Time you spend playing?

[ricknasty1985]

Like everyone here I'm sure, I struggle to find enough hours in the day to practice as much as I'd like. With full time jobs, other hobbies...

I usually get an hour a night running through excersizes and then spend most of my weekends creatively coming up with new ideas/riffs, just wondering how often do you guys get to bond with your guitars???

Also how do you make use of that time?

 

[Konfyouzd]

I have a full time job and responsibilities, but I don't have children or a wife and I live alone so I have plenty of time to play.

That said, I play about 5 instruments... Guitar, bass, tenor, alto, soprano and sopranino saxophone(s) (Yes they're all saxophones, but they're different beasts for sure)

So a lot of my time is spent doing weird stuff, honestly.

Sometimes I'll sit with a guitar and a saxophone and play weird cryptic phrases back to back to see how closely I can get them to mimic one another. When I hear George Benson play his guitar, he literally seems to play exactly the same way he sings.

I feel like sometimes I phrase things a little cooler on a horn than on guitar so I think this is a cool exercise.

I've also recently gotten back into music lessons just as a means of being pushed to continue learning. I'm not always motivated to go looking for new things to learn even with the internet at my disposal. I'm so damn lazy. But as a result of my lessons I'm also usually working on something that either my guitar or sax teacher has taught me.

I like to run through my scales in a number of ways...

First and most obvious is just playing through the normal 3nps patterns everyone spams all day long.

I also like arpeggiating the caged shapes and seeing how quickly I can make it through them while still being clean. The CAGED shapes are actually new to me although I'm sure I should have learned them long ago. They've done wonders for my phrasing insofar as they've given me another way to view the fretboard. Meshing that with the way I used to find intervals via 3nps patterns is yielding some interesting results the more I play around with this.

I also have about 15 guitars or so and some of them are in some very strange tunings. When I play those guitars I don't focus on anything I "know". I only know what I hear because again, I'm too damn lazy to figure out how the relationships between the strings have changed from standard tuning... I simply listen for sounds I like and play them.

I then figure out what the hell is going on later when I have to write a solo on my guitar tuned in standard.

On bass I spend a lot of my time just noodling over Jaco Pastorius basslines for finger strength and speed. A lot of folks hate on 2 finger basists, but I can move with just 2 fingers...

Plus the two finger stroke reminds me of the up-down motion of alternate picking and I'm comfortable with that.

I don't realize it, but I think I still get somewhere in the ballpark of about 3 - 4 hours of practice in per day, it's just spread among different instruments now as opposed to the college days when I'd spend 6 hours straight shredding a guitar.

 

[TaP]

Hmm it varies. I'm out of school until Summer classes begin in 2 weeks, & I'll be picking up a small part-time so my hours will drop but I'll try and keep at least 2.5-4 solid hours no matter what.

Right now I'm pulling like 5-8hours because I literally have all day to my strings. I wanna go for 12 just to see how that feels o__O.

 

[Konfyouzd]

Careful you don't hurt yourself doing that. Seriously.

 

[Steinmetzify]

I work at home so I usually have at least a couple hours a day to play, usually off and on but sometimes I'll take a break and just go for a couple hours straight.

I'm taking lessons, but just practicing scales is really boring to me so I'm usually working on them against a backing track for another forum I'm on; they do one or two a month and I spend a lot of time working on those; trying to get timing, nuances and phrasing to where it's coming naturally to me. The rest of the time is just spent jamming....finding new riffs, working out old ones, recording clips and whatnot.

 

[erdiablo666]

Careful you don't hurt yourself doing that. Seriously.

^This. I didn't think it was possible until I messed up my left hand and wrist. Be sure to always keep proper posture and take mini stretch breaks every half hour or so.

 

[DistinguishedPapyrus]

I have such a busy schedule I'm lucky to get 15 mins a day. I can do an hour if I do it at night when everyone else in the house is asleep.

 

[TheWarAgainstTime]

When I'm at my dorm at school I only get in maybe 30 minutes in a given day, but back home on weekends or over holidays I normally log in at least 3 hours a day

 

[Necris]

I can get a few hours a day usually, split up between the various instruments I play. Since I bought some electronic drums over the weekend those will likely take precedence over other instruments for a while, but I'll try to go back to giving everything an equal amount of time once I start feeling more confident.

On bass I spend a lot of my time just noodling over Jaco Pastorius basslines for finger strength and speed. A lot of folks hate on 2 finger basists, but I can move with just 2 fingers...

Plus the two finger stroke reminds me of the up-down motion of alternate picking and I'm comfortable with that.

Weird, most bassists I know and most I've seen on the internet consider 2 fingers to be the only "proper" way to play.

 

[johnny4kark]

Im a jazz studies major and spend between 4 and 10 hours a day practicing when I'm not stuck with some stupid 15 page research paper for my english composition class. That being said you can hurt yourself if you practice that long and i always make sure i do my stretches
(mostly stuff from the rock discipline dvd with a couple other things and some yoga for my back and shoulders).

