On June 26, 2011, I started an epic quest to log 1000 practice hours on guitar in 365 days.
Today, at 1:40 PM, I finished my 500th practice hour! Yes!
It was easy enough to meet the required pace (19.5 hours per week) while I was at home for the summer, but it’s gotten a bit harder now that I’m back at school. Classes + homework + part-time job + 20 practice hours per week = 0 spare time, but I don’t even care, because it has been totally worth it so far.
That’s pretty impressive.
Do you feel noticeably better in your skills and technique?
That’s awesome!
What are you working on exactly? I always get frustrated that I can’t bar and then I quit for awhile.
A variety of things, but the attribute that I find myself pouring most of experience points is rhythmic independence. This is a concept that generally manifests itself in the world of drumming, but there are lots of applications for guitar as well. Examples include polyrhythms, polymeters, and even just singing and playing at the same time. The latter is easy when the vocal melody synchs up with the guitar rhythm, but when they are independent it can be quite tricky. A fun challenge is to take songs in which the singer and guitarist are two different people and try to learn both parts simultaneously.
Absolutely. There’s an obvious improvement in the techniques that I’ve been focusing on. Before the challenge started, I couldn’t even do a 5-4 polyrhythm, but now I can transition to and sustain a 5-4-3 very comfortably. My right ring finger tapping has also gotten much stronger. I don’t know for a sure, but I feel like there’s an overall improvement as well. I haven’t gotten any faster (I don’t think), but I can sustain my maximum alternate picking speed for much longer than I used to.
Are you playing acoustic or electric? If acoustic, perhaps it help to switch to electric, on which it is generally much easier to bar. If you’re already playing electric… maybe switch to bass guitar? I consider myself rather fortunate that I have gargantuan hands.