“There Is No Elevator To Success, You Have To Take The Stairs”
This article is a pretty comprehensive look at a question that I’ve gotten on a regular basis, at SBL and through my own students: how do I build and maintain a regular practice routine?
Right from the top it should be said that the answers you arrive at when considering what I’m about to lay out are always incredibly personal, there are almost no right or wrong answers. Your goals are your own and all those goals are equally valid no matter how big or small they are. Your personal circumstances will also very much affect how you build a practice routine, alongside where in your list of priorities your bass practice falls. Consider these areas and look yourself in the mirror with honesty, because the more realistic and honest you are with yourself, the better your results will be.
With all that said, let’s dive into this!
Consistency
If we zoom out for a moment and look at the successful people in any field, whether that be music, sports, business etc., routine and consistency with what they are doing is the common factor. When things become a habit, you don’t need to think about them as much because they are just part of your daily routine and if you can ingrain your practice within your daily routine you will need to think much less about it; it just becomes a part of your day.
Now, that isn’t to say we all need to become the next Nathan East, Jay Cutler, Nafi Thiam or Steve Jobs, but we can apply the ideas they used in their success on a smaller scale. One way of doing this is earmarking a specific time each day to get some practice done, when you know you aren’t going to have any interruptions or distractions. This could be first thing in the morning or perhaps last thing at night depending on your nature and your schedule, but where possible make it a time when you aren’t going to be mentally fatigued so you can maximise your productivity.
With my daughter now going to school and my better half often working in early mornings, my practice routine is usually split into two specific chunks, one in the morning right after I drop her off at school, and another in the late evening when the little one is asleep. If I can get some extra work done outside of those, great, but these two blocks are generally predictable during the week and thus can be maintained consistently.
Each of your personal circumstances will vary but if you examine your schedules, blocking off 20-30 minutes on a consistent basis is usually possible. It may take a little shuffling around and you might need to wake up a little earlier, but if you want to make it happen you can do it.
Time
This brings me on to the second crucial aspect, your time and how much you are able/prepared to commit. How much time you are going to devote to your practice is (again) very personal and will be dependent on your professional life, your personal life and where music falls in your list of priorities.
That being said, how much time you can commit on a consistent basis will tie directly into your ambitions and goals as a bass player and how realistic they are. The loftier the goals you have, the greater the required daily time commitment.
However, this is not to say that you can’t become a really good player while having more limited time to practice! The keys are consistency and maximising the use (and split) of your daily time, and you can get a lot done in between 20 and 60 minutes if your time is well managed. Nailing down 20 minutes per day will do you more good in the long run than practicing once a week for 2 hours, because that daily stimulation and work for the brain to do will produce continual incremental improvements that a single 2hr block with 6 days away from the instrument simply cannot match.
If you are somewhat limited with your time, one of the most crucial things you can do is be organised and know before you sit down with the bass what you are going to be working on. This ties into the next section (keeping track), but if you are fishing around for things to practice when you sit down, you are wasting time. Have your time organised, your practice split already sorted, and you will get a solid 20-30mins of work done rather than 5 mins of fishing around and maybe 15 mins of real work done. This also means having any necessary materials already organised and close to hand so that you aren’t spending practice time searching for them.
If you are new to building a practice routine, make sure you begin with a time commitment that you know beyond doubt that you can keep to and maintain. If you find that you can build in more time in the future, great, but initially you want to be realistic and shoot for something you know you can hit (this helps with positive reinforcement!).
Keep Track Of What You Are Working On!
Two things I firmly advocate for maximising your productivity are keeping a daily practice log and knowing what you are going to work on before you even sit down to pick up the bass. A practice log enables you to keep track of your progress, it eliminates needing to remember details like what tempo you finished an exercise at last time you worked on it, and it also gives you a space to keep your general thoughts on how a given practice session went.
It also means you can quickly check back and see where you left off the day before, so you have a starting point and don’t need to fish around for things at the start of your practice block. Make notes! Keep track of tempos, styles, any issues you had, anything that felt good, anything that didn’t feel good, any new things that have cropped up that you might want to investigate and work on later.
When it comes to wider reflections on your practice routine, you always want to be looking at things from a much longer view. In this respect practice is very much like a workout routine, you won’t see results from a one-week cycle from a training block designed to last 6-8 weeks so don’t go looking for the immediate gains because that isn’t how training and practice work.
If you’ve set out a practice routine, give it at least 8-10 weeks to run before you look at seriously changing things! A little tweak here and there isn’t an issue, but making wholesale changes in the search for the ‘rapid gain’ isn’t helpful and more often than not will be counter-productive and you’ll end up having to do things all over again.
Take your time and do the thing properly the first time round.
What Kind Of Musician Do You Want To Become?
- What Are Your Ultimate Goals As A Bass Player?
- What Things Need Fixing Within Your Playing?
- What Things Can You Not Do/Do You Not Understand That You Would Like To?
Figuring out who you want to become as a bass player is the most important aspect of your practice because this is going to directly drive what you work on within your playing. If you don’t have a clear idea of what sort of musician/bass player you want to be, how can you know what to practice?
