Quiet practice: bad?

[Tobin]

In order to spare my wife's ears and allow her to go about her normal routines in the house, I practice in the bedroom with the door shut. And I try to play softly enough where she either can't hear me or just barely hears me.

On weekends, if she's off riding her horse or doing something out of the house, I'll jam full volume.

What I've noticed is that I tend to make more progress in my practice when I can play as loudly as I want. When I'm intentionally playing softly, I think I'm inhibiting my speed and technique.

My question to the rest of you is whether you think there's really a difference, and if so is there some technique I can use to get around it? I've read several tips on here in past threads on muting the mandolin so it's not as loud. But is there maybe a practice technique I can use that will get me the most benefit while still not playing full volume? Or do you even think it makes a difference?

[Ernie Campbell]

Dude,

I can not answer your question.Although,I am glad you ask it.My wife has heard sally gooden so many times she does not ever want to here it again.I still do not have it up to speed.

[Gerard Dick]

Get an electric solid body and play unplugged when the wife is around. When she's gone plug it in and wail away. Beware of the lynch mob beating down your front door.

[Christian McKee]

The best instructors I've worked with have encouraged me to practice at low volumes - to focus on tone and technique rather than speed and volume, etc. I find that when I really get drilled in on clean tone and technique above everything else, my volume tends to drop - but I'm building skills which will support faster, louder playing when necessary. Heck, listen to Chris Thiele's non-bluegrass material: It's pretty quiet! All in all, I like practicing quietly, but tastes vary widely.

Christian

[Lee Callicutt]

But is there maybe a practice technique I can use that will get me the most benefit while still not playing full volume?

It's a good time to slow down and focus on learning a new tune by ear, and/or fretting/fingering technique since you're de-emphasizing the picking technique.

[Denny Gies]

I agree with Taboot; it never hurts to work on tone and technique. The speed always seems to come when needed.

[Tom Smart]

... since you're de-emphasizing the picking technique.

Playing softly, loudly, or anywhere in-between requires technique. Perhaps the OP is struggling with speed and technique at lower volumes because he needs more practice doing it.

Usually, "progress" comes fastest when you're practicing stuff that's easiest for you. Playing as softly as possible can be challenging. But if it's hard to play softly while still getting a clear, clean tone, maybe it's better to spend more time practicing that instead of looking around for a mute, solid-body, or some other way to avoid the difficulty.

Lots of beginning fiddlers seem to think they need to keep a mute on their bridge at all times. I tell them they'll make more progress by learning to play softly rather than trying to hide behind a mute.

Lots of string music (especially at the jams I attend) is played with just one dynamic: LOUD. To me, playing with a full dynamic range as appropriate adds so much. Monroe was a perfect example.

[mandozilla]

Get yourself a Man Cave Tobin. I'm lucky, "MY" den is a long way from where my wife hangs out and with the door shut I can play as long and as hard, or soft, as I want and I don't hear a peep out of her.

Also, I have a 3 car garage, well actually it's a two car garage with a single car garage attached. That single car garage is "MY" Man Cave and in the summer you'll usually find me there pickin' away to my hearts content.

Now don't get the impression that I live in a mansion or something, it's a nice house but it ain't "That" big. But, I have claim on three rooms; TV room, den, and "MY" single car garage Man Cave...my wife has the rest of the house...the other nine rooms...we're 'Empty Nesters'.

Oh, and it doesn't hurt that we met when I was in a bluegrass band at a gig 35 years ago...she don't mind bluegrass music...if she did we'd probably have been divorced long ago...HaHaHa

[OldSausage]

When I started out I found was that it was very helpful to have practice time when I could play loud, mainly because when I was in a performance or jam situation I needed to play loud, and playing loud needs different techniques and muscles from playing soft. I found that when I came to play a tune I had until then only learned by playing quietly in a jam situation, I usually ended up in a tangle of pick, strings and fingers.

However, playing at the kind of high volume you need to play at to be heard in a jam session will do very little for your tone.

Really, the best advice is not to care either about how loud or soft you are playing, but instead to care deeply about how each note you play blossoms in the air around your ears. The theory is, if you sound good enough, everyone else will quieten down to listen to you.

[Rhinestone]

I practice in my master bathroom and with all the mirror and tile it sounds fantastic and doesn't infest the rest of the house with music. The tiled entry way to my house is a close second when no one's around. I like to practice softly when I lay in bed a watch TV. I noodle, practice scales and try to play along with whatever music is playing - until my wife comes to bed......Then mandolin time is over. She doesn't get it - I might as well be drilling holes in sheet metal with a dull drill bit while she's trying to watch TV.

But to me, playing softly is ok and is just another way to play.

