If I really lose my place, I will give some muted thumps with the groove of the song until I find my place again

 

[Grinderman]

I find this extremely weird. So when you're practicing a song, do you just start at the beginning after your first mistake? Or do you just carry on after a measure or two?

When I'm learning a song, I try to play through the entire thing making many mistakes along the way. I make a mental note of where my problem areas lie and then I work on those pieces individually until I have them nailed down. Then I try to play the entire song again--rinse and repeat.

Could be either one, it depends on where I'm at in the process. I do what I think my learning process needs most in the moment. It also depends on how much time I have. Sometimes I'll keep replaying a section of a song over and over for a few minutes at a time for a few days just hone muscle memory and develop fluidity.

For example, a couple weeks ago I wanted to refamiliarizing myself with Panic in Detroit, from Aladdin Sane. I kept playing the first section (He looked a lot like Che Guevara,), after the intro, over and over, off and on again, casually--5 to 10 minutes here and there--over the course of about a week, until it felt effortless.

 

[LBS-bass]

For me; what I do in practice translates to what I do in performance ... that is what practice is for.

I can fully appreciate where the OP is coming from. When I started playing bass I was focused on playing the right notes and I wanted to correct mistakes as soon as they happened. It is also where a mentor \ teacher can help as I think it is one of the really bad habits I picked up that is rarely addressed on a beginner video lesson anywhere.

It took me a long time to get out of this habit and it was only when I started playing with others that I really had to force myself to keep going when I mis-fretted or just plain screwed up a note. Time doesn't go backwards; I couldn't correct what had gone. I just had to get on with it and do my best to keep the groove even if my brain was frazzled and I couldn't remember the notes or while I'm trying to get myself back on track.

I agree that if it has become an automatic habit you might need to address it, and I suppose I should make a distinction between "learning," "practice" and "rehearsing."

All three of these things are distinctly different and when I am learning something it has proven to have zero value to not acknowledge my mistakes and fix them. I have spent countless hours listening to a drummer who doesn't do this; he blows through his practice material over and over again and doesn't even notice half the mistakes he makes, or if he does, he never fixes them. That's not effective practice. He hasn't bothered to learn the material properly yet, but he's already in the phase of treating practice like a dress rehearsal.

There's an element of confidence that doesn't often get discussed here. When I know the material well, that is to say when I have learned it thoroughly, I am already 1) prone to fewer mistakes and 2) able to easily move past the ones I still make because I know what I did and where I am supposed to be. If you're the type who stumbles over these mistakes once you really know the music, you might have to practice being more smooth in this regard. There's probably a time and a place for each approach and, for me, where you're at with that depends on how well you've done in the learning phase.

 

[landrybass]

I always find it amazing how little people care about live music. They don't care about your bass, your tone, your chops, your effects, and especially your mistakes.

 

[vindibona1]

I've (unusually) glanced through 5 pages of responses, many of which are similar. But I think I'd like to approach things a bit differently. Everyone agrees that we all make mistakes. We mostly agree that a break in sound and/or a breach of rhythm/timing is more disturbing than the mistake itself. But based on how you react to the errors tells me something about the way you approach the music.

As a bass player there are two main things we all acknowledge we are responsible for- Rhythm and notes. But there is one other thing that is rarely talked about: Musicality. One of the essentials of musicality is phrasing. In other words, even if you only have one singular pitch to play over several measures you still must create musical idea out of it. That's what good drummers and percussionists do. We as bass players have and different rhythms, notes and accents whether we are playing the same or different notes. So what I'm going to suggest is that you not only study the notes, but study the PHRASING and musical idea, and how you will shape it as each phrase becomes a total musical message.

What am I suggesting but more importantly exactly why?
If you understand what each musical phrase should sound like EXACTLY down to each accent you will KNOW the music even if your fingers go to the wrong place. As others have said, you have to learn the music first. But in the process of learning the music you MUST learn to understand the musical phrasing within it so you understand that each phrase has a message that links to other phrases/musical messages. But if you know where the beginning and end of each phrase is, how each phrase is connected- and focus on the phrase and make it your mission, your prime directive to play each phrase as one entity, an individual missed note or two will become meaningless because you are making music, not playing notes. In other words, if you play the message and not the notes, the mistakes become meaningless. Be a musician and not a bass player and you will find that if you can change your focus as described above you will contribute more to your band and probably make fewer mistakes because of it.

 

[HelpImaRock]

There's a lot of anxiety in playing and performing. Essentially, I learned how to practice not until I got it right, but until I couldn't get it wrong.

