Share you experience. Practice Regimen/ Focusing on too much?

[9lbShellhamer]

Sometimes posts serve a useful purpose in that they create shared experiences, helping us to forge on in a more efficient pursuit of mandolin mastery.

I am trying to build proficiency in the FFcP first four positions. I am working through the first four PDF's which are basically a page each.

It can take me up to thirty or forty five minutes in the mornings do so. The 4th finger workout is really something! I expect to really know the fretboard blindly because of these exercises.

On work mornings when I don't have as much time, I feel like I slop through them because they take so long.

Should I just focus on one position daily?

I work as a nurse and I only work 3 days per week.

I am playing about 2-4 hours per day on non-work days and on work days I only about 25 minutes in the morning to practice. I am trying to figure out the most useful way to spend my time on these work days.

Sometimes I focus on too much at once. Like in learning songs I want to play one through without mastering it at speed before moving to the next. I'm forcing myself to do so now and its rewarding. You can't do everything at once. It's better to focus on one thing at a time right? I am specifically focusing on BG mandolin right now...

There's a saying, Ad Nauseum. I believe I need to get more acquainted with playing things Ad Nauseum.

The same is true for songs. I made a pact with myself to stop playing new songs until I could play all current projects by memory. This has worked well in that I memorized a bunch of stuff recently.

Thanks for your opinions! I know this is supposed to be fun, and it is! I'm just trying to really make the most of my time and be dedicated as I just noodled around with guitar for nearly a decade and in only 7 months now on Mandolin I have become much more proficient through working a lot harder at it.

[Beanzy]

Take one (make a note and do another the next work day), really focus on tone and clean fretting & say the note names as you play them.
I reckon if you really do that properly it'll be a way better practice than hours of just playing through stuff.
Playing through is not practice, it's like just going through the paces in the gym.
So short periods demand more focus and a very defined idea of what you want that valuable time to do to make you a better player.

[SincereCorgi]

I think it's good to have a solid technique goal like mastering closed-position scales. However, like Beanzy said, doing it to the point where you're numb and 'slopping through it' probably means you're not fully engaged with the material. If you're bored and working by rote, you're probably not learning very much. Also, I know this is a tautology, but you gotta just play music if you want to play music- just because you can play a closed-position scale in B doesn't mean you can rip it up on 'Rebecca'.

[Ivan Kelsall]

From SincereCorgi - "...but you gotta just play music if you want to play music-..". That's the best advice you can give to anyone. Playing banjo & guitar 'finger style' isn't about single string work,so when i came to mandolin,it was a 'start all over again' afair. You mention 'Rebecca' - i play that tune on banjo & i love it,so it became one of my first ever goals to play on mandolin along with a few others. I never bothered about scales,i went straight for 'tunes'. OK,somewhere along the way,i did learn a few scales purely as finger practice & excercise,but playing tunes is still the way i do it & i can 'rip it up' on Rebecca now, as well as several others of Herschel Sizemore & John Reischman's tunes. Not concentrating on scales hasn't harmed my playing one bit.I know that others have their own way of learning,& that's fine,but you have to play tunes a lot,'cos that's what the ultimate aim is,& the more you do it the more you can do it. Scales have their place,but they're of secondary importance to 'music' (IMHO).
There's nothing wrong with having 3 or 4 songs on the go at the same time either.Playing one tune to distraction isn't a good thing although i do understand your point. Leaving one tune alone for a while & going on to another one,can bring surprising results,not least that you don't bore yourself to a frazzle !. It's a pretty well known fact,often voiced on here,that one's 'subconcious'
will carry on working on a specific problem (tune) while we're consciously doing (playing) another.
It's happened to many folk on here.So,sometimes leaving one tune alone pays dividends when we come back to it, in as much as some of the 'little dificulties' get subconciously ironed out.
These days,if i have a couple (or more) tunes that i want to learn,i practice playing them in rotation,one tune one day,another tune........etc.,that doesn't mean that i don't need to play parts of the tunes i'm learning over & over,i do,but i make sure that i don't get bored with the process - that's the killer !,
Ivan

[bmac]

To me.... If I structure my "practice" too much I will lose interest... I need results fairly immediatly... So I deny ever practicing, but of course I play a lot... Sometimes four hours per day... but to refer to it as "practicing" would take the enjoyment out of it.

[Beanzy]

Just so the thread doesn't get de-railed, the original post isn't general, it's specifically about how to get the best out of those very brief 25min practices on 3 work days a week.
He's got plenty of time (2+ hrs) on the other days and is focussed on getting the songs and tunes under his belt then.

I'm interested in peoples ideas as I'm in a similar position but with mad shifts away on alternate weeks.
In my case it's often tiredness that limits my practice time, so I make sure it's really structured and short with a few goals or I'll never be able to concentrate for the time & I'd fall asleep (I have)..

