LittleNigel
6 posts
Jan 23, 2015
12:51 PM
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I’ve just read the part in Adam’s great book “Mr Satan’s Apprentice” where he talks about “woodshedding” where a musician would virtually lock themselves away and practice for extremely long periods in an effort to gain faster mastery of their instrument.
My favourite example of woodshedding is to found in the marvelous book “ Blowing Zen” by Ray Brooks. This is an autobiographical work about an Englishman living in Japan who takes up the zen flute: the shakuhachie.
At one point in the book, Ray Brooks is desperate to accelerate his progress and undertakes a “Shugyo”. This is an extreme version of woodshedding wherein Ray sets out to spend 60 days on a mountain practising for six hours a day!
I was wondering if any fellow harp players have done their own version of woodshedding, and if it was successful.
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Rubes
927 posts
Jan 23, 2015
1:51 PM
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When the kids and the missus go to bed........I get my few hours of ..'wood shedding'..( known in Oz as...goin' to the shed) most nights..
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OzarkRich
528 posts
Jan 23, 2015
8:07 PM
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I homeschool my kids during the day and work nights. Most of their schoolwork is online. I have a camera going to make sure they stay on task and woodshed at my desk in another room. It definitely helps, especially with practicing sections of music over and over; the family can't stand the repetition of practicing or when I'm trying to figure out a song.
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Ozark Rich
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kudzurunner
5273 posts
Jan 24, 2015
6:18 AM
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Here's an extremely interesting and useful article on the subject. I found it by searching "10,000 hours," which took me not only to Malcolm Gladwell's oft-cited rule (that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become great as something) but to those who have debunked it.
This article says a lot of things that I've been saying, and knowing, for a long time. It's not just practice time that counts, but a repeated firm-but-gentle attempt to push your edges back, with full focus. At first you can't do the new thing; you practice and bit by bit you hard-wire it so that eventually you can do it without thinking. But at first, you need to think and work it through. You need to do that on a daily basis if you want to keep getting better.
Goleman also insists that although self-guidance is OK, you really need a teacher, a "master" in the old sense, to guide you. That person will keep pointing you towards your edge and won't let you become complacent.
I think back to the one-year period in which I deliberately upped my game with 1/16th notes--something that I'd never been very good at--in order to play "Crossroads." I'm still surprised at that leap forward. I can't play like that--i.e., like the video--now! I haven't been in the woodshed like that. But for a year, I spent quite a bit of time in my garage with just harps, a videocam, and a metronome.
I didn't have a master; I just had a memory of a couple of hours I'd spent with Jason Ricci back in 2000 when he'd shown me a fast 1/16th note pattern--the foundation of his style, something he'd learned from Pat Ramsey, but not something I was particularly skilled at. I took that one pattern and worked it through. So you could argue that I'd internalized him, strategically, as my "master," prodding me to move towards my edge.
Debunking the Myth of the 10,000 hour rule
One of the most interesting findings is that world-class performers and athletes limit serious focused practice to about four hours a day. Any more than that tends to lose focus and become automatized. And the key to good practice is maintaining focus and avoiding the desire to kick into autopilot.
Four hours a day. Of course you can spend other time doing other things, like listening to music and transcribing recordings.
Last Edited by kudzurunner on Jan 24, 2015 6:26 AM
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Tom585
2 posts
Jan 24, 2015
8:30 AM
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You may also find the book "Effortless Mastery: Liberating the Master Musician Within" by Kenny Werner to be useful in improving your playing. It can also be helpful for dealing with stage fright.
Tom
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nowmon
6 posts
Jan 28, 2015
11:31 AM
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Me thinks if you assimilate the great stuff you like until you hit it,how can you miss.I been playing since 1968 and I don`t believe I`ve played a scale once, on a harp.I have played every lick an on and on,on.and it is like language,when you know the words and speak the
dialects you get your own ! now,to get poetic,thats dealing with the art.
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Diggsblues
1633 posts
Jan 28, 2015
1:21 PM
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I'm still woodshedding. I'll let you know when I'm finished. They keep coming up with more stuff to learn. I tell you it never seems to end.
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ted burke
62 posts
Jan 29, 2015
12:46 PM
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My experience is that I kept playing all the time, whenever I got the chance, after I first picked up the harmonica in 1968-69. I listened to lots of Butterfield, Musselwhite and Taj Mahal at the beginning, and listened to as much jazz and blues and soul as I could get my ears to. And I kept playing obsessively, trying to do on the harmonica what I heard others perform on other instruments, whether guitar, piano, sax. I was pretty much woodshedding all the time, playing things ovr and over until they became second nature and a natural extension of my emotions and moods.
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Ted Burke
__________________
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tburke4@san.rr.com
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slaphappy
69 posts
Jan 29, 2015
12:50 PM
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I think of woodshedding as just focused practice time, working on stuff you're not good at (yet) or songs you don't know..
This whole notion of some isolated sojourn to top of the blues harp hermit mountain is kind of overblown but just my opinion.
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4' 4+ 3' 2~~~
-Mike Ziemba
Harmonica is Life!
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JustFuya
711 posts
Jan 29, 2015
2:02 PM
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I think a big part of the 'woodshed' experience is the uninhibited venture beyond your comfort zone. I prefer isolation for this type of practice.
Last week I was sitting at my desk [facing the street], working up vocal riffs and runs on 'Bad Bad Whiskey'. Unamplified. The same stuff over & over & over with painful breakage. IOW, I made a lot of unpleasant sounds during the 3 hour process. A few days later I was horrified when a neighbor told me she loved my voice and didn't know I could sing. I was flattered that she found some good in what I would consider a general annoyance but I was mostly embarassed. And I am now inhibited in my bedroom.
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ted burke
63 posts
Jan 29, 2015
3:16 PM
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A big part of playing literally every instance you could is not carrying what others thought of your playing. I played when I walked places, when I was waiting for the bus (which remains my mode of transportation) , during my lunch breaks, when the house was empty, when the house was full. In my mind I was trying to get to the center of some bit of soul and emotion in a phrase a hero of mine had played on record, and the search for the sound and the emotion that came with it removed my capacity to be embarrassed by my then-amateurish playing. I was lost lost in the search for the right notes, the blue notes.
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Ted Burke
__________________
ted-burke.com
tburke4@san.rr.com
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garry
558 posts
Jan 30, 2015
6:23 PM
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In my 'shedding, my go to song is the Allman Brothers' "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed". Listen for something you like, then work on it until you can play it at speed. Repeat until you can match Duane, Dickey, and Gregg note for note, or you die a happy old man, whichever comes first. In the meantime, it does wonders for your chops.
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