Practice routine

[SpaceChick]

Just wondering what other people practice routine is.

I try and do an hour a day.

15 minutes is playing on my iPad fret finder game so I can get quicker at my fret board notes.

Then a do 45 mins playing practice.

I do my major and minor scales and pentatonic scales.

Then I play some songs.

My current favourites are teenage kicks, let it be, sunshine of your love and the main bit of Money.

I am so very much a beginner but I absolutely love it

[Silvia Bluejay]

Deb, I think that's a very good routine. I did something similar when I was attending my courses: each lesson had some theory and the notes to a song that applied the theory, and we had to learn both for the following week.

I kept up my scales and 7th chords etc. for a while after I finished attending the courses, but now I tend to spend most of my time finding the basslines to my favourite songs by ear, jotting them down in chord charts and similar, and then playing along to records, all of which I absolutely love doing.

I try to play bass (all types - guitar, upright and acoustic, although usually not on the same day!) for at least half an hour a day, but preferably longer if I'm not snowed under with work or going out in the evening.

[Gust0o]

I'm much less organised - perhaps unsurprising for a boy!

But, I tend to have a guitar in either the dining room or the living room - so I find myself almost continuously noodling, trying out new things. Twice a week I'll make time for some warm-ups and then play through our entire set, along to a back track; and then once a week I'll spend four hours with the lads, running through things at volume.

I don't do a lot of hand work. My nerves were shoddy in my right hand since my car crash, and I now have some physio routines to follow following my Carpal tunnel issue.

[BottomE]

[quote name='SpaceChick' timestamp='1337971154' post='1668290']
Just wondering what other people practice routine is.

I try and do an hour a day.

15 minutes is playing on my iPad fret finder game so I can get quicker at my fret board notes.

Then a do 45 mins playing practice.

I do my major and minor scales and pentatonic scales.

Then I play some songs.

My current favourites are teenage kicks, let it be, sunshine of your love and the main bit of Money.

I am so very much a beginner but I absolutely love it
[/quote]

Better than me

I did have a great routine including reading, scales of all kinds, chord tones, exercises on CDs from Bass tutorial books. Then GAS set in and my playing is standing still but i have loads (5) of basses. I think it was better when i had 1 bass.

It goes in cycles where there'll be months where i do a lot of theory (an hour a night) and then months when i jam along to stuff or try and write a few tunes.

[Dandelion]

I am just noodling at the moment, I need more direction.

[Marvin]

I can't be arsed and haven't got the time. I learn the songs I need to and that's about as far as it goes. I don't write anything for the originals band I'm in so don't do any practice oriented that way (especially as I might quit it anyway). And with a full time job and 3 kids...meh!

[icastle]

Three hours a day minimum for me unless I'm gigging.

I start off with anything I'm currently working on and then hit YouTube and just select random tracks.

[JakeBrownBass]

There's a fair old difference in proper practice & playing along to songs on youtube.

I try and split my time equally between bass & keyboards at the moment.

A lot of people can't get an hour of solid time for practice and i picked up a great technique from a drummer i saw at a masterclass.

If you split a circle into segments, you give each section a specific thing to practice be it sight reading, scales & arpeggios, transcribing etc....

You then choose the amount of time the circle represents, say 1 or 2 hours. Meaning each section is worth a certain amount of time, so 4 equal sections would be 15 minutes each for an hour circle.

You'd then set a 15 minute timer and get on with one of the segments and as soon as the 15 minutes is up, you stop, even if you haven't finished the exercise and move on to the next.

[attachment=108753:Screen Shot 2012-05-26 at 00.29.36.png]

Every time you complete an exercise you mark off a segment with a simple line. The beauty of this method means at the end of a week, you can physically see what you've practiced, what you haven't done enough of & how much time you've spent doing it.

For example after a day,

[attachment=108754:Screen Shot 2012-05-26 at 00.30.18.png]

This regime allows proper practice even for busy people. It allows you fit in an hour or 2 in a day without realising it.

If you can sit-down and do this concentrated work you will see your playing come on so far without noticing and is much more productive than sitting and noodling along to youtube.

Of course if you have songs to learn you can use a similar method to structure the work across the time you have.

The biggest rule in this is to stick to the timings and do concentrated practice and not get distracted.

Obviously it's easier to draw with pen & paper and just pin it next to you desk, allowing you to set your own practice patterns. Its really great to see what you are doing and what your slumping on.

[MrTaff]

I don't have a practice routine, I normally play at least 2 hours a day but I'm pretty much either learning a new song or playing something I already know.

