As with your forthcoming material with Dr. Mazzoni, I think it's great that you are delving into evidence-based recommendations for improving music performance. Even cooler that these insights are applicable outside of guitar playing as well.
I haven't been able to figure out what your endgame is - you create an awful lot of high quality free content- but I do know you are doing the lord's work, Troy. ive been playing 35 years, these videos really speak to me. love the series, thank you!
+Daniel Schorr I can vouch for Troy's paid content as well. Troy puts lots of great content out there for free, but if you're hungry for more, his paid stuff covers things in much more depth.
+Daniel Schorr I think from what I've heard in his interviews was he wants to mainly just address the picking hand techniques and mechanics behind that. I can't really say to what end other than it ROCKS.
I actually realised for myself the interleaved concept was the way to go early on in my playing in the early to mid 1990s. I became a well rounded competent player, who could solo fluidly very quickly. However I had a friend around the same time, who would only play the same lick for hours on end, without changing to something else very often. He could play those licks really cleanly, although he sometimes made backward steps, maybe due to his brain becoming bored perhaps. He was also very bad at soloing fluidly and at improvising.
+monno2600 I found that part interesting as well. It seems a risk in applying this approach with young students or anyone who's not highly motivated is that the lack of ego gratification from the *feeling* of progress might lead to student non-compliance.
severalpaperclips That's right and I think it's more useful to a advanced player but what I have found myself doing lately, is starting several projects (as in challenging songs) at once and work them out as far as possible. When I get stuck, let's say at the solo, on one song, I just continue with the other. So eventually when the same happens for that song, I'll go back to the other cause so I still try to finish it. This is leaving me a much more satisfied feeling than the example in the video. For the motivation part I would say that everyone has a thing that will get him/her motivated, that doesn't have to be a music related thing (would be nicer) but there is always something. A break can help too but everyone has they're own way of pushing through their limits. I hope this helped you :)
It's not 100% clear to me. If I want to learn 6 songs. Lets say I have time to practise 6 songs per day. How should I practise them? A: Practise all six once per day B: Practise song 1,2,3 and then again 1, 2, 3 (and then two times 4,5,6 another day) C: Practise song 1 and 2, 1 and 2, 1 and 2 (and then do three times 3 & 4 another day and then 5 & 6 another day again) I think he said I should do C ? Right now I do A
+Karl-Henrik Arendt I got the impression that the advice in this video was more about developing technique than memorizing repertoire. To that end, I thought one of the key points was that from a "technique development" point of view, practicing a full song front-to-back isn't optimal: difficult passages should be isolated and practiced, but multiple passages should be practiced in an interleaved manner rather than spending long "blocks" working on a particular passage. Presumably, when you're trying to memorize a song as a whole (rather than trying to "improve" difficult passages), you need to practice playing the song front-to-back, but I don't think that's a topic that this video addresses head-on. I may be out in left field, but here's what I took away: identify difficult passages (e.g. "A", "B" and "C"). If you have time for 27 "units" of practice per session/day, rather than doing A x 27 today, B x 27 the next day and C x 27 the following day, it would be better on any given day to do something like: A x 3, B x 3, C x 3, A x 3, B x 3, C x 3, A x 3, B x 3, C x 3. The key idea is to avoid "falling into a groove" of repeating any one passage mindlessly. I don't recall what was said 100%, but I think it was suggested that "3x3" was a reasonable starting point for trying to find a structure for your practice (as illustrated in my example). There is probably a better answer than what I'm suggesting, but a very simple approach might be to organize your practice as difficult passages grouped together in threes, and practice each "group of three" in a 27 unit block as above. Then you could organize your daily practice based on how many different 27 unit blocks you can fit into a one hour session (for example), and how many sessions you want to do per day. I believe Dr. Kageyama suggests that for most people, a single session probably shouldn't exceed one hour, and that a cumulative total of about four hours of practice per day is probably the most that anyone can realistically stay focused for.
+severalpaperclips I rewatched the video. The "loose" recommendation from Dr. Kageyama suggests a basic structure like "A,B,C,A,B,C,A,B,C" (or even A,B,C,D,E,A,B,C,D,E,A,B,C,D,E) where each letter represents roughly 2 to 5 minutes of "deliberate practice" on a particular identifiable passage or technique.
+Karl-Henrik Arendt You're talking about memorizing a song - and the chord changes that it uses. That's just a matter of playing the song over and over until you know the changes. The more you play, the easier that will come because you'll get used to certain keys always using certain chords in the progressions. This video (and all of the "Cracking the Code" content) is focused on lightning fast fretboard patterns and runs. Troy kind of assumes you know (and understand) scales and how to use them in any key. In other words: All of Troy's content is aimed at more advanced players that are focused on lead/solo/riff playing. They are talking about (and this is just a random example) of how to practice super fast 4's or 6's with multi-note per string patterns and chaining them together.
As with your forthcoming material with Dr. Mazzoni, I think it's great that you are delving into evidence-based recommendations for improving music performance. Even cooler that these insights are applicable outside of guitar playing as well.
+severalpaperclips Neural Plasticity ;)
I haven't been able to figure out what your endgame is - you create an awful lot of high quality free content- but I do know you are doing the lord's work, Troy. ive been playing 35 years, these videos really speak to me. love the series, thank you!
if you like the free content then you can buy the full lessons/course. much more information in the paid content obviously. .