A lot of my time is spent simply running arpeggios or scales in different patters and connecting them by 4ths minor thirds half steps and whole steps. so like C to F, C to Eb C - Db and C-D. Theres a book called (patterns for jazz which is really helpful for this kind of stuff and further exploration into it).

I pick a scale type a day and just sing while playing the notes in all twelve (15 really) keys.

and an especially large amount of time is spent listening and transcribing individual phrases from like charlie parker donald byrd or john coltrane, learn each phrase in all 12 keys and every on the guitar that you can play it. and then i apply it two whichever tune I'm working on (right now my improv class is working on cherokee which is why the first two names are listed (Ko Ko by charlie parker and The Injun by Byrd share the same changes as cherokee)

and then i bust out my 1527m and try and decipher any song off of the album intrinsic by the contortionist and fail because of the way its mixed and their guitars are tuned and get disappointed lol

its a shitload of work but its so worth it.

 

[Andless]

I've got a family and a career outside music, but I try to squeeze in a few exercises, whenever I can and if I can sit down later try to record a few clips of riff ideas. I really should record more, it exposes weakness so much more than just sitting and improvising even tho that is def needed to be creative and write stuff.

If I'm lucky I get 2h, but 0-30 min is the case more often than not. Although, time being so limited at the moment, it makes me care more about getting quality time out of the playing and play more structured, and actually keeps me more motivated.

Plus, I believe in the need for quality practice. Lots of it.

 

[p0ke]

Sometimes more than 12 hours a day, but on the average working day, absolute zero. I might grab a guitar or bass while watching TV and just noodle away for a while, but that's all. I don't do technical excersices anymore, as I don't feel like I need to. Sometimes I come up with parts I can't play, then I might practice that until I get it down, but otherwise, I just can't be bothered.
My absolute minimum is something like 5 hours a week though, which comes from band practice.

 

[Konfyouzd]

I can get a few hours a day usually, split up between the various instruments I play. Since I bought some electronic drums over the weekend those will likely take precedence over other instruments for a while, but I'll try to go back to giving everything an equal amount of time once I start feeling more confident.



Weird, most bassists I know and most I've seen on the internet consider 2 fingers to be the only "proper" way to play.

Oh is that so?

I only said what I said because there are some folks here who say that 3 fingers is the way otherwise you'll never build up any speed.

 

[stevexc]

Oh is that so?

I only said what I said because there are some folks here who say that 3 fingers is the way otherwise you'll never build up any speed.

From what little I remember from jazz college, two fingers is the "proper" way to play bass. But sometimes tonally playing with a pick is necessary, and using three fingers will give you more even triplets and speed.

Bear in mind the "proper" form for bass or guitar is really only relevant to academic jazz - there's a LOT of variance, and a good chunk of that is beneficial.


Ugh I do not play anywhere near as much as I like to. I get an hour or two in every few days and that's about it... just too much of life going on.

 

[Batsinthebelltower]

All night , every night

 

[Oreo_Death]

as of lately I haven't touch my guitar. Been about 3-4 weeks because I'm about to graduate and papers/finals are killing me, and I know the last thing I need is a "oh ill just play for an hour oops its 6am" thing happening. Usually though, before my school load got too heavy, I'd play for maybe an hour or so every day or every other day. Usually did things like finger exercises, running through the list of cover songs I like to play, and maybe messing around with my POD HD Pro in making some tones. Maybe once a week I'll have serious buckle-down time where I have a hefty riff session, recording stuff onto Reaper and layering tracks.

 

[Misfit]

average of a couple hours a night

 

[cjms1997]

I tend to play as much as I can. This can very from 30 minutes, to around 4-6 hours. I have school, and it's pretty intensive, but I still find time for music. Hell, if it weren't for music and playing guitar, I would probably have gone insane.

 

[Nimby]

Currently, having to deal with school, I typically practice for 3 hours or so each day.

On the weekends and in the summer it was totally different. Last summer I was pulling 14+ hour days, which was REALLY hard on my back and wrists. I'll definitely be taking more breaks and doing stretches when I get back to the ridiculous woodshedding schedule.

 

[Dayn]

For the past 16 months or so, I'd been far, far too busy working and doing further postgraduate study. For the last year I was lucky to play an hour a month. I just stuffed around a bit to make myself feel better.

But now, I'm fairly free. I run a new office, but it's part-time with ultimate flexibility and freedom. I've just about finished my final research paper, I just need to wait for a second round of feedback, then polishing it a bit and then I'm done.

So lately I've had a lot more freedom to play. I... still don't play as much as I used to, though. If I'm alone, I usually manage maybe 4 to 5 hours a week. I spend it stuffing around most of the time, with a bit of consolidation on foundational technique and writing.

So mostly, instead of playing, I've been writing a hell of a lot without my guitar. Smashed out nearly three songs on the weekend with a friend. Putting together my own songs with such renewed verve and inspiration. It just flows without having to think of it and I'm getting amazing results.

I intend to finish writing, and hopefully finish recording, a seven-song album for myself by the time the year's done. I intend to start a PhD near the end of this year, so apart from aiming to bring in more work, I'll be spending a lot of my free time writing and recording. Need to make the most of it.