There's a monster player here in L.A. named Evan Marshall and his wife is ok with him playing mandolin at home I'm told - as long as it doesn't sound too much like he's "practicing".

[Man of Wax]

I think it's important to play loudly. For one, when I play with others, they often tell me to play louder. I'm a naturally quiet guy, and I think that extends to my picking. But you need to play loudly when you're with others, so it's worthwhile to practice that. Second, and more important, when you play loudly, you will hear errors more clearly. You need to hear the trouble spots or you will unconsciously gloss over them. I also find it much easier to play at speed if I'm playing more softly, but since playing softly is of no use in a jam situation, it's imperative to learn to play at speed while also playing loudly. Why, just a couple hours ago, my banjo-playing buddy commented that I sounded "like a little girl playing a harp"—that got me to pick up the volume right quick! (No offense to little girls or harpists.)

For the sake of matrimonial harmony, of course, it makes sense to play at a level your wife can tolerate, but I think you should play as loudly as you can, as often as you can. I'm no expert, but this has been helpful in my experience.

[Mike Snyder]

Yeah, and I think it's important (to me) to practice quiet. Many years with POS mandolins have caused chronic overplaying. The beast must be slain. I've got a mandolin with tone, I need to learn to let it out. My problems; starting a tune too fast, speeding up, overplaying.

[Mandolusional]

I think it's important to play soft, and loud, that way you learn more about how you produce tone, and improve the range of emotions you can convey.

If you are worried too much about being quiet, then the mental faculties aren't free to focus on things like technique. Not only that but it might cause you to change your pick angle, or hinder you from following through on your attack, etc.

I agree with others that what matters is what you do with the notes rather than their volume if you're playing alone. I also feel/agree that hearing the same phrase on repeat can be incredibly irritating. Perhaps you can play with a little more gusto, but avoid geting hung up for long on one area and return to it after working on something else.

[250sc]

You have to be able to pull back and play softly and lean in and play full out. I can't think of any song that isn't better when you use the full range of dynamics available to you and your instrument. Playing constantly at one volume is tedious it do and listen to. Use all the colors on your palet.

[billkilpatrick]

You have to be able to pull back and play softly and lean in and play full out. I can't think of any song that isn't better when you use the full range of dynamics available to you and your instrument. Playing constantly at one volume is tedious it do and listen to. Use all the colors on your palet.

i'll go along with the above but i learned more from listening to and developing those subtleties which only come from playing softly. sustain is not our favorite instrument's strongest suit and playing loud - "shredding" it (shudder) - often sounds more like someone abusing a box than it does music.

[Tobin]

Get an electric solid body and play unplugged when the wife is around. When she's gone plug it in and wail away. Beware of the lynch mob beating down your front door.

I've considered that. Before I picked up the mandolin, that's what I would do with my electric guitar. I'd play it unplugged (or better yet, with earphones) so it never bothered her. My mandolin is acoustic/electric, so I could plug in earphones but it wouldn't do any good. I can't turn off the acoustics.

I don't have to worry about anyone beating down my front door, though. We live on 15 acres in a rural area. Sometimes when it's nice outside I'll even take my mandolin down to the barn and serenade my horses. They always stand and stare at me while I'm playing, with their ears pointed to me, so I'm guessing they like it.

As for getting a solid-body electric, I can't right now. My wife says I have too many instruments already. Between rifles and instruments, she's had her limit with my "accumulation issues".

The best instructors I've worked with have encouraged me to practice at low volumes - to focus on tone and technique rather than speed and volume, etc. I find that when I really get drilled in on clean tone and technique above everything else, my volume tends to drop - but I'm building skills which will support faster, louder playing when necessary. Heck, listen to Chris Thiele's non-bluegrass material: It's pretty quiet! All in all, I like practicing quietly, but tastes vary widely.

That's mainly what I do, is focus on technique and tone while I'm playing quietly. And it does help translate into speed to some degree. But if it's speed I'm trying to work on, that's hard to do when playing quietly. I actually do find it to be good practice, though, trying to work on quiet speed. I think it helps develop control. It helps limit extraneous movement when you have to watch the force with which you pick or fret the instrument. So heck, now that I think about it, maybe I am doing myself a favor after all by having to play quietly.

Get yourself a Man Cave Tobin. I'm lucky, "MY" den is a long way from where my wife hangs out and with the door shut I can play as long and as hard, or soft, as I want and I don't hear a peep out of her.

Heh, yeah, I wish I had a Man Cave. In our old house we had two spare bedrooms, one of which was my "gun room". But we bought the new place almost 6 years ago and went with a smaller house but more land. So I lost my gun room. Now all my gun safes are in the one guest bedroom, and I can't display my collection like I want because it scares the guests.

