Hello anyone,
I play guitar on and off throughout the day as time allows between school runs and chores... I don't know if it adds up to one hour or three hours but I doubt it's ever more... between one and two most likely I would think.
I wouldn't call it practicing exactly as most of what I do is write stuff and refine what I have already written.
Every note I play is my stuff as I am working totally on writing songs now.
When I play I don't look cool: I wear my guitar like a schoolgirl's bra because I'm not skillful enough to play with it dangling round my knees!
At 52 now it is over half my life ago that I was in a regular gigging covers band; I played lead guitar and wore it much lower than I ever would today, but that was with a plectrum back then, where now I only play with my fingers and have come to play my electric at the same height a classical guitarist plays his guitar on his raised left knee (assuming he is right handed).
I had always assumed that people only wore their guitar right down low if they were miming on TV; then a few weeks ago a heavy metal band played at my local pub and the guitarist wore his so low he was at arms length and stooping a bit to reach the guitar... he didn't play great but he wasn't half bad considering!
I cannot imagine ever practicing scales; I seem always to write phrases of guitar that I am not yet quite up to playing... I remember someone else on this thread saying much the same... so in learning the finger patterns of the phrase I have written I don't feel great need to tramp up and down well worn scales.
There is a teaching method in Japan I believe called the Suzuki method; whole classes of kids learning the violin together but never playing scales at all... they learn tunes, and the tunes are made of scales and bits of scales of course but they don't know it because they are just playing a tune!
So I suppose I am sort of learning scales by the Suzuki method, but I just don't realise it.
I can see the point of learning scales in classical tuition, because then knowing where each of those notes is by name on the fingerboard you can look at a sheet of music and play a tune by numbers... but I can see little advantage in rock except to exercise your fingers; but doing a few chords and riffs does that anyway.
What I am doing all on my own does of course make me a law unto myself; no deadlines to learn stuff for gigs anymore, and no one can say I'm playing wrong or slower than the original etc.
I you practice for too long and too regularly, might there be a danger of it all becoming mechanical and un creative?
Cheers guys,
Mark...................
I play guitar on and off throughout the day as time allows between school runs and chores... I don't know if it adds up to one hour or three hours but I doubt it's ever more... between one and two most likely I would think.
I wouldn't call it practicing exactly as most of what I do is write stuff and refine what I have already written.
Every note I play is my stuff as I am working totally on writing songs now.
When I play I don't look cool: I wear my guitar like a schoolgirl's bra because I'm not skillful enough to play with it dangling round my knees!
At 52 now it is over half my life ago that I was in a regular gigging covers band; I played lead guitar and wore it much lower than I ever would today, but that was with a plectrum back then, where now I only play with my fingers and have come to play my electric at the same height a classical guitarist plays his guitar on his raised left knee (assuming he is right handed).
I had always assumed that people only wore their guitar right down low if they were miming on TV; then a few weeks ago a heavy metal band played at my local pub and the guitarist wore his so low he was at arms length and stooping a bit to reach the guitar... he didn't play great but he wasn't half bad considering!
I cannot imagine ever practicing scales; I seem always to write phrases of guitar that I am not yet quite up to playing... I remember someone else on this thread saying much the same... so in learning the finger patterns of the phrase I have written I don't feel great need to tramp up and down well worn scales.
There is a teaching method in Japan I believe called the Suzuki method; whole classes of kids learning the violin together but never playing scales at all... they learn tunes, and the tunes are made of scales and bits of scales of course but they don't know it because they are just playing a tune!
So I suppose I am sort of learning scales by the Suzuki method, but I just don't realise it.
I can see the point of learning scales in classical tuition, because then knowing where each of those notes is by name on the fingerboard you can look at a sheet of music and play a tune by numbers... but I can see little advantage in rock except to exercise your fingers; but doing a few chords and riffs does that anyway.
What I am doing all on my own does of course make me a law unto myself; no deadlines to learn stuff for gigs anymore, and no one can say I'm playing wrong or slower than the original etc.
I you practice for too long and too regularly, might there be a danger of it all becoming mechanical and un creative?
Cheers guys,
Mark...................
