Often when we sit down to practise, we actually end up playing. Practising means working on the things we can’t yet play.
Playing is really important, after all that is why we practise so much in the first place and ripping through some solos is really fun and satisfying. Practising – like the large section of iceberg that sits under the water – is the part no-one else ever gets to see.
The purpose of practising is to find our weak spots and turn them into our strengths, but this is the part that can be challenging. Psychologically it is difficult to admit that we are not perfect.
In his autobiography ‘Total Recall’, Arnold Schwarzenegger mentions how as a teenager he never worked on his calf muscles, with the result that he had a great upper body, but skinny calves. Some of his early photos even had him standing in water so his legs couldn’t be seen. When he later decided to work on his calf muscles he would wear shorts all the time, showing the world his weak spot and often being ridiculed by other bodybuilders in the gym. But he knew this would give him the motivation he needed and eventually his calf muscles became one of his strengths.
Identifying Your Weak Spots
A good to find your weak spots is by learning lots of songs. I always use a backing track for the song I’m learning, as it ensures I stay in time and learn the music at the right speed. Playing without a backing, it’s easy to unintentionally slow down at the fast bits and fool yourself that you’re playing it at the right speed.
As I play through the song I highlight the difficult sections, then use a metronome to find the current speed I can comfortably play them, writing this tempo on the tablature.
I turn each tricky section into an exercise, playing it in isolation with a metronome, gradually building up speed and accuracy, and marking my new speeds on the tablature. This may take many weeks, but you can see your improvements in the new speed markings. You can even record yourself each day to hear yourself improving.
It’s important to decide on the most comfortable fingering at an early stage, as you want to use consistent fingering to maximise your practise time. Once the tricky part is at the correct speed and feels comfortable, you can put it back into context and play along with the backing track. Record yourself and listen back: does it flow? If it is a fast part that you find tricky, build up speed until you can play it a little faster than the actual tempo; when you play it at the normal speed it will feel easier.
When you find a weak spot in your playing, try to identify the underlying cause of the difficulty. For instance if you have difficulty switching from a D chord to an A chord, play really slowly and watch what your fingers are doing. Can you play each chord on its own? If not, practise each chord in isolation. This is the idea of ‘tightening the circle’ where we start with the biggest movements and gradually refine them in smaller and smaller detail. This concept is mentioned in the excellent book ‘The Art of Learning’ by Josh Waitzkin, who is a chess master and martial arts champion. The smaller we make our circle, the faster we can target our weaknesses and turn them into strengths.
Play with Other Musicians
Another great way to find your weak spots is by playing with other musicians. A major benefit is that you will be exposed to songs you may not usually listen to: if you are mainly a rock player, but you are asked to solo over some jazzy chords you may realise that you aren’t comfortable soloing outside of a pentatonic solo. Or you may realise that your rhythm playing isn’t quite as tight as you thought it was. Or you may discover a new love for Latin Disco Techno-Funk!
When I was a teenager playing in my first band, we used to learn songs from CDs and tapes. I realised that my ear wasn’t very good at identifying chord progressions, so I started making my own ear-training tapes to improve my relative pitch. I would never have done this if I’d just stuck to learning songs from tablature.
Emulate Your Heroes
Find a backing track to one of your favourite guitar solos and then emulate the solo, but don’t copy it note-for-note. Just copy the overall shape of the solo. I tried this with Zakk Wylde’s solo from ‘No More Tears’ by Ozzy Osbourne, following the overall shape of:
- Smooth melody (starts at 4 minutes 13 seconds into song).
- Aggressive pentatonic solo (starts at 4 minutes 41 seconds).
- Climactic build up, using ascending legato patterns (starts at 4 minutes 56 seconds).
I realised that I found it difficult to use fast pentatonic patterns to build to a climax, mainly because I didn’t know my pentatonic scales well enough across the entire neck. I had discovered my weak spot and could begin making it a strength.
Steal from your heroes
Once you have learnt a new solo, take some of the licks and write ten variations to use in your own solos. When we engage with the things we’ve learnt it makes us process it in a deeper way and helps us retain it for longer. This makes our new knowledge “disfluent”, meaning its more difficult to initially absorb, but is more memorable for our brains. See the book ‘Smarter, Better, Stronger’ by Charles Duhigg for a great chapter on this.
Practise with “Emotional Content”
Bruce Lee said it is better to practise a punch once with focus than practise a punch one hundred times with no focus. He called this “emotional content” and we can apply this by practising with our full attention. Allocate a realistic time period for your practise session with a clearly defined goal (i.e. “I’m going to practise for 25 minutes and learn an A Major 7 arpeggio in five different positions on the neck”. This will help you maintain focus. Make sure you have a break when the time limit is up as it is vital to rest your hands and mind.
One of the great things about music is that it is a life-long endeavour and we all have areas that we can improve. Never let your weaknesses discourage you, as each weakness is a gift that will push you closer to being the best musician you can be.
Impact Guitar 