[nobodysprefect]

[quote name='JakeBrownBass' timestamp='1337989133' post='1668521']
There's a fair old difference in proper practice & playing along to songs on youtube.
&--#60;snip&--#62;

A lot of people can't get an hour of solid time for practice and i picked up a great technique from a drummer i saw at a masterclass.
[/quote]

Fantastic. Incidentally, this is the [i]very same[/i][i] thing[/i] Carol Kaye spoke of when I was getting started on bass almost twenty years ago. I probably should have kept up with it! But you know, when you learn the first four frets on E and A strings, you have so much work you don't need to improve any more, right?

The pie diagram makes it much easier to keep tabs on how much time you actually use on everything.

Back to the point, whatever everybody thinks of Carol is not relevant (back then, nobody knew a thing about Carol, nowadays people who couldn't lay down a techno bass line track in first take slag off her... the nerve of some people) but you have to admit that her students have gone on to great things. Jaco used to study her stuff iirc. And her advice to me was to make the most of my practice time by practising everything for 15 minutes a day, then change the subject. I seem to remember that she said reading, ear training, arpeggios and, finally, improvisation were the sh*t to do. Since, at least the way I see it, at some point scales, cadences and arpeggios become one and the same, you get theory, scales and chord arpeggios all in one.

Say, you take the good old | IIm9 | V9 | (who plays 7th chords anyway? It's at least 9s here all the time) and if you practise that up and down, you've 1) practised the minor and the major 9th chord in a couple of inversions 2) practised walking IIm-V 3) practised the I major scale 4) trained yourself to notice the major scale in IIm-V cadences all in one!

I don't know if that's what you should begin playing the bass with, but it worked [i]for me.[/i]

Edited May 26, 2012 by nobody's prefect

[thisnameistaken]

I really need to get some decent practise material going on. I've spent the last couple of years learning to play the DB and haphazardly expanding my theory knowledge but it's been slow going learning 'by chance' as it were.

[nobodysprefect]

[quote name='thisnameistaken' timestamp='1338014526' post='1668582']
I really need to get some decent practise material going on. I've spent the last couple of years learning to play the DB and haphazardly expanding my theory knowledge but it's been slow going learning 'by chance' as it were.
[/quote]

Get a teacher! Seriously. the upright needs to be learnt from a good teacher. You live in a bigger town than I by far, so you shouldn't have any trouble finding a teacher.

Did I mention you should find a teacher yet?

[debwilliams]

Some really good suggestions here for me as beginner. I'm playing along with tracks that I like & are manageable for me. What I try to do is add stuff I wouldn't normally listen to so I'm less familiar with the song so I have to listen a lot more.
I use Scott's lessons as well but at the moment I'm doing more of the playing along. Listening to a band last night has also given me new ideas for songs to practice so that was a useful, unexpected visit to the pub!
I do think the 15 minute scheduled practice would work well for me, big thanks for that.

[paul_5]

I used to play for most of the day when I had the time, but since we had two sex-trophies (one nearly 5, one 20 months) I'm not really playing regularly. I was at the stage where I could pretty much do anything I wanted but have noticed that , even though I'm still competent player, I've plateaued and I'm not really exploring any new territories.

I think I need to book some lessons with a local teacher to 'pin down' some proper practice time.

Must try harder.

[BigRedX]

I play/practice when I feel like it. That means sometimes playing all day and at others I can go for a week or more only picking up my bass at a full band rehearsal or gig. That way I seldom get into a rut and it never feels like a chore. If I take a break (even if it's just a day of not playing) I usually come back full of new ideas to try out.

TBH I haven't done any real practising since the day back in 1974 when I realised that I could finally change between all the common chords on the guitar without there being any pauses in the music. I don't think I've ever played a scale in my life, I certainly don't work on anything that doesn't have a direct (and immediate) use for the band I am in.

"Practising" for me these days consists of learning parts for existing songs that I'll be playing or teaching my hands to do something that my head has come up with. My solo playing time is probably split 25% going over parts of songs in our set that I can't play without having to think about them and 75% working on ideas for new songs when I'll swap between bass, guitar, keyboards and computer as the inspiration takes me.

Not a conventional practising regime and one that will probably incur the wrath of some on here, but the point I'm trying to make is that the right routines are the ones that work best for you. By all means try all the suggestions in this thread, but be prepared to ditch some of them if you find that that they aren't of any real benefit in favour of ones that work for you.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record the best thing you can do to improve your playing is to join a gigging band. You get to interact with other musicians - something that no amount of bedroom playing along with recordings can replicate and having upcoming gigs gives you goals to work to.