There are no wrong answers here and no goal is greater than another! The goal of someone trying to build up a repertoire, work on their rhythm and develop some solidity to their feel in order to play in a bar on a weekend is every bit as valid as someone trying to become the next fusion monster able to blow over changes.
Whatever your goal, write it down in a place that is visible to you daily (I’m an advocate for pen and paper!). This has the value of reminding you consistently of what you’re working towards as well as stopping you wandering off down rabbit holes in the search of ‘the next shiny thing!’.
Your Current Skill Level And Understanding Where You Are Now Musically
Having established where you’re looking to go musically, the next thing to establish is what your current level of skill is, and this covers both instrument specific skills and (where necessary) wider musical skills such as ear training and transcription.
One of the most useful things you can do in this respect is record yourself regularly and then listen back with honest ears. Recordings don’t lie, and you can start to focus your practice routine by listening to yourself and making notes of what needs work.
One thing to avoid here is simply writing ‘everything’ Don’t fall into the trap of being hyper critical and rubbishing everything you’re doing; there is ALWAYS something positive you can take from a recording. That said, listen honestly and with respect, and then make a list (in order of priority) of the things that you’ve heard that need work. If you think that something can be fixed quickly, then it may well make sense to get that done and tick the box, then move on to some of the longer-term issues.
At that point, write down some short- and medium-term things that you want to fix within your practice routine.
BE REALISTIC WITH THESE!
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Working through every arpeggio type in every key within a month for example, is not realistic, not if you want to actually be able to use any of the information. A more realistic idea might be ‘I’m going to work on major arpeggios for a month, looking at multiple different fingering patterns taking it one key at a time’. If you can work on that for 5-10 minutes every day, you can make some real progress!
Record yourself at least once a week working on these things as well as keeping notes in your practice diary and you can start to get a sense of how your playing is progressing. You think you’ve gotten your arpeggios down? Record yourself and find out! You might be right, or there might be a key or a shape that still needs more work! It’s worth saying at this point that skills like using technology such as a DAW and interface is every bit as much a musical skill as those that are instrument specific (as Gary Willis often reiterates).
Your Practice Split
How you split up your available time depends on two things, your total available daily time and what your overall goals are. One wider principle I do subscribe to (again coming from Gary Willis) is that around 40-50% of your time should be spent working on music/creative problem solving (not exercises in other words!).
Here is an example split that you could use if you have a 40-minute block. Let’s say for this example that I’m wanting to improve my fingerboard fluency, I’m looking at playing in a band and I want to build some repertoire...a rough practice split could look like this
10 mins – Fingerboard harmony
10 mins – Rhythmic/Rhythm Section Work
20 mins – repertoire work
With this split I have 10 mins of basic harmony work, 10 mins of rhythmic work and 20 mins working on a new song that will be part of my repertoire. So that you don’t get bored or burned out, at times you could switch exercises around, but again keep notes of these things so you can keep track and see how long it has been since you’ve worked on something!
Practice environment
I find that the environment in which you practice has a real effect on your productivity and engagement, so if you are in a place where you have lots of distractions, you won’t be as focused on what you’re working on. If you practice with a computer, try not to have surplus apps/tabs open with things that will distract you and have your phone turned over and set to do-not-disturb, this way your practice time will be uninterrupted. Personally I don’t advocate practicing with the TV on, this is because even when working on something that might be repetitive and mundane, you need to be building a connection with the instrument. If your focus is on the video, you are noodling, not practicing. Not to say that cannot have a place, but it isn’t productive in the same way as focused practice.
Another crucial thing is making sure your practice environment Is both comfortable and well heated. If your practice environment gets cold, not only will this affect your instrument’s intonation and set up, your body (particularly your hands) will get cold quickly, neither of which are good for your practice because you will constantly fighting to keep your hands up to temperature. Your practice chair/stool should be both comfortable and supportive, ideally with some sort of back rest so you don’t end up slouched/with bad posture! You may be spending considerable time sat on it, make it something comfortable
Don’t get distracted!
There are few things more counter-productive than ‘chasing the next shiny thing’. That can be videos you see on YouTube, the latest ‘lick’ on Instagram or any other new thing you’ve heard recently. While thinking ‘THAT! I want to get that down NOW’ is easily done (guilty myself!), before you do so always check in with yourself and ask what this, that or the other thing is going to do for you, and if you have an established practice routine don’t suddenly try and cram extra stuff in.
Keep your practice materials close together (the shedspace app is FANTASTIC for this) so you don’t end up clicking on things and going down rabbit holes. This is also why writing your goals down in a visible place is important, so that when you get tempted to check out the fancy exercise someone is working on over on social media, you can check yourself and remind yourself of what your overall goals are! If you really feel that something is worth investigating, bookmark it in your browser or make a written note of it in your journal and come back to it at a later date. Often, time will give you a less rose-tinted view of something and you will be able to view it with greater objectivity.
Hopefully this has been somewhat helpful to you all! If you have any questions, thoughts, or you want help and guidance building your own practice routine, leave a comment below or send me a message!!