My blog buddy IG, wrote this article today about the power of short practice sessions. I totally agree that short, daily practice sessions are a great way to keep your chops up. My only problem is that while I normally set a time limit of about 30 minutes to practice each day, my practice session oftentimes turns into a couple to a few hours. For instance, I was practicing arpeggios one day recently, and happened to do an arpeggio “run” in Am that sounded like it would fit with an acoustic riff that I had come up with a long time ago. I was having problems coming with suitable lyrics and a song structure, so I had just laid down the riff to save it for posterity and let it sit.
So I opened up the song in GarageBand, played the arpeggio run along with the acoustic riff, and voila! I had the basis for a new song. That turned into a two-hour recording session, but the result was a really cool instrumental.
The point to all the anecdote is that you can use your practice time to open up possibilities for new song ideas. The original riff for “RESOLUTION” was the result of practicing a rhythmic strumming technique and chord/picking pattern that I wanted to get a lot cleaner than I had played it in the past. It turned into a song.
So you never know what might come out of your practice…
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