[TheGreek]

I try to spend at least 1 hour a day playing - start by playing a few scales to loosen my fingers up then go through some stuff that I've written. I like to get in front of a video at least once a week - I don't learn it note for note rather choosing to look at how other people play and how I can construct their style/riffs. Recently discovered [b]Bass2Bass.net [/b]where they have numerous playing videos in different styles - I'd advise everybody to have a look and sign up. You can also have live Skype lessons with Ed Friedland and Pete Townsend!!

SpaceChick, when you mentioned playing "Sunshine of Your Love" it took me back - one of the first things I learned along with "Money", "The Chain" and "Badge"...

[steve-bbb]

i have a structured rehearsal program

i play for a bit

get distracted/bored

wander off do someting else

ooh look thats shiny

what was i doing now?

practice?? was i practising??

[Judo Chop]

I don't have a set routine like some of the ones already posted, but I do play for a couple of hours every day to different styles of music.
I play with a few different guitarists and drummers regularly too, and I've learned quite a lot from them.

[pete.young]

To me, practice includes working on a skill, a technique or a short passage from a piece, that you're having difficulty with. Take it down to component parts, understand it, build it up until your fingers know where to go. Then start to put it back into context by playing the few bars leading up to it.

This is a bit different to just playing along to stuff or rehearsing your set (there's value in that sort of thing too of course). It's hard and takes concentration, but definitely pays off.

I'm also a firm believer that practice is more effective if you can develop the habit of listening critically to what you're playing. One way to do this is to record yourself and listen to the playback for missed notes, off-timing etc. It's really painful sometimes to listen to yourself but it will improve your skills.

[Prime_BASS]

I do a fair bit a of theory and technique practice, and going through web lessons at least once a week, but I've been playing for around 8 or 9 years,a nd spend most of my 'practice' time writing songs, stuff for my band, stuff for my drum and bass/noise project and stuff for what could be considered solo work.

At the minute I'm going through phases of not being able to put the bass down and times where I give a quick noodle or go through the bands songs and thats it, usually when the strings need changing and I don't have any new sets............

[Mark_Andertons]

Heard a great tip from Musicademy which I'm sure a handful of you guys will know. Which was to think about your repetoir in 3 circles within each other (don't make me draw it!) like rings in a tree trunk. In the core you have the material that you know like the back of your hand and could play at a moments notice in any key. Then in the next segment/ring/circle you have all the stuff that you're working on learning at the moment and you can play confidently most of the time, then outside in the last segment/ring/circle you have songs that are literally too hard for you, way outside your comfort zone. And your aim is to practise songs in all three with a view to pulling things from further out of the circles into the core.

That way you are always challenging yourself with stuff that you can't play and improving quicker than if you just pottered about always playing what you can already play confidently.

That was a proper crap explanation. Sorry! I'm sure you get the point though: practise working on songs that you think are way out of your league and before you know it they will be in your league!

That's not to say don't work on scales techniques etc just a good tip for improve general skills faster.

[thisnameistaken]

[quote name='nobody's prefect' timestamp='1338014768' post='1668584']Get a teacher! Seriously. the upright needs to be learnt from a good teacher. You live in a bigger town than I by far, so you shouldn't have any trouble finding a teacher.

Did I mention you should find a teacher yet?[/quote]

That's the plan, I just need to work out what I want to be taught first.

I did have a couple of lessons with BC's own Geoff Chalmers last year and he put me on the right track with DB technique, very valuable knowledge, so I'll be calling him again when I can explain what it is I want to learn next.

[Cameronj279]

it depends really, generally it's just if I'm in the house, I'll practice while I've got nothing else to do. I don't really set myself out a set time to practice each day. When I'm practicing I generally just go for learning more about chords or certain techniques (at the moment tapping (failing miserable might I add!!)) or even try and learn a cover of a song, generally try and learn one I feel is out my ability range, at the moment Sequoia Throne by Protest the Hero

Theres generally a fair amount of times each day where I'm just standing up for one of my daily feeds or urinations where I'll just pick up the bass for maybe 10-15 mins before or after I complete my quest.

[thepurpleblob]

I've spent 10 years trying to get a practice routine and have (mostly) failed miserably. I am about 90% event driven - learning new songs that I need to. Only when there's none of that do I get back to reading practice and usually a bit of all round the neck type of scale practice which is always useful.

[charic]

I just practice the band songs at the moment. Other than that, I've been asked to audition for a band on Friday on keys so I need to do some of that. Oh and I'm teaching myself guitar now too...

Also need to finish recording for one band
Start recording for another
Finish the first track on keyboard for another band

Busy busy