5 Ways To Improve Your Practice Sessions In 2019 with Thomas Viloteau
Watch Thomas Viloteau share exactly how he practices in his exclusive tonebase lesson here! | tonebase Tips
It’s the one thing we all do as guitarists.
No, not sign up for tonebase (though we surely wouldn’t mind) — but rather, practice!
And given that it’s the most common item in a guitarists music schedule, it’s amazing just how much room there is for improvement in each of our practice routines. Think of the amount of time you spend just noodling around on a passage or technique, playing it through, making mistakes around but pushing on, and finally getting it right once! At which point we all breathe a sigh of relief and call it a day…
According to tonebase Instructor extraordinaire Thomas Viloteau — that isn’t really practicing.
Our practice habits should always allow us to learn music as quickly as possible. Life is way too short to practice inefficiently, and thank goodness the GFA-Winner and newly-minted Peabody professor is here to help!
Thomas Viloteau’s Key Tips To Practice Well
1. Use A Metronome
A metronome will help you quantify your practice by helping you set and reach clear numerical tempo goals. This can be especially helpful while practicing repertoire that is meant to be groovy, especially modern repertoire that mimics playing with a drummer.
2. Slow Down When Practicing But Determine Your Fingerings A Tempo
Slow practice is good, but many people make the mistake of determining their fingerings at this tempo.
This wastes time because it runs the risk of having to reevaluate the fingerings as you get closer to full tempo. It is best to start learning the piece a tempo to decide on the fingerings that will work right away at the full tempo. Once that is established then the slow practice can begin.
3. Reduce complicated sections to groups of “5” things
These “things” can be notes, shifts, or other considerations. It could be as little as three notes that includes one shift and one other additional technical consideration.
Practice the groups with a metronome to quantify your progress. Once you can play each passage 10 times in a row perfectly, then you can move to a faster tempo. Continue this until each group is at the full tempo. It is important to follow this up for two to three days to commit the movements to long term memory
4. Spend focused time with the guitar — 2 hours of focus is better than 6 hours without!
There’s no substitute for raw practice time.
Make sure your time spent with the guitar is highly focused. Two hours of focus is better than six hours without focus. Get as much focused time with the instrument that you can each day.
5. Find out the rest by watching the full lesson…
We can’t give it all away! Head over to tonebase.co to watch an extended preview of Thomas’s full lesson on “How To Practice”!
Plus now, for a limited time, use the coupon code TONEBASE-BLOG to get $15 off your subscription when you start your free 7-day trial!
Watch the full lesson on tonebase ➡️
tonebase gives you instant access to knowledge from the world’s greatest guitarists, performers and educators: https://tonebase.co
