The Workout Part 2

by Eric Vandenberg

Introduction

I am finally back online, and I have to thank all the iBreathe members who made it possible... Thanks guys!!!

OK, so here is the second part of my workout-series. I was pretty surprised by the feedback from the first part.
After all, if you look at the exercises included in that one, there wasn't really a lot of new stuff. Most of those
exercises had been featured in older articles of mine already. But I obviously chose the right thing to write
about... an organized practicing-schedule which combines both disciplined and focused work on certain aspects of
playing, as well as some variety to keep it interesting.

So what am I gonna write about this time? Well, first of all, I want to show you a few more "blocks", segments of
a practicing session, topics to work on.

But this time, I also wanna show you some different, interesting approaches to add some variety and fun to your
practicing session, AND I wanna cover some stuff I haven't talked about before.

But before I get into all that, I wanted to emphasize something one more time: It is up to YOU to make up your
own, customized practicing schedule. Just because I included all these different blocks / topics into my "imaginary
workout", it doesn't mean you have to do the same thing.

You have to figure out for yourself what works best for you (whether focused, repetitive work on just a few
different aspects of playing, or a workout that has lots of variety to keep it interesting and challenging).

No one can play EVERYTHING. Yes, there are some players who are extremely versatile, but there is no sense in
trying to cover every single possible aspect of playing.

Imagine you'd want to work on: Alternate picking, Legato, Economy Picking, Sweep Picking, chicken picking,
bending, Tapping, playing with a slide, whammy bar playing, classical style playing (on a gut string-guitar, sight-
reading, with the recommended hand-positioning), using FX, jazzy playing (bebop, Dixieland, fusion...), chord
soloing, sight-reading (not only guitar-scores, mind you), flamenco, exotic scales (covering the whole fretboard),
harmonisation, transcription, various styles of music (country, latin, reggae, oriental music, polka...), finger-
picking, transcribing, polyrhythms and all that good stuff in just one single session.

Believe me, to practice all that stuff in a focussed way, it would either have to be a very VERY long session, or it
wouldn't be really effective. You need to focus on some aspects first, and work on those for a while. Don't try to
go for the whole thing, try to focus on little bits one at a time.

And most importantly, try to figure out a) what you NEED to work on (this involves being a bit self-critical) and b)
what is interesting for you. You need to make sure that it's motivating, interesting and FUN to practice.

Sure, sometimes you need to work on stuff that you need for some purpose (e.g. reading if you wanna play with
some orchestra or something), but to me, it makes the most sense if you work on stuff you really WANNA learn.

As I said, sometimes you need to convince yourself that you need something in order to work on it. It sure is more
fun to work on wacky tapping-licks than it is to rectify those flaws in your playing, but always remember to take a
peek at the big picture.

If you wanna be a "shredder" (*gasp*), you need to put in some work. You need to work on all those playing-
techniques, and it might be frustrating sometimes to listen to the new Dream Theater-record and hear John
Petrucci pick 16th notes at 220 bpm, while you aren't yet able to play 16th notes at 120 accurately.

Try to adjust your way of thinking in a positive manner. Don't think "If I can't do this, I suck". Instead, try to think
"If I can nail this, I'll be a better player... it'll be a step forward". Not much of a difference between those two
ways of thinking, but actually, it does make quite a difference. The first approach basically is a negative one, the
second one is rather positive.

Keep all that in mind. And don't take my workout-articles literally. Don't try to squeeze all those segments into
one practicing session. I didn't either. This is just a list of stuff you can do, and it might make sense to use every
single one at a certain point of time. But not all of them at once.
Let's go ahead, then, shall we?

Ear training

Ear training is an essential part of your development as a musician, regardless of HOW you train your ears. If you
really do wanna include e.t. into your practicing sessions, there are a bunch of different exercises you can do.

Example: Play a note on your guitar. Let this be the root, some kind of a reference note for you. Then, sing (!) a
simple phrase or lick, and try to play it. Don't worry about fingerings at first, simply play the melody or riff you
just sung. This will (if you keep doing it) not only provide you with some cool new ideas, but it'll also enable to do
this while improvising... you can imagine some phrase that you wanna play, and then play it.

Or... listen to a song you like, and try to play some of the melodies you hear in that song. Don't limit yourself to
guitar-melodies only, but also try to play i.e. vocal melodies, drum patterns (using percussive sounds, like muted
strings) etc.

This will not only improve your hearing, but it also might give you some neat new ideas. A singer often uses
intervals that might be unusual for guitarists, same goes for instruments like the saxophone etc.

Another thing you can try is: take a simple melody that you know very well but haven't played before (for
example a famous lullabye, a Christmas carol or some kind of hymn). Now, take your guitar, pick any note and try
to play that melody. Try to find the right notes with the least possible amount of attempts.

Once you have that down, try to harmonize it... add bass notes on the lower strings, or play some chords at the
right spot.

Again, this will help to improve your ears, but one other cool side-effect is: imagine you walk down the street, you
don't have a guitar with you, and all of a sudden you think of this really really cool melody. If you are not able to
write it down in notes just like that, or if you don't have some recording-device with you, you might forget the
melody. But if you're used to it, you can pick up your guitar once you're home again, and play the melody you
have in your mind.

