Practice

Originally posted by iamthe_eggman
... Too bad you never played until your fingers bled back in the summer of '69....

Phfttftft! Bryan Adams wasn't even born back then!

But he did capture the feeling pretty well... :)

Originally posted by Lordathestrings

Originally posted by iamthe_eggman
... Too bad you never played until your fingers bled back in the summer of '69....

Phfttftft! Bryan Adams wasn't even born back then!

But he did capture the feeling pretty well... :)

What was the feeling like back in '69? How old were you? It was a really busy year, with immense social implications. I'd really like to hear someone's account of it besides my parents'. My dad was 20 and in the jungles of Vietnam. My mom was 17 and sitting in a one bedroom apartment praying everyday that my dad wouldn't die.

Sounds about right. I wasn't alive then either, but that wasn't exactly a rare situation.

To all of you have seen The Awakening with Robin Williams, that happened in the summer of '69.

Do you mean Awakenings, with Robert DeNiro? I love that movie....

Originally posted by Leedogg
... What was the feeling like back in '69? How old were you?...

I could write a long book to answer your post, but a lot of other people already have.

I bought my first guitar to celebrate my 16th birthday in October of 1968. It was a used hollow-body electric. A Japanese ES-335 knockoff with the name "Guya" on the headstock. I paid $40 CDN with the money I earned from my morning paper route. I would meet the truck that dropped off my 144 copies of the Globe & Mail for my daily deliveries at 04:30. I was usually home by 07:30, to get ready for school. My Saturday deliveries jumped to over 200. The Globe kept sending me a bunch of extra papers and charging me 65 cents a week for each them, which wiped out a lot of the 17 cents profit from each of my actual customers. That $40 took a lot of work to accumulate.

So, then I did the obsessive practice routine previously described. By July '69, I was playing lead guitar for a band we called "Little Earth". We were the unofficial house band at a night club called "The First Church of Alice", which was decorated with stuff from Lewis Caroll's book "Alice Through The Looking Glass". The back of the stage featured a gigantic magic mushroom, complete with hookah-smoking caterpillar. The cap of the mushroom extended out over the stage like a canopy.

I spent a lot of time either hunched in front of my stack, trying to hear myself through the stage wash, or standing in front of the drummer with one foot braced against the kick-drums, trying to keep our pet maniac from walking his kit right off the stage.

Musically, it was a time of self-indulgent solos and stretched songs. A one-hour set might be comprised of three or four songs. After Cream released "Toad" on the "Wheels of Fire" album, our drummer insisted on doing a solo every night that grew into a 40-minute bash-fest. Try spending your evenings braced against a kick-drum, and see how you like it. :p

Socio-politically? I was in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, which is located on the north shore of Lake Ontario, where the St. Lawrence River starts. About 20 miles from the Thousand Islands. New York State is about 12 miles south, across the water. All of which is to say that we saw a lot of draft-dodgers passing through on their way to Toronto. At the time we were too young and ignorant to do much in the way of critical thinking, and often too stoned to do much of any kind of thinking. We were push-overs for squishy-pink socialism in general, and anti-Vietnam-War sentiment in particular.

Originally posted by iamthe_eggman
Do you mean Awakenings, with Robert DeNiro? I love that movie....

Robert Deniro and Robin Williams starred in it.

hey man, i was in kingston a while back to celebrate their university homecoming. lovely city.

I practice 2 hours a day.. In the weekend i can play for almost 7-8 hours!

i usually spend around 7 hours playing the guitar- that's composing, critically studying songs, perfecting my fingerings, tempo, timing, inversions, making up chords, practicing scales/ riffs- basically whatever my head tells my hand to do at the spur of the moment. But I don't play 7 hours straight. I usually have a life besides the guitar so my typical schedules like practicing for 3 1/2 hours in the mornin and then 3 1/2 hours at night. When I'm busy it's like 2 hours in the morning, 1 hour in the washroom, 2 hours in the afternoon, 1 hour in the washroom, and then 1 hour before I got to bed. It really depends on my schedule you know?

Originally posted by the fool
1 hour in the washroom

umm...

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Originally posted by the fool
1 hour in the washroom
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Originally posted by iamthe_eggamn

umm...

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what? i'm not as gifted as the beatles you know?

The Beatles practiced on the can?

...

I've been thinking about this, and these days I only really practice when the guys come over to jam. I'm really starting to feel it in the lack of creativity in my licks. It's kind of frustrating. ARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHH!!!!! :mad: :mad:

Sorry, it's just that we had a really crummy jam yesterday. I was tired and not really into it until the last hour or so.

yup they did- but i'm not sure if all for of them were there at the same time though...

1-3 hours a day

Depends on how I'm feeling. Usually around 30 minutes to 3 hours.

the longest i have every played for was about 3 hours, usually i play at least 10 mins a day usually about a half hour and if i dont get fustrated longer

I play 2 to 3 hours on school days and about 4 hours every weekend. Have you ever played lead over and over until you arm was about dead and you could hardly move it? happens alot to me.

i practise weneva i can it's not like a time set aside per day.

jus pick up the guitar an go wen eva i hav free time :)

I used to pratice 6-8 hours a day. I was insane about geting something perfect, and wouldnt leave my room until i had it down.

Right now im really busy, i usually get to it about 2 or 3, sometimes less.