Keep practicing a hard song or come back to it - How to decide

[Sav'nBass]

You have been playing for a year plus a couple of months. There will be difficult songs. I know some songs that when I first heard them In thought no way will I be able to play this.. Today I can play them.. One thing I will say is listen listen listen ... and give yourself time to grow a a player.

 

[WhenTheDrumsStops]

It depends on what bassline you are trying to learn and at what level of playing you are at. For beginner players I would recommend to keep going at it every day for X amount of minutes to get the muscle memory of the bassline in your fingers and to get the techniques under control. If you are more seasoned/experienced then you should just play what you feel like playing and improve what you want to improve whenever you feel like doing it. Unless you are in music college like Berklee etc then there should be no pressure, music should be spontanious and creative, in the moment. At one point I myself lost the fun of playing a bit, because I was to focussed on learning specific basslines and techniques, I pressured myself to much. After a break of almost not playing for several years I got my mojo back again and I only play now what I want to play and whenever I want to play, not because I 'need' to progress or 'need' to learn a line (or to compete with other players - A hidden 'drive' a lot of us have subconsciously).

 

[rtav]

I practice a lot of very difficult songs - Dream Theater's most insane stuff, Vai, Liquid Tension Experiment, ELP, and I'm working on some Dregs, Zappa and (maybe) Plini - my new obsession - currently.

I say keep at it, keep struggling, keep playing, but check if you're doing these things first:

1. Slow it down. This is the single most important factor in learning anything - whether it's YYZ or Dream Theater's Instrumedley (both on my Youtube channel - shameless plug alert). I have a couple of apps that slow down a song without changing its pitch (although I can change it's pitch if I need to in the app) and loop sections of the song. This allows me to take sections, slow them down as much as I want and loop them until I get it right.

2. Get it right. This comes after you've slowed it down, learned the passages and have the basic thing under your fingers. Take the time needed to get it right, because the quickest way to speed something up, IME, is to know it thoroughly. The better you know something, the more it is part of muscle memory, the faster you can play it. So learn the song, play it slowly over and over and over until you really get the whole thing right.

3. Bring it up to speed. I know several DT songs (Metropolis Part I, Ytse Jam, Erotomania, Dance of Eternity) so I thought Instrumedley, which is a mash up of those songs with some others, would be an easy hill to take. After all, I already have 90% of it under my fingers. WRONG. I spent 3 months, from September to December last year, focusing on that song - and the hardest part was getting it up to full speed because it is SO much faster than the studio versions I've know for years. I would get to the "Change of Seasons" section and stumble, trying to get it up to speed by changing finger positions several times, etc., or the "Dance of Eternity" section after the LTE part, where it is too fast to think about as it comes at you. I basically spent three months just bringing it up to speed, but once I did, it is now a part of my routine.

I think that if you decide to take a break, make it a week at the most, because it will go faster than it will come.

 

[mojomike001]

I like to take a hard song and get it out of the way by breaking it down to some simple shorthand cheat notes that can allow me to play it without spending too much time memorizing it. Then I can move on to the easier ones.

 

[bfields]

Random thoughts from a mediocre bassist:

1. I rarely practice the same thing for more than about 10 minutes. I take one little passage, give it my best shot, then move on. There's always tomorrow. Don't give up on a hard song if you really want to play it, but: this music thing is definitely a marathon, not a sprint. Just because you can't get a song down in a month doesn't mean you won't get it in a year. Just be patient and keep chipping away at it, a little bit each day. Meanwhile, keep working on other stuff too.

2. I used to spend a lot of time repeating passages while inching up the metronome notch by notch, and I came to hate it. There's this seductive idea that if you can do it well at one speed, surely it can't be *too* much harder to do it just one notch faster. So you think you'll get there eventually without really doing anything special, just a lot of repetition and gradual speeding up.

But it's never that simple. What actually happens is the initial slow practice works great, you learn the part and make noticeable progress, you start to feel comfortable, so you move up a few notches with no trouble, and again, and again, and then... you hit a wall. And you can spend days and weeks just pounding away at that wall, that top metronome marking where you can sometimes make it through. Eventually maybe you'll make progress that way, but it's slow and frustrating, and you make yourself really tense by practicing at a speed where you're always just on the verge of screwing up.

So instead the way I think of it these days is, I really only play at two tempos: too slow and too fast. When I play fast, it's not for *practice* exactly, it's more of an experiment. I'm trying to figure out which parts I can do, which parts I can't, and troubleshoot the parts I can't. Does it look like the problem might be the fingering? The right hand, the left? What if I forget the fretting hand entirely, just lay it across the strings to mute, and do the right-hand alone, does it work then or do I still screw up? What if I try just that *one* string crossing? Etc., etc.

From those experiments I get some ideas about what to try: maybe it's a new fingering, maybe something else. Then I switch to the actual practicing part, which I do at the "too slow" tempo--so slow that I'm almost bored. This is where I memorize the new sequence of motions I want to try out. After maybe a few days of that, I start to feel comfortable with the new motions, so I try a few more of those "too fast" experiments and see where I stand. Rinse, repeat.

Anyway, just some ideas. Good luck, be patient with yourself, have fun!

 

[IamGroot]

You have a good regimen and practice habits. Congratulations.

Practice daily at a tempo that you can play perfectly and then at a stretch tempo.

