Question to pros about practice endurance

[Scott Denniston]

Looks like I've got a lot of time coming up with few distractions or other responsibilities. Just the dog & I here all January and then pretty freed up through maybe April. I don't want to waste this time and would like to work up a practical, doable, and structured schedule. I'd appreciate input from those of you who have given it a really concentrated effort and experienced quantum leaps in your playing. I've got plenty of curriculum,courses,backing tracks,direction,everything I need. I guess my question is have you ever actually given it 8 or so hours a day with breaks? Do you have thoughts about where the over-saturation point is to where it's no longer productive? Do you strictly time each subject & then move on to the next thing whether you're having fun or feel done with that or not? Things like that.
I expect to have to work up to this marathon type practicing. I've always felt I didn't have enough time. Well, here we are. Thanks for your input.

[Earnest Bovine]

Practicing is mentally exhausting for me and I need a break after 20 or 30 minutes. On a good day I can do that 5 times ... but that reminds me of a Garry Graffman book.

[Scott Denniston]

Thanks Earnest. That's what I need. What people find that's realistic. I know it is mentally exhausting. I may blow on a baritone sax a bit during breaks as I sometimes find that relaxing.

[Marty Broussard]

Watching...

Pre-Hurricane Laura I was doing 15 minute segments on 4 different things—-to battle my tendency for boredom.

[Scott Denniston]

That's kind of how I'm thinking. Maybe a little longer segments though. Have time limits so I don't spend all day trying to perfect one thing. Have it all move down the road together.

[Marty Broussard]

Scott,
I’ll add to my earlier comments to really mess things up..lol

I had 2 of Tom Bradshaw’s racks stacked in front of my guitar loaded with “things” that I wanted to practice. I devoted 15 mins each for a total of 1 hour per day. But there were enough things on the racks for a 2-week cycle. Top rack was week #1 and bottom rack was week #2.

[Clark Doughty]

FOUR 15 MINUTE SESSIONS PE DAY DOES IT FOR ME.......CONSIST DAILY EFFORTS...

[Scott Denniston]

Marty that looks pretty intentional and organized. That's how I want to do this but see if I couldn't tolerate about 8 hours a day. Or build up to that. Gus the dog will be pissed. No dinkin' around. I've got such a backlog and a lot of catching up to where I once was. Lately I've found my speed is way down. Stuff I used to whip off without a thought is rusty and my left foot is inaccurate. Like I unintentionally partially hit the A or C pedal when I just want the B. I've been blaming the shoes. Bought different shoes and I'm still doing it. Then there's all the new stuff I want to do. I know I improved a lot when I was playing out regularly. I also know that most of my musical time then was taken up with other people's priorities. If I can sit in a truck seat for ten hours a night with breaks I should be able to do this. Conditioning.

[Paul Sutherland]

An 8 hour day of playing steel guitar is a lot. Not many people can do that day after day. When the picks hurt your fingers it's not much fun to keep playing. I've probably done it on rare occasions, but only when I suddenly got a sixty song set list dumped on me of mostly new material, and I have limited time to get ready. I think of that as practicing with a concrete goal.

When it comes to practicing in the abstract (just doing it because I want to get better), I believe it's best to set realistic goals, and then stick with them every single day. I feel good when I put in three or four 45 minutes sessions per day. Do that consistently and you'll make substantial progress.

With the pandemic shut-down I'm putting in far less and not always playing every day. It's hard to find motivation when no gigs are on the horizon.

[Richard Stoops]

When I sit down at the guitar my practice is usually to learn a new (to me) song. I go to youtube and find a version I like, then try to how to play it. I find myself continually stopping the video and backing up to see "how he did that". Sometimes the practice session can go on for one, or two hours. I'm fairly new to PSG and can't play very well, so most of the stuff I hear played is new to me. Anyway my sessions can go from twenty minutes to an hour or so, depending on how the session is going.

[Ian Rae]

Because I used to teach, I am trained to detect when the student is saturated and no longer taking any more in, like watering a plant.

Now I am that student, and I take breaks or swap projects until I know I've stopped benefiting. I seldom practise more than once a day, maybe for an hour or two with the breaks I mentioned. I never run out of material.

As I believe most people know, what we've been attempting to learn continues to sink in after we're away from the instrument.

[Scott Denniston]

I guess I know that feeling that I just can't continue.(saturation). I would like to try to push that out a bit however gradually since the time is there and so is the passion. My goals have nothing to do with going to Branson or Nashville or backing any stars or even playing out regularly again. I want to stretch out on the instrument and maybe approach the vision of what I know it could be. Not that it hasn't been done. When I hear guys like Buck Reid I know I won't get there. I guess the idea of a concentrated effort comes from reading about guys like Charlie Parker who practiced about 12 hours a day and then went out & gigged at night & then had an after hours jam. Of course he was superman too. I'm not even really saying I can do this (8 hrs.) but who knows if you don't try it? I've known guys that are exceptionally great that say "I never practice". That's not me. I have to work really hard for every little bit of it. I'm sure a lot greats never practice that much. But I'll bet you they did.

[Andrew Goulet]

I've definitely expanded my useful practice time by committing to 1 to 2 hours a day, rather than going from marathon sessions one day to a paltry amount the next. I've discovered what many others have, though, which is that if I remain more focused and have concrete goals (and a strategy for achieving them), the quality of my practice time goes up. I think that's the key: developing a practice strategy that is fun, challenging, and logical (so you learn fundamentals).

