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Off-Topic GTG for learning the guitar

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Baron von Raschke

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Hello everyone. I know there are several guitar players on the forum so I'd like to pick some brains. I'm 49 years old and have an electric guitar that I've "dabbled" with over the past 15 years (books, youtube, fiddling). Just two months ago I started taking my first ever lessons from an instructor and in the first lesson he was able to see what I'd learned on my own and tied them together. For example, I had taught myself some basic chords using a massive intimidating chord book. I'd also learned about the chromatic scale on my own. He took that basic knowledge I had and showed me barre chords. Within an evening I was able play, oh, about 20 chords and with my previous knowledge of the scale I was able to map them out on the guitar neck. I've been building on that revelation ever since.

Now to my question. You hear about guitar players practicing for hours. Guitar playing requires a lot of neurological connections between brain and fingers. Is this something that lends itself to GTG? Multiple short sessions during each day, rather than long intense practice sessions each day? Like for learning a new riff?

Just curious. I've been practicing every day, once a day, and after one session ended with the inevitable hand cramp the thought of GTG occurred to me. Thanks in advance!
 
If you wanted to learn one specific riff, you couldnprobably do ok with one minute on every hour, get like 5 repetitions of the riff at different speeds throughout the day. Sometimes slow, sometimes as fasr as you can perfectly without strain, sometimes faster than you can play it perfectly (past the edge of out of control, but learning tour “sticking point” and working on smoothing it out at that speed. I would only do that 1 in 5 sessions because perfect practice is what makes perfect, but the reckless speed seems to help my progress as the nervous system gets acclimated to it.

However, thats only 10 minutes a day, and its only a specific riff.
For most people its way for convenient to have one 30 minute session a day as a beginner intermediate. Music performance majors in school Ive heard can put in 6 hours a day. No matter how you split that up, its a lot. Its what seperates the good musicians from the reliably consistent in world class orchestras, session musicians etc.

I think one can get very very good with a dedicated hour a day. Grease the groove with 3 20 minute sessions, but make sure those sessions arent too “casual”. The thing with the short session is that it can be too instructed and you might just noodle around a bit. Having dedicated chord learning, chord transitioning, left-right hand synchronization, scale practice, improvization practice etc is very helpful. I would rather have my guitar student practice 10 minutes every day (70 total minutes) than 2 hours every Saturday. I think... but theres something about daily compounded progress
 
I’ve been using that technique on all my musical instruments for over 40 years. I keep whatever instrument I’m working on at the time beside my recliner and pick it up several times a day anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes. That’s not to say I never practice longer than that because every once in awhile I might play 30 min to an hour but an overwhelming majority of my sessions are short. You just want to make sure you have a predetermined practicing plan when you pick it up and aren’t just noodling (although noodling has its place too).

Let’s say you’re trying to learn a line/passage of a song/solo. If you play that line over and over for an hour straight there’s a good chance you’ll be playing it worse after an hour than you were after the first 15 minutes. Just like in weight training once your technique breaks down its time to take a breather. Everyone is different but I personally reach a point of diminishing returns pretty quick.

A lot of times if I get stuck and can’t seem to progress on something I’ll just take a few days off and not play at all. Almost without fail I get past my sticking point the next time I pick up the instrument. But you also have to realize that there’s many great musicians who play several hours a day with history making results. I just don’t advise that for the average person.

Yep, the similarities between gtg weight training and learning an instrument are uncannily similar.
 
I think the problem is in your combination of "long" and "intense" - needn't and, IMHO, shouldn't be that way, and although practicing might require intense concentration, never forget that the goal is to make everything easy. Playing a musical instrument should be _way_ at the other side of the muscle tension continuum from anything related to lifting weights. If you practice in a single, long-ish session per day, you're following in the footsteps of many accomplished musicians. I don't know many people who practice in short sessions, save if it's something new, e.g., your example of hand cramping - you want to stay away from that.

-S-
 
Yes, frequency of practice is superior to massed practiced. This is well established in psychology. It is called spaced repetition. However, this is practice, not initial learning. Also, layering and weaving or alternating practice sessions of different types together is counter-intuitively good practice. This is nicely summarized in the book, Make It Stick.

This works for "deliberate practice" where you are working on a specific goal to improve, e.g. part of a song, rather than just playing the entire song over and over or just going with the flow and playing what you feel like for a long time.

I would imagine that you need five min or so at least to get going, so it would be a little different from GTG.

