Tell me about your guitar playing or practice habits

My band has been stuttering off and on the past few months. We've practiced a few times but nothing regular enough to be grooving with each other again yet.

At home I wouldn't call anything I do practice. I play my bass every day for the most part, but it's just playing along with music I already know or just noodling around. I really enjoy playing with others, though, so I'm hoping that we can eventually work ourselves in to some kind of regular pattern.
 
I haven't even owned a guitar amp for a couple of years now but hope to rectify that by year's end.

As far as bass, I jam for several hours most Friday nights but there's rarely anything played there that I need to shed on. Occasionally I'll whip out some Real Book charts at home just to knock the rust off a little bit and keep my fretless intonation at an acceptable level. I never ever play along to recorded music, although I sometimes did when I was in the community big band and was having problems with grokking the arrangements. Mostly I shed on basic funk lines and bebop-ish melodic stuff that I tend to use a chordal rather than scalar approach on. It's mostly just about trying to stay limber and keeping some fresh solo ideas on tap for my jam night.
 
Now that I'm ampless it's helix into a set of studio monitors. My kid goes to bed about 8 and I'll play through my monitors up to about 10 until MrsOctpuss goes to bed and then I switch to headphones.

I tend to switch between structured practice and jamming along to tracks. Thankfully I've got a gig coming up in November so have some homework to learn a pretty weird mix of Sly and the Family Stone, Dr Dre, RATM, Stone Temple Pilots and Tool for the set we're doing.
 
Paradox916 said:
I definitely don’t practice as much as I use to and my chops have suffered at a very frustrating level, but as of lately I have been trying to get them back attempting to practicing scales while chasing my 3 year old around the house, my favorite songs to sing to her at the moment are “don’t stick that in your mouth!” ,”What are you doing!” And “no no no no no”
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Everytime I try to play I end up with an 18month old trying to turn knobs on the amp, if I’ve got pedals out he likes to push the foot switches on and off. And I end up singing those same songs. I get most of my practicing done after the kids go to bed at my bench in the garage.
 
peccary said:
My band has been stuttering off and on the past few months. We've practiced a few times but nothing regular enough to be grooving with each other again yet.

At home I wouldn't call anything I do practice. I play my bass every day for the most part, but it's just playing along with music I already know or just noodling around. I really enjoy playing with others, though, so I'm hoping that we can eventually work ourselves in to some kind of regular pattern.
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Got any band recordings to share??
 
dawson said:
Got any band recordings to share??
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We recorded three songs at Bell Studios in LA years back before our singer self destructed.

It was my first time in a studio and it happened to be a really nice, professional one and I was basically walking around feeling like a little kid in a China shop who was terrified to touch anything :ROFLMAO:

It was a cool experience, though, and I'm glad I did it. It was recorded over two days but I didn't show up the second day since my parts were done. I regretted not showing up though because Alain Caron was there on the second day and did some background vocals for us. You can hear him (as well as the engineer and out guitar player) shouting "Hey!" on "The Revolt" as well as backups on Dirty Laundry.

www.reverbnation.com

Dirty Revolt | Rock from Anaheim, CA

Rock | Anaheim, CA
www.reverbnation.com www.reverbnation.com
 
peccary said:
We recorded three songs at Bell Studios in LA years back before our singer self destructed.

It was my first time in a studio and it happened to be a really nice, professional one and I was basically walking around feeling like a little kid in a China shop who was terrified to touch anything :ROFLMAO:

It was a cool experience, though, and I'm glad I did it. It was recorded over two days but I didn't show up the second day since my parts were done. I regretted not showing up though because Alain Caron was there on the second day and did some background vocals for us. You can hear him (as well as the engineer and out guitar player) shouting "Hey!" on "The Revolt" as well as backups on Dirty Laundry.

www.reverbnation.com

Dirty Revolt | Rock from Anaheim, CA

Rock | Anaheim, CA
www.reverbnation.com www.reverbnation.com
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I had a singer go the way of cocaine on us. Well... we didn't know about the coke. When the coke became crack and then meth, things changed rather quickly. Last straw was a no show no call at a bar gig. "Byeeeee"
 
Mentaltossflycoon said:
I had a singer go the way of cocaine on us. Well... we didn't know about the coke. When the coke became crack and then meth, things changed rather quickly. Last straw was a no show no call at a bar gig. "Byeeeee"
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Yeesh. That's rough.

I drink but I never drank when we played as I was too worried that I would play like shit.

I never really knew our singer outside of practice and gigs. Our guitar player knew her really well, though, and I heard from him that coke was definitely a factor. She apparently had some other opportunity to sing backup in a popular local reggae band that ended up not panning out. She was a pretty great singer but I think that ultimately she thought we weren't worth her time. I didn't hear about the coke until afterwards but it made perfect sense with her antics at our live shows leading up to her leaving. After she left she went downhill pretty quickly but I am not going to get in to that stuff since I only know like half the story.