Also, I believe that if you play any lick (transition, etc...) at least 40 times perfectly (as slow as you need to), it will stick in your brain.

[Kevin Fix]

Two, maybe three hours a week. Been posting cover tunes to my YouTube Channel. Can't play live anywhere so I do it YouTube and FaceBook. Have lots of followers. Keeps me up on my chops and able to entertain some.

[Scott Denniston]

Thanks Andrew. You guys are probably right. I've done about 3 1/2 hours today though and could easily keep going. I got up at 4:30 am. I'm in a pretty isolated situation and there's not a lot else to do. I think I'll have to find my own comfort level where I can stay focused. I really wasn't talking though about going full bore one day and then just a little bit the next. I mean having it very structured. I'm looking at doing some hard time here. At least 4 1/2 months and a lot of it will be snowed in at 8200'. I'm kind of surprised not to hear from anyone that have had stretches where they've done that.

[Paul Sutherland]

There was a Jack Nicholson movie about your situation. There was a kid riding a trike down long hallways. It didn't end well as I recall. The Shining.

[John Alexander]

Practicing is mentally exhausting for me and I need a break after 20 or 30 minutes. On a good day I can do that 5 times ... but that reminds me of a Garry Graffman book.

Gary Graffman, concert pianist whose career as such was eventually ruined by a performance-related hand injury, compounded by his efforts to work around the injury and keep performing his concert repertoire. Ultimately it got so bad that he was reduced to playing only pieces written for the left hand alone.

I haven't read his memoir, I Really Should be Practicing, but I read an interview he did with David Dubal, where he talked of the risk of injury due to overly strenuous practicing, habitual repetition of stressful hand movements, and even bad posture.

I feel fortunate to have heard Graffman play a solo recital in a relatively small concert hall in the mid-60's, long before his injury.

[Andrew Goulet]

4.5 months snowed in with steel guitar sounds like heaven to me! If I had that, I would probably play 8 hours too! I'm sure you'll make huge bounds with that kind of time.

[Andrew Frost]

I think time spent away from the steel, but still thinking musiccally is just as important as hands on practice time.
I think Winnie Winston said that the more time you spend lost in thought about the instrument, the better player you'll be, and I agree.

These days I put in about 3 hours a day more or less but I always take breaks.

I'm a firm believer in structure and focused goals but some days it is just 'not happening' and I don't force it on these days, practice-wise.

[Scott Denniston]

You know, it occurs to me now that in a previous incarnation I did a long string of 6 nighters 8 to 1. I'd get home around 2 and sleep. My day-boss was the bass player so I could roll in at 9 or so and drive a concrete mixer all day & then do it again. It was grueling but I was ambitious. Half the stuff we played I would rather not have and that was the hard part. Those were five/ 45 min. sets a night (with breaks in the parking lot of course). I don't remember any physical discomfort from it. That was around '85 when people went to bars.
Now all that makes this practice idea seem pretty cushy. Only working on stuff that I want to. Also, a lot of my practice is just repetition and not all that mentally taxing.

[Fred Treece]

Good stuff in this thread, especially regarding structure and injury hazard. Eight hours of daily practice, no matter how well-paced, is out of the question for me because I am prone to repetitive stress injury. I know the limitations of my own joinery.

Regardless of stamina and physical ability, structure is more important than goal-setting. For example, after a 3 or 4 hour session of practicing the same tune over and over, I might find myself pretty darn close to perfect at tempo with it, and record it for posterity. But trying to play it the next day from a cold start would probably be a disaster. Muscle memory can’t be learned in a day. And for me, neither can deep musical understanding of the tunes I want to play, or how to get the sounds I want out of the pedal steel. It seems there is always something more to learn from the songs and the instrument.

I have learned to keep my goals a little more open-ended, and work on a variety of skills from hour to hour and day to day. Even the structure of practice time is variable. So what you didn’t get to your 30 minutes of ii-V-I in the flat keys today. You were having more fun with locating harmonic minor scale tones with AB down. There will be time for that country stuff tomorrow too. Unless you’re under the gun to learn specific material, like Paul S. was saying, keep it loose but keep it steady.

[Scott Denniston]

There was a Jack Nicholson movie about your situation. There was a kid riding a trike down long hallways. It didn't end well as I recall. The Shining.

now you're scaring me. I think that was here in Colorado too. And heeeerse Johnney!

I like that Fred. It goes along with what I'm planning. Open-ended but with a basic structure. Being strict about timing most of the time (maybe even with a timer--DING) and varying things. The hard, dry stuff for a segment and then something I'm really wanting to do as a reward.

[Clark Doughty]

FOUR 15 MINUTE SESSIONS PE DAY DOES IT FOR ME.......CONSIST DAILY EFFORTS...

OOPS....GUESS I SHOULDN'T HAVE POSTED IN THIS THREAD BECAUSE I'M CERTAINLY NOT A "PRO" IN ANY STRETCH OF THE IMAGINATION.

[L. Bogue Sandberg]

The danger of repetitive stress injuries from practicing too long should be taken seriously. I learned it the hard way, with some permanent damage in each hand. If you start to hurt or tire, take a break. Our young fiddle player was taught that and since adopting her approach I've coped much better with right hand arthritic pain.

[Andrew Frost]

There was a Jack Nicholson movie about your situation. There was a kid riding a trike down long hallways. It didn't end well as I recall. The Shining.

Over-practice at the Overlook Hotel 😅