+Daniel Schorr I can vouch for Troy's paid content as well. Troy puts lots of great content out there for free, but if you're hungry for more, his paid stuff covers things in much more depth.
He's going to rule the world
+Daniel Schorr I think from what I've heard in his interviews was he wants to mainly just address the picking hand techniques and mechanics behind that. I can't really say to what end other than it ROCKS.
Priceless. And yeah, Guthrie Govan should be a goal :)
Thank you much, my playing has improved after watching your alternating picking videos. great stuff.
Great info! Thanks Troy!
Definitely gonna try this, I always have the problem of forgetting the last thing when I move on to the next thing
I actually realised for myself the interleaved concept was the way to go early on in my playing in the early to mid 1990s. I became a well rounded competent player, who could solo fluidly very quickly. However I had a friend around the same time, who would only play the same lick for hours on end, without changing to something else very often. He could play those licks really cleanly, although he sometimes made backward steps, maybe due to his brain becoming bored perhaps. He was also very bad at soloing fluidly and at improvising.
Great upload Troy! Thanks for sharing this information with us.
I've always tended to practise like this, but put it down to having the attention span of algae. :-)
Thank you, Dr. Kageyama. Great information!!
Thanks Troy!
I friggin love this shite, thanks Troy
Please release this one next!
Bro. This video is great
It's a pretty affective method but quite frustrating too like he said
+monno2600 I found that part interesting as well. It seems a risk in applying this approach with young students or anyone who's not highly motivated is that the lack of ego gratification from the *feeling* of progress might lead to student non-compliance.
severalpaperclips That's right and I think it's more useful to a advanced player but what I have found myself doing lately, is starting several projects (as in challenging songs) at once and work them out as far as possible. When I get stuck, let's say at the solo, on one song, I just continue with the other. So eventually when the same happens for that song, I'll go back to the other cause so I still try to finish it. This is leaving me a much more satisfied feeling than the example in the video. For the motivation part I would say that everyone has a thing that will get him/her motivated, that doesn't have to be a music related thing (would be nicer) but there is always something. A break can help too but everyone has they're own way of pushing through their limits. I hope this helped you :)
It's not 100% clear to me.
If I want to learn 6 songs. Lets say I have time to practise 6 songs per day.
How should I practise them?
A: Practise all six once per day
B: Practise song 1,2,3 and then again 1, 2, 3 (and then two times 4,5,6 another day)
C: Practise song 1 and 2, 1 and 2, 1 and 2 (and then do three times 3 & 4 another day and then 5 & 6 another day again)
I think he said I should do C ?
Right now I do A
+Karl-Henrik Arendt I got the impression that the advice in this video was more about developing technique than memorizing repertoire. To that end, I thought one of the key points was that from a "technique development" point of view, practicing a full song front-to-back isn't optimal: difficult passages should be isolated and practiced, but multiple passages should be practiced in an interleaved manner rather than spending long "blocks" working on a particular passage. Presumably, when you're trying to memorize a song as a whole (rather than trying to "improve" difficult passages), you need to practice playing the song front-to-back, but I don't think that's a topic that this video addresses head-on.
I may be out in left field, but here's what I took away: identify difficult passages (e.g. "A", "B" and "C"). If you have time for 27 "units" of practice per session/day, rather than doing A x 27 today, B x 27 the next day and C x 27 the following day, it would be better on any given day to do something like: A x 3, B x 3, C x 3, A x 3, B x 3, C x 3, A x 3, B x 3, C x 3. The key idea is to avoid "falling into a groove" of repeating any one passage mindlessly. I don't recall what was said 100%, but I think it was suggested that "3x3" was a reasonable starting point for trying to find a structure for your practice (as illustrated in my example).
There is probably a better answer than what I'm suggesting, but a very simple approach might be to organize your practice as difficult passages grouped together in threes, and practice each "group of three" in a 27 unit block as above. Then you could organize your daily practice based on how many different 27 unit blocks you can fit into a one hour session (for example), and how many sessions you want to do per day. I believe Dr. Kageyama suggests that for most people, a single session probably shouldn't exceed one hour, and that a cumulative total of about four hours of practice per day is probably the most that anyone can realistically stay focused for.
+severalpaperclips I rewatched the video. The "loose" recommendation from Dr. Kageyama suggests a basic structure like "A,B,C,A,B,C,A,B,C" (or even A,B,C,D,E,A,B,C,D,E,A,B,C,D,E) where each letter represents roughly 2 to 5 minutes of "deliberate practice" on a particular identifiable passage or technique.
+Karl-Henrik Arendt You're talking about memorizing a song - and the chord changes that it uses. That's just a matter of playing the song over and over until you know the changes. The more you play, the easier that will come because you'll get used to certain keys always using certain chords in the progressions. This video (and all of the "Cracking the Code" content) is focused on lightning fast fretboard patterns and runs. Troy kind of assumes you know (and understand) scales and how to use them in any key. In other words: All of Troy's content is aimed at more advanced players that are focused on lead/solo/riff playing. They are talking about (and this is just a random example) of how to practice super fast 4's or 6's with multi-note per string patterns and chaining them together.
Stephen Harrell Thank you :-)