How to improve your technique and maximize your practice time

One thing I think that many people overlook is that there are quite different areas of technique on the guitar. There isn't just one all encompassing area called technique.

For example, I hear a lot of modern rock particularly HM players dismissing blues players as having little or primitive technique. Strangely, how ever 'simple' for example Robert Cray's playing might seem compared to Steve Vai's, if you ask your average supersweeper HM player to slow down and play over a 12 bar, Cray's playing walks all over them. The same is true in reverse of course.

Why? Because the technique required to play HM and blues are quite different, but it doesn't follow to say that one is better or superior to the other.

To put it in a nutshell: HM players tend to have clean accurate control over linear sequences of notes, where as a blues player tends to have more minute and idiosyncratic control over tone production and timing.

Jazz players tend to have a lot of rhythmic control as well as varying degrees of both of the above depending on the player.

We'll start with what is the most basic area of technique, which I call the rudiments. This involves work on the most difficult areas of playing the guitar technically: coordinating the right and left hand.

Some players of course sound most of the notes entirely with their left hand, using hammer-ons and pull-offs. This is of course known as legato playing. However, most good legato players also have a pretty articulate right hand as well. So the connection between right and left hand is still very important.

If you are a player who either picks most of your notes or uses a combination of picking and hammer-ons and pull-offs, then co-ordination between right hand left hands is of key importance.

Accurate timing is also very important. Lets just define the term timing for the purpose of this article. What I mean by timing in this context can be described by the following question: If you play a series of 8th notes (quavers) how accurate is the timing of these notes compared to a metronome? How much control do you have over the length of the notes? Can you make any note long or short within a series of others, or is it just a matter of bashing through the scale and hoping for the best? For the purpose of this article this is what we mean by timing, though this is not meant as any sort of strict definition of the word.

Some one at this point might protest: But the timing in blues and some rock riffs are anything but metronomic, so why should I work on this?

The reason is, that having a reference point makes it easier to CONTROL divergences from that. I've found after many years of teaching that working on accurate timing improves all styles of playing, because it gives you control. Once you have some real control over your timing, you can apply no end of non metronomic inflections to your playing, but you'll have the control to get them the way your really want them, instead of that sort of 'not quite there' sound.

Good timing is different from the rhythmic control I mentioned earlier, associated with jazz players, that's another subject for another article.

So centering technical practice around 1) a tight connection between right and left hand, or clean loud pull-offs and hammer-ons if you're a legato player and 2) accurate timing, will improve your technique in the shortest time.

Slow is Fast - Or building-in strength

There's an important concept that has been spouted time and again by countless great rock jazz and classical musicians. Its the fact that if you practice things slowly until they are perfect, they stand more of a chance of sounding good if you play them fast.

If you normally practice things at a speed a bit faster than you can play cleanly, you'll find three things. One; your progress will be slow. Two; you'll probably come across a brick wall with speed and accuracy that you won't be able to break. Three; Your playing will sound messy, when you do a fast run, the notes will tend to turn into a mush of sound rather than distinct clean notes.

Make the Most of Your Time

Most of us have busy lives and unless you are a full time musician, you probably haven't got all day to practice. So efficient practicing is important (even if you do have all day). When I talk about efficient practicing, I mean there are a list of skills or techniques which, when used consistently, will maximize the improvement you'll make from the time you put in, however much or little that may be. These techniques have the added benefit of actually making you a better player in themselves.

Now I'm going to list them out here, but before I do that, I'd just like to point out one thing. Some of you who have been playing for a while might have a look at the following list and think it seems simple. But as your self; do you actually do everything on the list every time you practice? Its not that easy! But it makes a HUGE difference if you can stick to it.

1) Relaxation

2) Hand Awareness

3) Attention to Detail

4) Accuracy

If you keep all four of these things going when you practice, you'll find you'll rate of technical improvement will rise to its maximum.

Let's look at the list in a little more detail

Do you know how to relax? I mean really relax? If you want to maximise the improvement you make with the time you put into practicing, you need to be relaxed. If you want to play with fluency, you need to be relaxed. By relaxed I mean that every muscle in your body should be loose and free of tension. This might sound to some, like a nice but not necessarily essential state to be in when practicing. I try very hard in writing these articles to state opinion as opinion and leave as much space for individuality as possible. Here however, I can state categorically, if you are not relaxed, you will not play as fluently, as fast and your practice time will not reward you with the same rate of progress as if you are relaxed.

If you aren't absolutely sure you know how to relax your muscles properly, I recommend that you take a course on relaxation. Failing that, buy a book on it - there are lots of them, and most cover basically the same ground. I'm not talking here about meditation or anything mystic, just the technique of relaxing - at will all the muscles in your body. Before I did a relaxation course, I used to think I was perfectly relaxed when I practiced. After the course, i realized that what had felt like being relaxed was in fact, quite tense.

The more tension, the more your muscles are fighting each other, the less dynamic control you'll have, the less fluency. Practicing in anything but a relaxed state, is teaching the tension into your brain. Its not that hard, nor does it take that long to unlearn the tension, but I highly recommend you do it straight away.

We will include an article specifically on relaxation, in a future issue.

This is another great technique for maximizing your practice time. However, it is a bit pointless to attempt this with out being relaxed first. So get relaxed, then try this. Many of us have (especially if we've done some relaxation exercises) had the experience of moving our conscious awareness around to different parts of our body at will. For example, you can become very aware of the feeling of your big toe inside your sock if you choose to, or any part of your body. So with hand awareness, we are simple taking this principle to our hands. Hold up your left hand (if you are right handed). See if you can feel the air circulating around and between your fingers. If you are relaxed and aware enough, you should be able to do this. You should also be able to feel the pulse in your fingers.

This is the state you should be in when you practice technique - with both hands. You will learn much more quickly in this state, and you will be in a position to notice minute differences in sensation when you improve on something. That's important, because we all have days when a particular aspect of our playing seems to be suddenly much better that usual. If you can identify the physical sensation connected with this (and there almost always is one), you can often bring it back again and hence you see a permanent improvement - at least in that area. In a more general sense, as you practice something, you endeavour to make it better each time you go through it, as you improve or as you repeat the exercise, piece (or what ever you are practicing), if you are aware of minute sensations of your hands on the strings etc... you'll improve a lot quicker.

Here again, it helps a lot if you have the first two techniques down. Here we are talking about simply noticing the minute details in what you are doing. For example, listen to the following sound files and see if you can hear the difference. The first one is played cleanly ie: the pick hits the string at exactly the same time as the left hand (in my case) fingers come down on the strings, and each note lasts right up until the next note is sounded. So click here (.aiff 72k) for the first example.

OK now in the second example, I've played it so that one of my fingers comes down a little early, just before the pick hits the string. Click here (.aiff 72k) to hear this.

Can you tell the difference? If you're not sure, save these samples and keep listening to them in succession.

Its differences like this that are very important to notice and be aware of when you are practicing. When you actually start playing as opposed to practicing, the tendency is for all these little things (accuracy in general) to get worse. So its important to get it as perfect as possible when you practice.

1) its more likely to stay that way when you play

2) if it does slip a bit at least its slipping from perfect to almost perfect instead of not quite there to pretty sloppy.

So if you start with relaxation, then from there you concentrate on hand awareness, and next attention to detail, you'll be in the ideal position to reach the final stage which is: accuracy.

If you follow these steps, and develop them as a habit, you'll improve your technique in the fastest possible time.

Mark wingfield