Something Lektro said about practicing in the "Promote Yourself" thread in regards to a recording i posted there gave me the idea for this.

Post what you do in your practice time.

At the minute I'm concentrating on my alternate picking which has become a bit sloppy methinks so I'm just practising through scales/modes at the minute. For instance take this E Phyrgian pattern

E|-------------------------------------8-10-12----
B|---------------------------8-10-12-------
G|------------------7-9-10----------------
D|----------7-9-10-------------------------
A|-7-8-10-----------------------------------
E|---------------------------------------

I run through the scale, ascending and descending. Then I play through the scale in groups of 3 notes omitting the first one you play each time as you work your way through the scale,. After that I play the notes on the A string, ascend plus descend, then I add in the D string notes, basically just play one string then add in another string each time you move up the scale but always returning to the very first note you started on i.e in this case E.

Then I take the first four notes starting on the A string, E,F,G,A and ascend up through those and then play back to E. I add in one note each time I go up but always go right back to where I started each time as well. I then play all these patterns but starting on the high E string and working my way to the A string. This has helped me polish up a good bit of speed and accuracy again with my alternate picking.

Ha, I guess I'm obligated to post here now.

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WARNING: BORING DETAILS BELOW
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My practice session is a mess right now, to be honest. A mess of technical drills and studying jazz theory and recordings, mostly. It's not the most elegant solution, but it manages to work. Just keep in mind, I don't practice classical music or metal actively, it's basically all jazz and fusion for me now. That shouldn't matter for the thread, but it's just a warning. Anyway, my practice session goes something like this.

1) Warm up with slow scales, chromatics, arpeggios, and whatever else I feel like I could work on. I don't have a whole lot of drills that I use, so I take my examples out of things I've been working on with the jazz. Currently, that means melodic minor/modes, arpeggios of jazz chord voicings (usually concentrating on a few voicings every day) with extensions, and various chromatic patterns. The things that I work on end up in a hypothetical pot of information that I take samples out of to work on specific techniques, for example, find a few notes from the scale and make a legato pattern out of it, work on my ever-so-sloppy sweeps (actually, that's only half true, more on that later), work on alternate/economy picking, etc. This way, instead of having just a set of licks I use to warm up, I warm up using relevant material, which is a better use of my time.

But wait, there's more! I subscribe to the belief that the most effective exercises are the ones that engage the most skills simultaneously, and that creating more complicated exercises to use more techniques is most easily done using the framework of a simpler exercise. This is the meat of the drills I do. Currently, I'm working on finger strength for legato, so I might start out with a legato drill that goes something like this:

But say I want to work on my alternate picking as well; I'll just mix legato and picked triplets together, keeping the same idea. I could further extend the idea to include the B string as well, something like this:

Notice how the exercise just jumps to each string without working its way back up through the scale again. I find this to be a very valuable way to practice scales, rather than go all the way up and all the way down every time. It's a more vigorous workout. Also, this is still all in eighth note triplets; I have two options to speed up the exercise, I could either raise the tempo, or raise it to sixteenth note triplets (I would go for the sixteenth notes, actually, because I'm so used to Pebber Brown's timing drills). The next thing to integrate in the example is a bit of an odd rhythm, just groups of five. It'd look something like this:

Since it's less obvious how to integrate legato and picked phrases side by side, I could either play it once legato, once picked, repeating, I could pick a certain number of notes and pull off a certain number after, anything like that. The alternative is to find just a few groups of five and arrange them like the exercises above. However, the most important thing is playing it cleanly, and playing it in time.

I personally am stuck with a really weak rest stroke following a down pick (not sure what else to call it, really), which makes sweeping and economy picking down more difficult. Being placed in a position such as this, I make my practice session incorporate as much of the 'problem technique' as possible. I used to practice going up and down scales all day, and while they did benefit me a lot, I've found that if the problem can be broken down to the elements, a lot of practice time spent on doing things that aren't truly necessary can be avoided. For example, if your desired technique is faster sweeps for a song you're playing, would you rather play everything leading up to the sweeps in the particular section, just to make the song sound complete, or just focus on the sweeps and only the sweeps?

