Musicians' Tips

Dec 1
08:05

2008

Leon

Leon

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When practicing try and be disciplined about your time, ideally one hour a day minimum.

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Split the time up into various practice sections. So for example the first five minute maybe of warm up scales,Musicians' Tips Articles patterns or runs, followed by ten minutes of chords. Next ten minutes for ear training for example try and play along with a recorded song or chord sequence.

Try and get out to see live music and concerts. You will find that you get a lot of new ideas for playing just by seeing how people approach playing with a different style and technique which is often just individual to that person. If you can learn to read music that will open up a whole new world of capabilities and ideas. For example if a guitarist can read tab and music it will enable the player to learn more information about the piece being read.

Be mindful that tab is normally written by someone attempting to work out a piece. In other words it is their in interpretation of the music. So do not be surprised to find it is often wrong with mistakes. It is good practice to question the accuracy of a piece. This will improve your ear for music as you try and work out the right notes.

Learn the dots, the great advantage of learning how to read music is it is a world wide universal language that is recognised by musicians across the globe. Which can be used for musicians, choirs, singers and orchestras. Though there are simpler and more basic methods for example reading guitar tab, reading music is the dominant traditional method.

When working out a piece of tab try and be patience and realistic to the amount of time that should be dedicated to some pieces that can take a very long time to work out. And then will take also a long time to regularly practice in order to perfect.

It is always worth keeping in mind that when being a student to the craft of learning a musical instrument of your choice either it be being for playing in a band, as a professional trade or just for personnel pleasure then there are the basics to learn that take time. However once the fundamentals have been grasped you are then often able to learn the instrument to a much higher level which opens even more doors through your exploration of music.