Andrew Coyne in the book the Talent Code has part of a chapter on just how professional musicians practice and it is very different from what we think. They often isolate a few cords and play it faster or slower and experiment with different ways of doing it and then rebuild it back into the song.

This type of exercise for kettlebells would be like this. You are doing getups and you want to work on your high sit position. You do partial getups and experiement with minute differences in your weight distribution or the position of your legs and feet etc. until you feel you got it almost perfect and they you practice that.

Research shows that most high performers can function at a high level for no more than about three hours a day and often take a nap after practice, which has proven to help integrate new learning. More is not often better as StrongFirst knows.
 
Andrew Coyne in the book the Talent Code has part of a chapter on just how professional musicians practice and it is very different from what we think. They often isolate a few cords and play it faster or slower and experiment with different ways of doing it and then rebuild it back into the song.
I haven’t read that book but what you’ve described is known as “chunking” in my teaching studio and is something I teach to everyone - you work on a very small “chunk” that's a problem, then you gradually work that chunk back into the whole piece.

It seems as though, at least in music, our brains require a repetition of something fairly small and without intervening things in order to make a change and make progress. I have seen students play the same piece, even if it's only a minute long, over and over and over and never improve, but if they stop playing from beginning to end and work on a small chunk with a very specific goal, they can often overcome a long-standing hurdle with relative ease. My typical recommendation is, again, in line with what the book you cite suggests - we usually slow the fragment way down, discuss and solve any technical issues like fingering, and then play the chunk correctly, just at a greatly reduced speed. From there, it's work on the chunk for increasing speed, and then very gradually, usually by adding a few notes before the chunk starts, integrating the chunk back into the whole.

-S-
 
I haven’t read that book but what you’ve described is known as “chunking” in my teaching studio and is something I teach to everyone - you work on a very small “chunk” that's a problem, then you gradually work that chunk back into the whole piece.

It seems as though, at least in music, our brains require a repetition of something fairly small and without intervening things in order to make a change and make progress. I have seen students play the same piece, even if it's only a minute long, over and over and over and never improve, but if they stop playing from beginning to end and work on a small chunk with a very specific goal, they can often overcome a long-standing hurdle with relative ease. My typical recommendation is, again, in line with what the book you cite suggests - we usually slow the fragment way down, discuss and solve any technical issues like fingering, and then play the chunk correctly, just at a greatly reduced speed. From there, it's work on the chunk for increasing speed, and then very gradually, usually by adding a few notes before the chunk starts, integrating the chunk back into the whole.

-S-
We use the exact same term and technique in climbing. Especially in single pitch sport climbing and bouldering. If there is a certain boulder problem you can't do... chunk it down. Work on the 'easy' parts so that they are wired. Work only on the crux move(s). Maybe it's the transition into the crux that's the sticking point. Try the move statically and/or dynamically. By breaking the whole down into individual chunks, it's often easy to solve a problem. (Applicable to TGU as well :))
 
We use the exact same term and technique in climbing. Especially in single pitch sport climbing and bouldering. If there is a certain boulder problem you can't do... chunk it down. Work on the 'easy' parts so that they are wired. Work only on the crux move(s). Maybe it's the transition into the crux that's the sticking point. Try the move statically and/or dynamically. By breaking the whole down into individual chunks, it's often easy to solve a problem. (Applicable to TGU as well :))

Yes, "chunking" is the term from cognitive psychology and applies to all types of learning, motor and cognitive. In fact, there seems to be less difference between all types of learning than once thought. The process that Steve and you describe is what all professionals do. The more minute the attention to detail when chunking, the more likely it is an example of elite performance.

There are two huge problems though. One is that it is really hard to focus on what you are not good at. It takes good ego control. The book I mentioned gives the example olympic level figure skaters fall down more than high school athletes because the keep practicing the hard jumps and not making themselves feel comfortable repeating what they can already do.

Students when they study reread their notes to make themselves feel comfortable, which causes them to overestimate how well they know the material. They should be self-quizzing or elaborating on those parts they don't know.

Another problem is that this type of practice can also be boring with only highly motivated performers willing to tolerate it over time. Martial arts schools keep adding on new moves to keep students interested, not because it is the way to learn whereas pros keep drilling fundamentals.

On the opposite end, the other finding in research relevant to motor skills generally and kettlebell instruction is that almost even generally effective teachers try to teach step by step until the student has mastered one step before the other. But this is not the best way. OR they use massed practice of something newly learned for long blocks before adding another.