Other exercises:
- Play a note, then pick any interval (i.e. a major third), and try to sing it. Then, play it on the guitar and see how
close you came.
- Record a tape (or MP3) of yourself playing random notes... two of them, with a break between every couple of
notes. Record like 20 minutes of that. Then, the next day, listen to it with your guitar in hand, and try to play the
notes on the guitar after hearing them. Some of them you might remember from the day before, but if you
actually have recorded like 20 minutes of that, you most likely won't have memorized all the notes you played.

There are bunch of other exercises, but those are some rather helpful basic exercises which can be altered based
on what you wanna work on.

The "listen to a record and then try to play some of the melodies you hear on the guitar" leads us to another thing
you wanna work on...

Transcribing

Yes, that too can be part of your practicing schedule. If you do a really long practicing session, or if you wanna
work on several different things, you might appreciate doing something without a guitar in hand, or rather,
something that isn't a strict technical exercise.

The most basic way to transcribe something is to have a tape, CD or MP3 of a song, listen to it bit by bit and
transcribe the music (writing down the chords, melodies etc. In notation).

These days, there are many cool ways to make this process easier and more comfortable.

Stuff like recording and audio-editing-software such as Wavelab etc. Can be a great tool for transcribing music,
since you can use it to loop certain parts that are hard to figure out, slow down certain parts, change the pitch of a
piece etc.

Let's keep it simple, and use only one really cool tool that is available for free if you have a Windows PC...
Powertab. This is really a cool tool to transcribe stuff and write it down... well, ok, you're writing it down in TAB
(which is cool if that's what you wanna work on, as opposed to working on actually writing notation).

The cool part is, you can have the program play back your transcription, which makes it quite easy to check
whether you transcribed correctly... especially regarding rhythms. If you're not used to reading rhythms and note
lengths, you might not know whether you transcribed them right unless someone plays your transcription back to
you exactly as it is written down. PT can do that for you.

So try it... pick any simple piece of music - some basic melody, solo, chord progression or anything. Pick up your
guitar, and try to figure out that part you just listened to.

Important: Try to always think as a PLAYER. Which means, once you have figured out a part, say, a run, play it a
few times to figure out the best possible fingering. If you transcribe note by note, you might come up with some
impossible-to-play-stuff. So you should check whether your TAB can be played. Once you have the right notes and
a good fingering, put the part into your powertab-file.

Try to get all the rhythms right... the playback-option of powertab is a great help here. After a while, you'll be able
to figure out some typical rhythms and pattern easily. The more you do it, the easier it gets (after all we're talking
about practicing here, right?)

Don't limit yourself to guitar-stuff only... try to transcribe parts played by other instruments as well... bass lines
(which you might have to transpose on the guitar), brass-parts (if you listen to brass ensembles, you'll often hear
lots of very clustered harmonies... it's tough to figure those out at first, but once you get a feeling for it, you'll
become used to it).

A few years ago, I used to pick out and transcribe everything I heard for a while... once a friend was over at my
place, and he brought the Play Station. Back then, "Tomb Raider" had just been released, and I really liked the
main theme of that game.

So I picked out the melody on the guitar. Same goes for other stuff I heard in video-games, on the TV etc. (we
recently discussed the "Final Fantasy" arps, so there you have another example).

This will not only help you to improve your ear, but also, you'll improve your transcription-skills and, if you want
to, your reading- and writing-skills.

Fretboard Navigation and Strategies

This is closely related to learning patterns etc. But in this segment of your workout, you could do some exercises
that go beyond mere pattern-playing.

Try this:
- Switch on your metronome and set it to a really slow tempo, say, 55 bpm.
- Now, on every downbeat, play the note C... at least one C per string. Example: 6th string, 8th and 20th fret; A-
String, 3rd and 15th fret; D-string 10th and 22nd frets; G-String 5th and 17th fret; B-string 1st and 13th fret; 1st
string 8th and 20th fret.

Pick a random note, say, G#, and do the same thing.

You can do this with other things too... for example, a Cmaj triad, played in different areas of the neck, and in
different inversions. Or arpeggiated. Or... I guess you know what I mean.

Or... play an ascending run on the first two strings only, say, in the key of D major, starting with the lowest
possible notes. As always, try different scales, keys, rhythms etc. Try to figure out what you need to work on,
then make up an exercise based on that.

Keeping Variety

Lemme interrupt our regular program, and let's talk about how to keep variety. Sure, you can simply challenge
yourself constantly by trying the same exercise in all kinds of different keys, but there are more methods to keep
it interesting and to keep you from getting distracted.
Here are a few of my favourites.

The Chinese Menu Approach

This I mentioned before, in another article and in the forums. It was first taught to me by MI-Instructor Beth
Marlis. What you do is: Take a sheet of paper, and draw a table onto it. (Or simply, get yourself some flash-cards,
works great for that, too)
Make three columns, and, as many rows as you can. In the first column, write down a bunch of different
techniques and "approaches", such as alternate picking, legato, tapping, arpeggiated triads, arpeggiated 7th
chords, sweeping on triads, octaves (or other intervals), playing on one string only etc.

