Practice: my personal experience.

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What to practice? When to practice? How long to practice…How to practice. I think that Thomas hit the nail on the head when he asks “What is your goal?” I know that there’s a plethora of material on the web about the subject of practice. However, I would like to expound some of Thomas’ thoughts just a little by giving my own testimony on a practice regimen that I feel has helped my playing on both Double Bass and Electric Bass.

I don’t really “advertise” the fact that I play upright bass because it started as an “academic requirement” and, even after playing for a little over 3 years I still really feel like a beginner on the instrument.  In the beginning I found it very easy to get inundated with new “stuff to learn” with everything out there on the web and being so hungry I found myself quickly overwhelmed and frustrated.  Then,  I realize what I’ve known all along: it’s very difficult to chase more than one rabbit…. At my age (38) I may never know every Marcus Miller or Victor Wooten lick.  I don’t have hours and hours of available time to play as I did when I was 14 (ah, the good old days).

I’m probably never going to retain every nuance of every great MarloweDK “lick of the day”.  I’m certainly not saying that all of things aren’t valid and of course it’s certainly worth having some of this stuff under your fingers. However, I have to be realistic in my pursuits, I have a recital in the fall, my first ever, and there is no escape! :-0

35-40 minutes SOLO classical acoustic bass! Capuzzi, Vivaldi, Wagner & Bach! I squandered about a month of practicing the pieces because I was torn between upright and electric and, quite honestly didn’t know where to start with these pieces, in a style of music that I am, quite honestly, not that familiar with. Even after having played upright for a little over 3 years I only started receiving comprehensive private instruction in January, 2009.

This brings me to the subject of goals. What you practice and how you practice it depends on your goal. Basic fundamentals will always apply. (Practicing without a metronome is just plain silly!). Another big one, as Thomas mentions in his Practice Tips and Thoughts section is the use of a timer. It doesn’t have to be a fancy gadget. I use a good old fashioned wind up egg timer! The next issue, and the biggest for me, then, is time. I know what the goal is but how do I best manage my time??

My schedule is so crazy sometimes and sometimes, well, I’m just lazy. With the help of journal I found a way to better manage my practice time as it helped me to really see how I could organize what little time I have and then evaluate it at the end of each week. For instance, how much time had I set aside to practice how much time I actually practiced, how much time I spent on a specific piece or section of a piece and what was the actual focus of that time (in this case, intonation, bowings, fingerings, etc.)

It’s important to note that the following breakdown applies to my own upright bass practice regimen tailored to my goals but the ideas apply to any instrument and you certainly can tailor this to your own goals and instrument. Important: even if I’ve promised myself that I’m going to practice for an hour, bare minimum, a day it doesn’t necessarily have to be all in one sitting. As Todd Johnson would say “What’s the best way to eat an elephant? The same way you eat a chicken, one bite at a time!”  I also take that to mean that a focused 15 minute practice session is better for you than an unfocused hour of ‘noodling’.

For me, the most productive practice time is first thing in the morning.  My upright practice, for the last couple of weeks, has looked something like this:

1. 10 – 15 minute warm up: This is usually one two octave scale (whether it be major or minor or something a little more ‘exotic’) and its corresponding arpeggio per day with a particular focus whether it is fingerings bowings, intonation or whatever. We’re talking about a full body instrument with no frets.  To me, the best way to really get to know it is to play scales and I believe that the same applies to electric bass.  Besides if you stick to one thing at a time you’ll have a better shot of retaining it!

1. 15 – 20 min: 2, 4 or 8 bars of a particular piece or a particular section of a piece. How many bars depends on how long I’ve been working on the piece. For example: One day I  just “eat the notes” – just finding the notes, working out the most logical fingerings until I get to the point that  I don’t have to think about that aspect anymore and can make music it musical! I work out the phrases, the musical sentences. For instance: Capuzzi’s Concerto for Double Bass. Starting at Rehearsal Marker #2 it starts to get a little tricky. There’s a bar of 16^th notes that is a bit brutal at 104 bpm.  So one day I take that bar and the bar before it and just played it until I could do it (painfully slow speed) at least seven times without making a mistake. Then I add the down-beat of the next bar.  Little by little I chipped away at this two bar + one down-beat phrase. Every day, bit by bit until I am able to spend this time slot on that entire section. Even though I can’t play Capuzzi like I’ve been playing it for years, as I review and learn the subtle nuances fingerings are just one less thing that I have to worry about!  Watch a baby try to walk for the first time! They stumble, they fall, they get back up, and they realize that if they grab a hold to something familiar it will support them.   The keep at it, one step at a time, little by little. Try to think back to when you were learning how to write your alphabet… I think you get my point. J

1. 15 – 20 min: Next Piece, same deal. If it were only the one piece I would simply start working on the next section.

1. 20 min: Review, find trouble spots, fix, makes a list of practice priorities for next practice session, repeat.

The point is to keep moving, go back and review and, gradually, keep moving.  Focus on what’s right there in front you. I have the problem on trying to look too far ahead and that, more often than not, gets me into a jam! Whenever I relax and take things one step at a time I get farther, ‘faster’ and step back and think “wow, how’d I get this far so fast?!” Slow and steady wins the race!

While I agree that no one practice plan is going to work for everyone I believe in my heart that “what gets measured gets done”. If you set realistic goals and make a plan to whittle away at those goals day by day you will find marked improvement in your playing. I know that have seen improvements in my own playing!  You must have an idea of what it is that you are trying to accomplish. Imagine that you have only about an hour or so in an entire day to PRACTICE, not noodle… practice! What if you had only fifteen minutes before you left for work? What would would you practice? The answer would be directly related to your ultimate goal but, remember, you’ve only got 15 minutes.

You’ll know when you’ve mastered something when you can do it just as easily as you can recite your name!

So….in short

1. Set ‘appointments’ to practice. Appointments that you can’t afford to miss. Find the best time when you can have focus, uninterrupted practice. (youtube, although a great resource is, along with facebook and myspace the greatest waster of time)
2. Don’t waste time looking for anything! Make sure that ALL of your materials are in place.. [Metronome, timer, reading, cables, recordings,  etc.]
3. Make a plan and know what it is that you are trying to accomplish and WHY? (are you learning that lick just to be able to be the local music store hero or are you getting the concepts so that you can use the ideas as a springboard for your own ideas? There’s nothing wrong with either just be honest with yourself about your intention!). *If your goal is to know your neck better set aside time to master a scale per day around the cycle and then review them all.  If you want to improve your tone experiment with different right hand techniques….while playing scales – two birds, one stone. The list goes on and on.
4. Record Yourself! The recording will not lie.
5. Keep a Journal. Metronome Markings, progress, focus, etc.

BTW – I just found a $1.99 USD ipod/iphone Music Journal app. It’s very very simple and will give you graph of how much time you spent practicing a certain piece or exercise on a given day, week, month or year.

http://www.beadysea.net/musicjournal/

another is:

Musicians Practice Log by Burton Kaplan

http://www.magicmountainmusic.org/pdtBooks.html

Just my 2 cents but I am only one man -