[farmerjones]

if I had that much time for my own devices, i'd figure some way to do some picking with other people. Don't wait until you're good enough. If you can play a handful of songs from memory, get thee to a jam. Even if it's just a guitar picking buddy.

My practice regime is not to be used as a shining example. While it is daily, all I do is sit and play tunes that come to mind. I guess it's more of a memory test. Because I don't use notation, nor a tune list, and this is very deliberate. But also it's physical therapy. I just about have to keep at it every day, or the old joints loose conditioning.

[Jon Hall]

If I were in the situation of having 25 minutes to practice, I would have two objectives; I would want to enjoy the few minutes playing and I would want to work on whatever technique or piece of music I am learning. I would probably begin by getting in tune (duh!), playing something I enjoy for 5 minutes and then work on whatever I am learning for 15 minutes. Realizing I'm not able to squeeze everything into 15 minutes, I would pick one thing. I would finish by playing something I enjoy playing.

[jshane]

In keeping with the OP's question of how best to use sort (30min) periods of time to advance one's ability on an instrument:

I'd suggest developing some 15-minute "modules", each with specific goals. I would then "deploy" them, in this case 2 at a time, more or less in rotation. Mine might look like this:

1. Finger exercises/scales -- truthfully, I dont do much of this anymore-- I have more fun getting my fingers limber and facile while learning specific parts of challenging musical pieces I am interested in.. but people seem to swear by them.

2. Work on learning a new song -- 15 minute bursts are great at initially learning the chords/melody/etc of a new tune.

(2b. Same as 2, but with a new technique that is of interest. For example, recently I am working on claw-hammer.)

3. Work on mastering a song just learned (from number 2 above)--15 min burst of "powerwork" on the fancy spots/solos/etc is perfect -- each session will see improvement

4. Play through 1 or 2 songs that are in your "have mastered" category... keeps 'em fresh.. and sometimes something new will occur to you, and they get moved back into the number 3 category, for some additional polish.

5. Improvisation-- 15 mins of improv -- either solo, or along to recorded material -- just to keep the creative juices going

Everyone's 15 min modules will be different--- naturally.

I find that using focused short intervals can be very effective if they are planned, and have specific goals....

[SincereCorgi]

Just so the thread doesn't get de-railed, the original post isn't general, it's specifically about how to get the best out of those very brief 25min practices on 3 work days a week.

You can get a lot done in 25 minutes. Lately, if I have a little chunk of time, I usually spend it doing arpeggios over changes in one way or another. That way, I'm learning a song, practicing improvising, and hopefully making my left hand smarter. If I had that chunk for violin, I would probably spend ten minutes on Sevcik exercises or other intonation stuff, and then just work on music for fifteen. I don't think there's a best solution, and like bmac said, you've got to keep some spontaneity or you get sick of it.

[Ivan Kelsall]

Hi Beanzy - I think we all understood the OP's point re.the 25 minutes,so to boil down my own post to 2 words - 'play tunes'. I think most of us were giving our 'reasons' for doing what 'we' do. On the no-work days when the OP has 2- 4 hours of time,he can devote some of that time to scales etc. - the 'theoretical' side,but ultimately (IMHO) 'tunes' are what's required, & an understanding of 'where the notes' are on the fingerboard. Devoting some time to 'ear playing' pays huge dividends as well. Listening to recordings & then finding the 'sounds' on the mandolin helps to to recognise 'where those sound are' when you hear them in lots of tunes,or, hear them in your head when you're improvising,
Ivan

[Beanzy]

I used to try playing though tunes but on shift days I'd have real difficulty getting any life in a tune, I'd just be practicing playing it in a tired way and miss most of what I would normally spot when I have energy. I'd end up basically wasting the practice time I had. Now when tired I tend to avoid anything that requires an interpretation or more than a technical engagement with the instrument. So rather than let that be a dis-advantage I use the time to to work out something that can be brought to my playing when I am able to engage the rest of my faculties with it. I've found that even when tired I can still focus on getting fluidity in playing scales, arpeggios or tremolo and don't get tired until I stop practicing. But songs or making a tune work musically seems to need more engagement or something and I need to be more 'present'. I still haven't figured out why or what it is that goes missing, or how you can put that bounce back, hence my interest here. From what I've read I suspect though it's to do with plain old rest.

On the non-work days I pack the practices with run-throughs of sets jam tunes and ensemble programmes and practices of the pieces I'm working on. But there are hours of material to run through so even then it needs to be well broken up.

The advantage for me in doing specific exercises on those short practice days (I usually do a week on about 4hrs sleep a night following a 31hr period without sleep) is I can forget about trying to bring something to the practice that just isn't available. I'm certainly less likely to miss a practice now due to tiredness. I suppose because it's so focussed and quantified it's easier to say to myself "you've just got to do that,that and that then you're done". It's all trickery really.