In the second column, put all the different keys... C maj, Cmin, D maj, D min etc.
In the final column, put down different rhythms... triplets, eight notes, 16th note, shuffled 8th notes, quintuplets,
sixtuplets, quarter notes etc.

Cut out the table, and cut out every single little cell. Put those into three different little containers (three glasses
or cups, three ash trays, three hats or whatever).

Now, interrupt your workout the next day, and draw one little piece of paper from each of those containers. You
might get something like:
"Arpeggiated triads" (in) "eight note triplets" (key of) "Eb Major"
or
"Playing along one string" (in) "shuffled eight notes" (key of) "G min"

Get the idea?

That way, you don't only keep some variety, but you might be challenged to work on something you have never
tried before (a lot of us usually stay in some common "guitar"- keys when practicing, like i.e. Em, Cmaj etc.), such
as "tapping" in "quintuplets" key of "F# major"

When last did YOU work on something like that... HUH?

If you do this on a regular base, you'll get used to adjusting to different keys and rhythms. Sure, when you are on
stage, and you improvise on stage, you wanna play from the heart (or the hip) and you wanna use different
techniques etc., care mainly about the music.

But by using the "Chinese menu approach", you might work on stuff you have never tried before... and if you do,
you'll have improved afterwards, that's for sure.

Etudes

This is another thing I have talked about at the forums. I'm bringing it up now because... I recently had another
conversation with Steve Morse, and I asked him (Tommy, you see? I did ask :)) how he manages to practice
without getting distracted.

He said "Well, if you do a static, boring exercise" (he said this while playing an E minor arp, arpeggiating it with all
alternate picking at about light-speed), "... you're bound to get distracted".

Instead, Steve likes to make up etudes, and so do I. You know... etudes... little pieces of music that are supposed
to help you work on a certain aspects of playing... in a musical context. You could i.e. consider the "Moto
Perpetuo" (aka. "Perpetual Motion") an alternate-picking etude. It's musical and it might need some time to
memorize and play with some conviction. At the same time, it will help you to work on your picking chops. Fire up
the metronome, get to work. You're most likely to pay a bit more attention to such an etude than you would
playing some static, basic picking exercise.

In the forums, I posted an "inside picking etude" I once came up with. (Try and use the search engine to find it). I
was bored of playing the same two notes over and over on adjacent strings, so I made up a little melody with a
pedal-tone, and voil... to me, it was way more fun to learn and play that little etude, than it was playing one
repetitive inside picking-exercise over and over and...

Making up an etude, and playing it will help you to focus on the specific aspect of playing (like in the inside-picking
etude), but it will also require some theory knowledge and / or creativity, cuz you wanna make up a little piece of
music.

So... go ahead, make up your etudes (ForgottenKing / Jorge recently posted a really cool little alternate-picking
etude.. that's the kinda stuff I am talking about, people!), play them, and maybe share them with the people in
the ibreathe-forums!!!

Etudes Pt.2

This is some kind of an after-thought to the etudes-part. You can also extract little pieces from songs you like, if
you think that they're good exercises. Remember when I wrote about the "folder-method" that John Petrucci uses?
Gathering lots of exercises, columns and transcriptions in a folder in order to have plenty of exercise-material?
Well, this will require you to pick whatever you wanna use, transcribe it (let's ignore all the TAB-sources on the
net for now, shall we?), file them and work on them whenever you feel like it.

Examples? OK, let's say you wanna work on alternate picking on adjacent strings (i.e. alternate-picking arpeggios,
Steve Morse-style). Well, you could e.g. work on the intro or the clean arp-parts of "Tumeni Notes", the intro of
"User Friendly", that fast Dmaj-Amaj-lick at the end of "Simple Simon", the riff of "The Well-Dressed Guitar", the
solo of "Cascades- I'm Not Your Lover" (you guessed it... all these songs are by Morse, the SMB or Deep Purple).

Or... if ya wanna work on fast, alternate-picked runs utilizing 3NPS-scales... well, check out "Frenzy" by Racer X,
some Yngwie-tunes etc.

Fast runs using the stretch-pentatonic? Check out Todd Duane's songs, or some stuff by Marcel Coenen.

Sweeps? Try "Serrana" by Jason Becker, or "Go Off!" by Cacophony, or, for fusion-stuff, check out some solos by
Frank Gambale.

The list is endless. It depends on what you wanna work on. It's so much fun to work on an actual piece of music,
transcribing it, working it up to tempo, being able to play it at nearly the original tempo.

Sure, you don't wanna rip off anyone (well, maybe you want to, but anyway...), so you don't wanna use those
excerpts in any of your songs. But they'll help to improve your technique, and hopefully, they'll give ya some cool
ideas to come up with your own parts.

Conclusion

So make up some etudes, or transcribe some licks off of records, write them down and file them so you can
access them whenever you need to

OK those were some more thoughts on the whole workout-thing there'll be a third, concluding part which will
have lots and lots of exercises and permutations of those exercises kinda like a compendium
See ya next time

(Gosh, so much to read and no lick, pic or diagram... I'll make up for that next time =))