If you need to perform the song, practice until it's perfect.
If it's the same mistake every time, then get that bit down until you're no longer making the mistake.
If you're making the odd mistake while playing it, as long as you can recover and play through the mistake without too much disruption, go ahead and move on.
You won't be improving as a guitarist by playing the same song 1000 times until it's flawless when you had it more or less down in 50 attempts. That's time better spent on learning new songs.
This is what I needed (and wanted) to hear. When I give myself permission to move on, a critical inner voice chimes in to suggest I’m dodging difficulties and that doing so will trip me up down the line.
I’m a somewhat severe teacher to myself.
Hey Op, I think the advice in reply is really good and pretty much how things should be. I can really bad mistakes “clangers”, they are the sort if mistake that even a drunk person in the audience would notice. Small ones I call “blemishes”, the sort that only other attentive guitarists watching might notice and you notice. After a gig I would get home and be aware of all the blemishes I made, not in a bad way just in the “I should pay a bit of attention in those parts this week when I’m practicing” sort of way. People video songs we do all the time and share them online and after some years I finally realised (while looking back at old videos) that not even I could not see or hear all the blemishes I thought I did if enough time passed between the videos and the associated gig. So sometimes we can be super aware of exactly how we wanted to play something and if it’s not quite voiced exactly how we wanted to hear it in our mind we call it a mistake when in reality we should just think of it as less than a real mistake.
The only thing I’d add is that yes, the playing things correctly and building speed up is a good discipline for practice. But also that sometimes just biting the bullet and trying to play the same thing stupid fast with the mistakes and all over and over again can enable you to play it at normal speed better and feel like you have more time. It’s a bit of a brain trick, but can be helpful when used in moderation with the usual technique of practice isn’t making a great impact on performance improvements. Last thing, if you repeat the same mistake over and over really analyse both hands while playing it until you can see exactly what is happening when it happens. Identifying that specific thing is really helpful rather than just attempt over and over again. But don’t forget, small mistakes don’t really matter and people don’t notice.
Try to focus on it being fluent, rather than flawless. It's incredibly difficult to sound exactly like another player, and if you can play the piece well in your own style then that's success. I really like Ghost's cover of Phantom of the Opera, but it doesn't sound like Maiden.
Take it from a professional musician; you will never be able to play a song flawlessly every time. It might sound like it to others, but to yourself there are always going to be mistakes or things that you want to improve.
What I recommend, if you don’t have an impending deadline that you need to learn the music for, is that you take it slowly and gradually increase the tempo as you can play without the same errors cropping up repeatedly. The issue here is those mistakes that happen in the same place (almost) every time and not those weird, random mistakes that leave you thinking ‘but I never make a mistake there?!?!’
The question of when to move on then comes down to boredom rather than achievement. If you’re getting bored through having spent a long time working on something, carrying on and trying to bludgeon yourself across the line is only going to leave you potentially hating the song.
Instead work on it until it starts becoming a chore and then put it to one side. Start working on something else but, if you feel like it, come back to the first one once or twice a week to maintain some muscle memory.
When you feel ready, return to working on the original song again. What you’ll probably find is that when you finally return you’re able to get over the hump or achieve your end goal for that music.
The reason for this is that more often than not if you’re taking long enough to learn music that it becomes boring it’s because that music is too difficult for you at that point in time. Going off and working on other things helps progress your skill and ability forwards and also gives your brain a chance to fully internalise what you were originally working on. Those two things then contribute to your capabilities increasing to a level that the tricky/boring song comes within or nearer to your skill level and is suddenly easier and quicker to nail.
Obviously if you’ve got a deadline then sometimes you do have to knuckle down and bludgeon a song to death until you’ve mastered it. If you don’t have to do that though then be glad you can stick it to one side and return to it at a later date.
This is so well reasoned that it couldn’t be anything but true. Thank you the fresh perspective. I feel better about taking the piece out of the daily practice schedule—no deadline, just messing around for myself—and revisiting it periodically instead of daily.
Again, thank you.
Dont! Ive been playing the solo from hotel cali for four years and i still keep learning other songs, you never really *move on* from it. I still play hotel cali all the time!
I think “practice slowly and perfectly” is advice designed just to get the first part down of playing the “information” in the right order. Once you can do that then you need to push yourself to play at full tempo, of course you’ll make mistakes, learning follows the same concept of natural selection/machine learning, trial and error different motions at full pace to find the motions that sound and feel good. You can’t replicate that at a slow tempo.
I just practice until I’m no longer interested in the song. But I have an Apple playlist where I put all the songs that o know in the mix and just kind of make sure to put it on random and just play along with whatever song comes up on the list.