I know a lot of this stuff is probably really basic for some of the forum members, but hey, I got called out :) Most of that above section can be summed up with a few small rules:

1) Use exercise incorporating as many techniques as possible

2) Instead of relying on set warmup licks (like the classic 1-2-3-4 exercises), try to take things from what you're currently working on, to better use your time

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Now that the section probably of most worth to the rest of the forum is out of the way, on to the rest...

2) Practice chords and progressions. I also integrate any chord based theory that I use later for jazz here. I also work on memorizing the positions of the leading tones for all the progressions I do, especially the gnarly ones. I'll also work on rhythm here. I know this section is extremely short compared to the mega explanation above it, but I spend more time on this than the scalar exercises, because it begins the integration of actual music. If I know anything about neoclassical metal players, many of you need to do more of this step :P

3) Practice improvising over progressions. This is self explanatory.

4) Study. This means listening to jazz recordings, buffing up on jazz theory, working on sight reading (which I am abysmal at), and any other miscellaneous things that could fit here. Also, transcription is a part of this step. Transcription is HUGE. If you want to have the ear of a musician and the ability to play what you want to hear, then you need to transcribe. Forget learning songs through tabs, get your music player of choice and the pause button ready.

The last three sections aren't really in a set order, they all get combined into a messy yet functional single unit of practice. The overall goal for my practice is to improve my jazz playing, not to become a technical monster.

Do you think I should get a book deal for some of these forum posts? :P

I've started doing this now. :D

Thanks.

No worries Steve. You will hopefully find that you can build up a lot of speed with this. Remember to get everything clean and even (metronome is crucial) before you start going into warp mode. ;)

I'll be waiting to see your first instruction book released, Lektro.

But really, your posts have that sort of charisma even in plain text!

Yes, it's very long, but very intresting too...

I think it's good to practice a bit what you feel like doing. If you want to play different styles, that is something you can't avoid.

Also it's good being creative rather than playing drills again and again. I use a note book to write the things I "discover" and some tricks too. Performing live is what makes me realize which things do I have to practice more, and "jamming" is a source for learning "tricks" from other persons.

I liked what you said about "blues": even if you play pentatonics, you can see it as arpeggios with some 6th and 4th, so they are very useful. When moving to different degrees in a progression, you can change pentatonic shapes for a very good effect too, and it's very single to do.

I guess some times you have to play without thinking what you're doing; and that's something comfortable when playing blues.

But maybe I rely too much on improvisation...

--This is an exercise I found very useful: try to imitate George Benson when soloing, that is, try to sing what you are improvising with the guitar. It adds a different taste in the solos... and it is a good training for the ear.

Oh, absolutely. I've always relied on improvisation, and it gave me a different perspective on practicing than someone who just learns songs all the time. Using 'The Patented George Benson Guitar-Vocalization Improvisation Method' ( :) ) changes your perspective a lot. You could also try playing without listening to yourself (keep it unplugged, use earplugs), which makes you rely on your ear and feeling your way around rather than just hearing yourself. Even better: record yourself and do this, see if you can accurately hear in your head what you play on the guitar, when the guitar sound is out of the equation. I take it a step further and transcribe vocalists as well. Emulating vocalists is how I create more powerful melodies.

Sorry for the double post, but I found a Paul Gilbert video where he goes about a lick that is a great example of how to integrate legato, picking, and a lot of scale shapes into one exercise. It's from Technical Difficulties, so you know what to expect.

I guess as a noob ill post my practice habits.

I generally start by using a Dm arpeggio and just practice the sweep.

once i feel comfortable with sweeping I start doing stuff like ID mentioned above but i always economy pick. (i couldn't alternate pick to save my life,just trying screws with my head).

After that basic stuff i play through a neoclassical solo/ exercise i created.

Then after all of that boring stuff i play pieces and parts of songs like "Far Beyond The Sun" and (my personal favorite) "Altitudes" at lower tempos.


That's about it but i spend hours on all this stuff. When I have more free time i will tab out the neoclassical exercise i made for beginners since it really helped me improve my technique. ;)