However, just like with Russian strength training methodology, waving is normal and progress is not linear except for some beginners. We should take things apart and chunk but also move forward and also regress moves in interleaved practice, not linear progression. We all know that pros keep drilling the fundamentals but this is often neglected in teaching.

For example, if you are teaching a getup you might teach each sequence step by step adding a new one when mastered. However, you should also continually regress for deliberate practice with an aim to mastery, then advance and regress etc. For a swing, you might practice concentrating only on the float but then regress to a kettlebell deadlift but focus on the snap of contraction in the standing plank even for those students who have decent basic swing dynamics. I looked carefully at how Pavel and other's standing swing plank look like their deadlift lockout. There is a clear snapping contraction (a zipping up) for less than max efforts. It is clear in elite hardstyle performers but much less noticible even with other pretty good athletes.

To simplify, traditional teaching of something like getup sets might be 1,2,3,4,5,6; 1,2,3,4,5,6; 1,2,3,4,5,6, etc. with practice on say step 4 if a student has visible problems.

Effective teaching would be more like.

1,2
1 regression
1,2,3, putting the chunks together.
2,3, deliberate practice of the transition between these two steps.
1,2,3,4,5,6, Rebuilding the sequence and previewing what is to come.
2,3,4, reconsolidating and linking new skill 4 to baseline 2,3.
repeat depending on sticking points needed for attention, need for review, degree of consistency achieved etc.

A Karate Kata could be taught the same way.

In short, it would probably look more like Plan Strong waving.

If you were doing an all day user's course on swing, press, squat and TGU one would normally do them in sequence but it would be more effective to do them in cycles 1,2,3,4; 1,2,3,4 1,2,3,4 over the day. It seems confusing and is not intuitive to the learner, however. And it is harder to manage and program. Frequency is more effective than massed practice.

Sorry for the length of the post. I work in higher education and I am very disappointed by the disconnect between what we know how people learn in research and how education is done in our society. It just does not make sense. 70 percent of American college students use the least efficient study methods: reading their notes in sequence...

People often criticize reasearchers for being out of touch and not practical, but this is valid because it is how the pros approach things intuitively when they practice.

The book Make It Stick details all of these findings in research over the last 30 year. I also highly recommend this book and course , especially to those in school that you know. years. Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects | Coursera
 
It is really hard to focus on what you are not good at. It takes good ego control.
This is why we have teachers.

This type of practice can also be boring with only highly motivated performers willing to tolerate it over time
This, too, is why we have teachers.

But I don't feel I motivate my students; rather, they're my students because they want to improve, and I help them make the connection between what they do in their practice time and the goal they want to achieve. The results of "chunking" in musical instrument practice can be dramatic and immediate - a person who has worked on a piece for long time without significant progress trying the chunking approach in his/her lesson, goes home and works that way for a week, and comes back being able to do things they were never able to do before. And that progress is what's motivating.

We must also note the huge difference between group and individual learning. I taught college for close to 20 years and found the experience of teaching a group less than satisfying, which is why I returned to my roots as a private instrumental teacher. Just today, I was making a point to an adult student - I made my point clearly but my student wasn't in a place to take it in, so I made it again, and again, and again, all nicely, but I was persistent, and I kept at it until he got what I was trying to tell him. One simply cannot do that in a classroom setting.

-S-
 
This is why we have teachers.

This, too, is why we have teachers.

But I don't feel I motivate my students; rather, they're my students because they want to improve, and I help them make the connection between what they do in their practice time and the goal they want to achieve. The results of "chunking" in musical instrument practice can be dramatic and immediate - a person who has worked on a piece for long time without significant progress trying the chunking approach in his/her lesson, goes home and works that way for a week, and comes back being able to do things they were never able to do before. And that progress is what's motivating.

We must also note the huge difference between group and individual learning. I taught college for close to 20 years and found the experience of teaching a group less than satisfying, which is why I returned to my roots as a private instrumental teacher. Just today, I was making a point to an adult student - I made my point clearly but my student wasn't in a place to take it in, so I made it again, and again, and again, all nicely, but I was persistent, and I kept at it until he got what I was trying to tell him. One simply cannot do that in a classroom setting.

-S-

Yes, I agree the more I reflect on it, the more teachers are forced or get into the habit of simply managing learning when ideally we should be teaching students how to learn and helping them when they get stuck. Online learning completion rates are terrible for most students but for those who can stay on task but have access to teachers when they get stuck or need guidance, the results are often very good. I do one on one work with students and find it very valuable as well.
 
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