Honestly the biggest bummer for me is that we were going to get a keyboard player from a local Oingo Boingo cover band and I thought that would have really filled us out. I was ready to jam with some rock organ which is basically all I've ever wanted and she ruined it :ROFLMAO:
 
Yeah, I avoided some of the grizzly details. My buddy is sober now but in that process he found Trumpism pretty hard as a replacement and blames all his problems on the libs he was surrounded by here. Any brand of politics embraced with meth addict enthusiasm is no bueno. Like, I'm glad he's healthy but he can also eat shit. Sober or otherwise he's a hard pass. Beautiful voice though.
 
Mentaltossflycoon said:
Yeah, I avoided some of the grizzly details. My buddy is sober now but in that process he found Trumpism pretty hard as a replacement and blames all his problems on the libs he was surrounded by here. Any brand of politics embraced with meth addict enthusiasm is no bueno. Like, I'm glad he's healthy but he can also eat shit. Sober or otherwise he's a hard pass. Beautiful voice though.
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I know what you mean. I grew up in a family of addicts so I'm no stranger to people trading one addiction for another. Not much fun.
 
peccary said:
We recorded three songs at Bell Studios in LA years back before our singer self destructed.

It was my first time in a studio and it happened to be a really nice, professional one and I was basically walking around feeling like a little kid in a China shop who was terrified to touch anything :ROFLMAO:

It was a cool experience, though, and I'm glad I did it. It was recorded over two days but I didn't show up the second day since my parts were done. I regretted not showing up though because Alain Caron was there on the second day and did some background vocals for us. You can hear him (as well as the engineer and out guitar player) shouting "Hey!" on "The Revolt" as well as backups on Dirty Laundry.

www.reverbnation.com

Dirty Revolt | Rock from Anaheim, CA

Rock | Anaheim, CA
www.reverbnation.com www.reverbnation.com
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Dang.. too bad she gave you guys such an anticlimactic ending. At-least you got a studio trip and few tracks out of it.

You fella's are having bad luck with singers like I have with drummers..
First there was Mr. Sticky Fingers who snaked all the t-shirt profits to buy weed..
Then there was Mr. Holy Britches who left us for some christian group who had a very large following of bible-thumping pre-teens..
THEN, there was Mr. Moneybags who would bring a 13-piece Gretsch kit to the salloon then proceed to.. play really badly..
*you can hear us with Mr. Moneybags here: BUSTARD.bandcamp.com

NOW, our previous singer/rhythm guitar is seated on the ol' drum throne doing his best to hold things down, leaving me writing all new material to yell into the mic' whilst playing baritone or synth' and we've got another guy covering bass and some synth'. Even though we're all doing jobs slightly out of our element, I feel like we're getting better work done now that the fat is cut out and we don't have these quarter-cocked losers slowing us down.
 
Mentaltossflycoon said:
Yeah, I avoided some of the grizzly details. My buddy is sober now but in that process he found Trumpism pretty hard as a replacement and blames all his problems on the libs he was surrounded by here. Any brand of politics embraced with meth addict enthusiasm is no bueno. Like, I'm glad he's healthy but he can also eat shit. Sober or otherwise he's a hard pass. Beautiful voice though.
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That's super lame..
Is the rest of the band still at it?
 
dawson said:
Dang.. too bad she gave you guys such an anticlimactic ending. At-least you got a studio trip and few tracks out of it.

You fella's are having bad luck with singers like I have with drummers..
First there was Mr. Sticky Fingers who snaked all the t-shirt profits to buy weed..
Then there was Mr. Holy Britches who left us for some christian group who had a very large following of bible-thumping pre-teens..
THEN, there was Mr. Moneybags who would bring a 13-piece Gretsch kit to the salloon then proceed to.. play really badly..
*you can hear us with Mr. Moneybags here: BUSTARD.bandcamp.com

NOW, our previous singer/rhythm guitar is seated on the ol' drum throne doing his best to hold things down, leaving me writing all new material to yell into the mic' whilst playing baritone or synth' and we've got another guy covering bass and some synth'. Even though we're all doing jobs slightly out of our element, I feel like we're getting better work done now that the fat is cut out and we don't have these quarter-cocked losers slowing us down.
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Drummers amirite?
 
I totally missed this thread! I have twin girls who take a lot of my free time so it’s hard for me to find time to practice. But I try to squeeze in 30 minutes here and there, usually after bedtime or during a break in my workday (which is getting harder and harder to do). I play mainly jazz and I consistently practice soloing and spend time learning new songs. I have recently learned about Troy Grady, joined his master of mechanics thing and unlocked some higher speed alternate picking which has been really great. I try to sprinkle my practice with some technical exercises (triads, arpeggios, scales, etudes) but that’s the part I often skip, which is probably not good.

I also miss playing in a band and I’m building up the confidence to go out and find somebody. That’s the hardest part for me!
 
To anyone who's struggling with practice or stuck in a dad blues rut. Try learning something totally new and I don't mean something new in a genre you already know.

I had to learn Hold on I'm Coming by Sam & Dave and If you want me to stay by Sly and the Family Stone and it's completely reinvigorated practice time for me. I've learned bunch of new chord shapes and they're in a style I've never spent much time playing before.

I'm planning on starting to learn how to use a slide properly next. The way I currently use a slide is with a ton of gain and delay for the purpose of making weird noises.
 
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