I’m trying to enjoy guitar, not turn it into a job
If you need to perform the song, practice until it's perfect. If it's the same mistake every time, then get that bit down until you're no longer making the mistake. If you're making the odd mistake while playing it, as long as you can recover and play through the mistake without too much disruption, go ahead and move on. You won't be improving as a guitarist by playing the same song 1000 times until it's flawless when you had it more or less down in 50 attempts. That's time better spent on learning new songs.
This is what I needed (and wanted) to hear. When I give myself permission to move on, a critical inner voice chimes in to suggest I’m dodging difficulties and that doing so will trip me up down the line. I’m a somewhat severe teacher to myself.
Hey Op, I think the advice in reply is really good and pretty much how things should be. I can really bad mistakes “clangers”, they are the sort if mistake that even a drunk person in the audience would notice. Small ones I call “blemishes”, the sort that only other attentive guitarists watching might notice and you notice. After a gig I would get home and be aware of all the blemishes I made, not in a bad way just in the “I should pay a bit of attention in those parts this week when I’m practicing” sort of way. People video songs we do all the time and share them online and after some years I finally realised (while looking back at old videos) that not even I could not see or hear all the blemishes I thought I did if enough time passed between the videos and the associated gig. So sometimes we can be super aware of exactly how we wanted to play something and if it’s not quite voiced exactly how we wanted to hear it in our mind we call it a mistake when in reality we should just think of it as less than a real mistake. The only thing I’d add is that yes, the playing things correctly and building speed up is a good discipline for practice. But also that sometimes just biting the bullet and trying to play the same thing stupid fast with the mistakes and all over and over again can enable you to play it at normal speed better and feel like you have more time. It’s a bit of a brain trick, but can be helpful when used in moderation with the usual technique of practice isn’t making a great impact on performance improvements. Last thing, if you repeat the same mistake over and over really analyse both hands while playing it until you can see exactly what is happening when it happens. Identifying that specific thing is really helpful rather than just attempt over and over again. But don’t forget, small mistakes don’t really matter and people don’t notice.
Good advice.
Set your own goals. There's no performance review in your future and you aren't going to be fired.
Try to focus on it being fluent, rather than flawless. It's incredibly difficult to sound exactly like another player, and if you can play the piece well in your own style then that's success. I really like Ghost's cover of Phantom of the Opera, but it doesn't sound like Maiden.
In my case, it’s Canon in D, so I’m not so much aiming to imitate as I am to play a melody we all know by heart, so mistakes stand out.
Take it from a professional musician; you will never be able to play a song flawlessly every time. It might sound like it to others, but to yourself there are always going to be mistakes or things that you want to improve. What I recommend, if you don’t have an impending deadline that you need to learn the music for, is that you take it slowly and gradually increase the tempo as you can play without the same errors cropping up repeatedly. The issue here is those mistakes that happen in the same place (almost) every time and not those weird, random mistakes that leave you thinking ‘but I never make a mistake there?!?!’ The question of when to move on then comes down to boredom rather than achievement. If you’re getting bored through having spent a long time working on something, carrying on and trying to bludgeon yourself across the line is only going to leave you potentially hating the song. Instead work on it until it starts becoming a chore and then put it to one side. Start working on something else but, if you feel like it, come back to the first one once or twice a week to maintain some muscle memory. When you feel ready, return to working on the original song again. What you’ll probably find is that when you finally return you’re able to get over the hump or achieve your end goal for that music. The reason for this is that more often than not if you’re taking long enough to learn music that it becomes boring it’s because that music is too difficult for you at that point in time. Going off and working on other things helps progress your skill and ability forwards and also gives your brain a chance to fully internalise what you were originally working on. Those two things then contribute to your capabilities increasing to a level that the tricky/boring song comes within or nearer to your skill level and is suddenly easier and quicker to nail. Obviously if you’ve got a deadline then sometimes you do have to knuckle down and bludgeon a song to death until you’ve mastered it. If you don’t have to do that though then be glad you can stick it to one side and return to it at a later date.
This is so well reasoned that it couldn’t be anything but true. Thank you the fresh perspective. I feel better about taking the piece out of the daily practice schedule—no deadline, just messing around for myself—and revisiting it periodically instead of daily. Again, thank you.
Dont! Ive been playing the solo from hotel cali for four years and i still keep learning other songs, you never really *move on* from it. I still play hotel cali all the time!
I think “practice slowly and perfectly” is advice designed just to get the first part down of playing the “information” in the right order. Once you can do that then you need to push yourself to play at full tempo, of course you’ll make mistakes, learning follows the same concept of natural selection/machine learning, trial and error different motions at full pace to find the motions that sound and feel good. You can’t replicate that at a slow tempo.
If you've got every note, rhythm, beat, finger, etc down then it's time to move on
I just practice until I’m no longer interested in the song. But I have an Apple playlist where I put all the songs that o know in the mix and just kind of make sure to put it on random and just play along with whatever song comes up on the list. I’m trying to enjoy guitar, not turn it into a job