A key point is to isolate what is keeping you from progressing and work on that. It may be a single thing like shifting or picking finger alternation or a combination of things. Slow it down and analyze whats causing you to scuff up. If you can't figure it out, go to a teacher you trust.

 

[IamGroot]

Also, if you haven't done this already, schedule a single instruction session to check and tune up your technique.

 

[bfields]

Set it aside and your brain relaxes and continues to work the problem. Later you when you pick it up again, often you can play a little faster and cleaner.

People that need to memorize lots of stuff use "spaced repetition", where they quiz themselves on the material at intervals that increase each time they recall correctly. So, maybe they first wait a day to review, then two days, the four.... Apparently those gaps trick your brain into shifting that information into longer-term memory? Anyway, I sometimes wonder if there might be something similar going on with practicing, which might explain why spacing out practice of something can be more effective than cramming.

 

[lat]

Sometimes after an extended sabbatical from playing, such as a few weeks, I find my technical abilities are actually enhanced.

Truth beyond words... Your brain / muscle memory is working it out while you are worrying about the rest of your life. The human body is an amazing thing.

 

[Wasnex]

Random thoughts from a mediocre bassist:


2. I used to spend a lot of time repeating passages while inching up the metronome notch by notch, and I came to hate it. There's this seductive idea that if you can do it well at one speed, surely it can't be *too* much harder to do it just one notch faster. So you think you'll get there eventually without really doing anything special, just a lot of repetition and gradual speeding up.

I believe you definitely reach a point where you hit a wall with bumping the tempo, and continued practice is unlikely to help push through. This is where I think setting something aside helps, because it allows your brain to work through the problem unencumbered by the frustration and stress that comes with conscious focus on the task. A very large part of our mental process is actually below the level of consciousness. This article should give you some idea of what I am getting at: There Is No Such Thing as Conscious Thought

My belief is when you focus too heavily on something you can form a mental block that prevents you from progressing. By setting the task aside, it allows your brain to unwind, work things out, and eliminate the mental block. Then, when you truly master a fast technical passage, you play it with very little conscious awareness of the fine details...it just sort of happens.

There have been several times where I was tasked with a challenging piece and never really got 100% there by the concert date. Months later I pulled out the piece for fun, and found I could play it faster than required.

I do think each of us has a certain wall that limits how fast we can play. This is determined by our level of training and possibly by our physiology; how fast our nerves fire and how fast our muscles respond...I am no speed demon, but there was an extended time where I had lots of fast technical music to learn and perform. To be honest, I was a bit surprised by how much progress I made, and how fast I could play when my skill peaked.

 

[Wasnex]

You have a good regimen and practice habits. Congratulations.

Practice daily at a tempo that you can play perfectly and then at a stretch tempo.

A key point is to isolate what is keeping you from progressing and work on that. It may be a single thing like shifting or picking finger alternation or a combination of things. Slow it down and analyze whats causing you to scuff up. If you can't figure it out, go to a teacher you trust.

Another option is to consider different finger patterns (in both hands).

 

[Sean Parsons]

Taking a break and coming back fresh isnt a bad idea.

Like others have said, when you do come back -

Practice slow. Half speed.

Quarantise the tricky bits. Practice them in isolation. Really slow, really fast and at normal tempo.

 

[MalcolmAmos]

………...My question is, how do you decide if a song is just too hard for your current level or whether you are not practicing correctly.

First decision would be how often will we be playing this song. I can always dumb it down and get enough for this upcoming gig by following the chords and laying down a generic bass line (R-5-8-5).

If something we will be using all the time -- work on the sections you are having problems with. And yes some songs are beyond my skill level and here I have been known to lay out.

 

[cheechi]

People that need to memorize lots of stuff use "spaced repetition", where they quiz themselves on the material at intervals that increase each time they recall correctly. So, maybe they first wait a day to review, then two days, the four.... Apparently those gaps trick your brain into shifting that information into longer-term memory?

I use this technique between songs when practicing to work on getting faster at a particular passage or chord shape. It can still get repetitive but at least you space it out with songs in between instead of over and over in one moment.

 

[jdarctic]

Thanks a lot for a lot of great advice. And I especially take away from this that I could:
1) practice a song slowly, like 50% speed or less, taking advantage of the slow speed to check fingering and doing things correctly.
2) speed up and can play the song at tempo or start to find parts which need practice in isolation.
3) slow it down and speed it up again, going for accuracy and a new level of what's comfortable to play.
4) I can bring it up to tempo or repeat the process.
conditional: If it's seems too much, too frustrating, or not fun, set it aside for another day. Come back to it. If simply tired, could be tomorrow or next week.
5) Once I come back to it, go back to a slow speed, but perhaps not 50% speed if very comfortable (e.g. if 70% is very easy)
6) Repeat 1-5.

Something like this anyway. I think I might be pushing too much on 3 and 4 and not setting it aside. Just getting frustrated or leaving it entirely.

I have to experiment more I think.

 

[sean_on_bass]

Sometimes a hard passage is trying to tell you something more specific about your playing. See if you can boil it down to a specific aspect of your technique and design an exercise around it. Maybe you are a little off on a shift or a certain string crossing. Maybe it's a foreign left hand fingering tripping you up. Create a part of your warmup or overall practice routine that addresses that thing dead on the nose.

 

[Russell L]

Something I hate about practicing one song for a long time is that the damn thing becomes an earworm for weeks.