Tag: practice

Are you ready to listen and practice? Oh and then play in an ensemble?

Nicole NealLeave a comment
The Guitar Player (c. 1672), by Johannes Verme...
The Guitar Player (c. 1672), by Johannes Vermeer, guitar Voboam (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Well, we’ve been a month on this lovely WordPress-hosted site now, seven months-ish of the blog and a good time is being had by all – including yourselves I hope dear readers!

So I think it’s time add to add in a new little feature that may interest you, and possibly help the time-stretched (most of us!).

From today I’m also going to post up audio files/podcasts of my postings. Woop! Woop!

The aim of this is to offer another avenue for you to explore the blog – and now you can listen to me witter on with my guitar-inflected pearls of wisdom when you’re on the tram or driving to work (but not cycling to work, because that’s naughty to have headphones in whilst doing that isn’t it?).

Initially these will be some of my back catalogue of posts, so this may interest some of you newer readers and followers. But then again it may also interest some of you who have read for a while and want to revisit and recap on some of my earlier musings. I’m thinking there may be some audio-only content coming up in the near future too. If you’ve any thoughts on that please let me know.

I’ll embed these into coming posts, but I’ll also created a dedicated page for these to live on permanently so you can access them super easily whenever you want. Keep your eyes peeled for that coming up shortly.

Anyway, here’s the first one for you: How do you practice when you can’t practice?

You can also stream this and download directly from SoundCloud:  http://soundcloud.com/nicole-rogers/how-do-you-practice-when-you

Ooh and before I forget I’m also working on some video content for the near future. Oooh…… [tanglible anticipation ensues].

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On a completely different note now, and harking back to one of my pet topics for the moment – ensemble playing…

Reading Carlos Bonell’s blog again recently he talks about the benefits of ensemble playing. One quote stood out in particular for me and I just wanted to share that with you:

To achieve great things in playing music with others requires more than loads of practise and rehearsing together: it needs a meeting of minds and such familiarity that one player can anticipate another’s next move intuitively. For the musicians who enjoy this feeling it is a wonderful experience. To reach it is the wish of all who participate, with the pleasure of working towards it almost as intense as its realisation.

This is so true, and it is extremely difficult to surpass the feeling of playing music with others. There’s a little magical feeling that can’t help but leave a big cheesy grin on your face when you know you’ve hit “the groove”, you’re all in the zone together. Ooh. Magical… Brrr. If you get the chance to give it a whirl, grab it with both hands!

You can read all of Carlos’ great insights here: http://queenguitarrhapsodies.com/blog/?p=1313

A weekly guitar practice schedule for you!

Nicole Neal4 Comments

And how are we all on this fine Saturday morning. Bit chilly out eh? Well, it is in south-eastern Australia for those of you reading on the other side of the world!

A good day to stay inside, keep warm and do some practice – yay!

As I’m sure I’ve said probably numerous times on this blog already, having something to work towards in your practice is so very important. We’re all pretty strapped for time and having some aims for your practice sessions or bigger goals to work towards can help make sure you’re making most efficient use of the time available.

So to help you with mapping out your practice I’m sharing with you the practice schedule sheet I use. Ooooohhhh…..

Here it is: Weekly Practice Schedule

You don’t have to stick religiously to the format, but you may find it a really useful little memory jogger, helping to:

  • outline what your objectives for that week are – what do you really want to work on? This could be, for example, increasing speed to a certain metronome marking through a scale or passage (this is one of mine this week) or ironing out all the tricky spots in a piece?
  • remind you to do your technical exercises – with your aims in mind, and that practice is not just about playing through your pieces. But you know that already right?!
  • set out which days you’re definitely able to practice on – some days it’s just not possible due to schedules and general life and stuff. Plotting your practice sessions out, firstly, let’s you plan which days you can practice, and secondly….
  • show you what practice you are actually doing on what days and for how long – so you can track what you’re doing, see if you’re doing as much practice or as little practice as you think you’re doing and see where perhaps see if you fit any more in if appropriate.
  • draw you back to your original objectives at the end of the week and explore whether you think you’ve achieved them.