I could go play in the garage; it's a two-car detached building. But it gets so dang hot out there I'd be pouring sweat all over my mandolin. And there's always the barn, which gets a nice breeze through it. My wife can always ring the dinner triangle in the yard if she needs me to come back to the house.

I take my mandolin to work every day too, and play during my lunch hour. So I have to be fairly quiet there too, and there's no barn or garage to go to.

Thanks folks, those are all great responses! I guess I will use the quiet practice time for really focusing on control and technique.

[Tom Smart]

... when I play with others, they often tell me to play louder.

There's a guy at our local jams who habitually plays way too loud, covering up other people's solos. When a softer player is soloing, he'll often bellow "play louder." More than once, I've told him, "No, you play softer."

This particular individual will never get it, but it's important to remember, and to remind others, that it's the responsibility of the backup players to adjust their volume to the soloist or singer, not the other way around.

[jimbob]

You need to learn to play with variance in volume. that's true with any instrument. The hardest thing , I think, to learn on the mandolin is how to really dig in an get the tone out of the instrument. I think learning to play cleanly and slowly is a must, but I also think you need to really dig in hard....so I don't like the idea of practicing softly.

[Pete Martin]

You can roll up a small piece of cloth and place it under the strings next to the bridge It will dampen the sound a lot, but you can still hear when you are producing full tone.

I believe one makes the fastest progress when they can picture in their mind a "sound" they want to create. This involves all elements, musical and mechanical (including volume). Then you have to do whatever it takes to produce this "sound". The more you practice this "sound" the quicker you achieve the goal.

[Nox]

Tobin we are in the same boat, and maybe my situation is worst.
I live in a building at the last floor and i can only practice after midnight.
So when practicing i play very very quiet, so quiet that my family sleep and don't hear me, and so quiet that the guys on the floor below can't hear me.
I think that isn't good. Today i played a bit in the morning, not to quiet, i felt much more free and the sound overall was better. I think there is a limit to a quiet playing, my situation doesn't help me, and maybe i'm taking bad habits and bad tecnique.

[hattio]

Tom Smart,
I agree with you on the backup players playing quietly, but only to an extent. You have to play loud enough to compete with the other sound, especially in a jam situation. There's only so quiet 25 guitars can get.

But, mostly I wanted to write and ask you about the quote on the bottom of your posts. What is it, what's the situation?

[250sc]

"You have to play loud enough to compete with the other sound, especially in a jam situation."

I disagree. It is their responsibility to be quiet enough to hear the soloist. If it means half of them have to drop out....so be it. 25 guitars!!!!!! No thanks. Grab 4 other like minded people and find a quiet corner.

[Tom Smart]

hattio, I shamelessly stole my signature line from this thread: http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/sh...ad.php?t=43669

It's about worn out, though, and I think I'll soon be changing it to another priceless bit from the same quotation.

Back on topic, I was once practicing something quietly between tunes at a jam, when someone asked if I was playing "air mandolin." I assured him that I was actually playing it, but he had to bend down and put his ear right in front of the mando to confirm that, yes, notes were actually coming out.

By the way, I agree that it's also important to practice playing loud. The masters have great pick control, tone, speed, etc., at all volumes. Grisman is another perfect example.

25 guitars isn't a jam, it's a mob, and like any mob there's probably not much you can do to control it. Good etiquette, as 250sc said, would be to drop out or split up, and that's what I do in those situations. But when a jam gets beyond a certain level of control, trying to model (or enforce) good etiquette becomes difficult. Not impossible, but difficult.

[billkilpatrick]

i've trotted this out before - but it's still good: a few years back, in a "which pick?" type discussion in the "classical ... etc." section of the forum, a worthy contributor quoted a professional mandolin player from the mediterranean who used thick (by inference, "loud") picks for dancing, in the earlier stages of the evening and thin ("quiet") picks for what he called " ... the more discerning reveler" later on.

basically, go with whatever serves you best: being talked to gently or hollered at.

[EdSherry]

No time spent practicing can be seen as "bad" -- so long as you don't develop bad habits when doing so. The real concern, as I see it, is that by playing softly for most/all of your practice time, you can slip into habits that will limit your ability to play loudly when you need to.

I have some heavy mutes for practicing fiddle and banjo, but I'm not aware of any commercially-available mutes for mandolin. You can do what Pete Martin suggests, or cut some foam inserts to fit in your f-holes.

That said, I would agree (a) that there are plenty of things one can work on at low volume levels and/or with a muted instrument but (b) in order to get the most out of your instrument and your music, you need to be able to play loudly on occasion.