One part of this process was lowering my overall anxiety. I've always had day jobs and a career and music is something I do for fun. I was bringing my daily anxiety to my escape, and then getting frustrated when everything wasn't perfect. Allowing myself to get more sleep, get away from my daily cycles, and learn how to be calmer overall, ended up helping my abilities on the instrument because I was able to approach it with a clearer head.

More specific to making music, one day I started holding my breath when I played. I was worried I would keep repeating my previous mistakes. I had to learn how to allow myself to make mistakes so I could keep practice anxiety at bay. Then, I would go back and only play the sections I made mistakes in until i couldn't get them wrong. Then play the entire passage again and repeat.

 

[MrBeta]

Everyone, I mean everyone including your music hero's make clams some times. It happens, maybe it is that lady in the front who is trying to make a spectacle of herself, or some crazy person on the dance floor. I remember many moons ago (when I was still a drummer) we played a private party (a well paying gig too) and the wife of the host decided to dance between the front line and me, taking off her clothes. Yup, major clam. I had to close my eyes. Lead player looks back to give me the eye for the clam. He lose's it big time, wank, squak, guitar in park. The same guy could never deal with a drum solo where I would go off time and then back on at the end. It was priceless to see Jerry totally messing up with his face dropped off as he gawked.

How do you get over stopping? Like everything else in music: Practice, Practice, Practice. The show must go on. The music has to too. In the end it is a mind set. I ain't stopping for nothing! Been places where the power went out in the middle of a song with a packed dance floor. I the drummer never stopped I kept the floor going for a good 5 minutes before the power came back up. Never missed a beat because I had made those mistakes in practice and some times at gigs. You will learn.

One more story. We played this very popular club in Sacramento, Shire Road Pub. I blew thru the start of a change. What I did to recover was magnificent. We had it on tape too. I listened to the tape a zillion times and could never figure out how to do what I did to recover. It was like some one with real monster talent took over and saved my butt.

Clams we all make em. And here is the insight you need most. The difference between an Amateur and a Professional is not the lack of mistakes, it is how they recover from those mistake. Mistakes happen, a pro forges ahead and often that mistake provides a different insight into the part blown. So learn from those mistakes, embrace the fact that yup I ain't no machine, I am a human and I will make mistakes.

As an aside have you ever heard a recording where there is a mistake left in place because all that surrounds it is so great. Or every watched a show and some one will look at one of the other guys because they pinched off a mistake. If you pay attention you may even see them laugh and just keep on going.

Good luck man. It's a journey and a road ALL OF US have traveled.

best......

 

[MrBeta]

Now, I'm fully aware that I may be too hard on myself, and perhaps shouldn't stop the tape for every little mistake, but that's just how I've treated these mistakes (and my recordings) in the past.

Stop the recording when the songs is over.

 

[BrassedOn]

Now, I'm fully aware that I may be too hard on myself, and perhaps shouldn't stop the tape for every little mistake, but that's just how I've treated these mistakes (and my recordings) in the past.

Stop the recording when the songs is over.

Along those lines, it can be hard to improve the "whole" like a whole song, so one approach is to take smaller bites as a smaller "whole" to deal with. That can mean recording the whole think then prioritizing one small section or phrase as the "whole" for that moment.

A mixed approach to recording (which is good prep for performance) can be something like this. Good to have a recording to start, like the original or a play-along as a mp3 file and into GarageBand or some way to multitrack.

• Learn a rough version of a song, a song with some sections like intro verse chorus bridge solo outro. I mean rough.
  
• Try recording a scratch track with whatever errors. Maybe mix a couple passes together. Still rough. If you can, change the track speed and record at 75% tempo if possible.
• Then re-record shorter sections or phrases. Step by step master one section and have it recorded, even piece by piece.
• This is actually practice in discuss. So go back and record a section like the verse as a whole. Etc for each section.
  
• Then, try recording larger chunks then the whole thing. Seems like work but it can work.

This is part-to-whole practice. But taking bite-size challenges, and the putting them together can build accuracy and fluency. That and slow slow practice might work and complement each other.

 

[dasherf17]

"The first rule is: Don't stop. The second rule is: Keep going."
-Frank Zappa

I played guitar in a 3 piece a bunch of years ago...we were doing a lead break and our bass player went into this fabulous bit that just blew us, the drummer and me, mind you, away.
We praised him on break for a great job with it...
He said "aw, shucks, I got lost an' I was just makin' stuff up!"
True story...Dean, if you're on this forum, HI!!
Message me...

 

[HelpImaRock]

This is a really great article about staying out of your head.

Jazz Guru Bill Frisell's Top Ten Tips For Guitarists