Loosing progress

[Matt Wildman]

Im learning the solo for “lost” and im focusing on the economy picking run in the middle of the solo. I was proud of myself, yesterday i was able to play it at 135 bpms. Today i practiced it and i had to back it up to 120 bmps to be able to play it. I find myself having this problem a lot and just dont know if im doing something wrong. I only increase the speed by 5 bpms every time i master the speed im playing it at. And i started out really slow. Tell me what you guys think i just dont want to loose the progress ive already made

 

[Calvin Phillips]

Dude i have days where i hit licks never imagined before. Then there are the days where i cant hit a simple strum pattern. Best way to deal is start again tomorrow. Id just jam out. Try to feel good. Then finish your session with another shot. I bet youll do better then the first

 

[Dominik Gräber]

Calvin is right. There are days where everything works out perfectly and then there’s the oppisite. If you don’t get too frustrated, what helps me is play it slow. Then rest or play something easy and try again after like 10 minutes. If it still doesn’t work out you should maybe focus on it another day and like Calvin said have fun.

 

[Filip Tomiša]

You are not losing progress, you are progressing. That’s just a part of the process. You progress each day but just a tiny bit so you just gotta keep exercising to reach the point where you will master that solo

 

[idssdi]

The thing with speed is that it comes after a certain amount of repetition. If you play it at 135 BPM one day doesn’t nescecarily mean that you play it the day after at the same speed. Muscle memory takes some time to develop so it’s not nescecarily losing progress. It’s more like developing the muscle memory and speed to get to where you want to be so look at it as actually making progress.
Remember Rome wasn’t build in a day, so your guitar skills probably won’t be build in a day either.
I’m not sure where I was going with that metaphore but I hope you get the point.

 

[Jak Angelescu]

@Ids I literally laughed at “I’m not sure where I was going with this metaphor but…”
@matt, my dearest friend. This situation you’re in is actually 100000000000000000000% normal. You’re a human, not a machine, and so there are definitely going to be some better days than others. Your situation is the reason why I STILL practice Hail To The King everyday. I’m still not comfortable with it. The sweeps are still at a spot where I’m “lucky” if I land them, and I don’t like it. Believe it or not, I too have slowed that solo back down to 60% speed so I could play it standing up and really practice those sweeps. To be honest though? 5BPM is WAY too fast of an incline each time. Everyone suggests that. But it’s completely detrimental. The reason why, is that your technique and muscle work will change with each increasing or even DECREASING tempo. For example, when I play the tremolo part in Nightmare, I use my whole rhythm hand forearm to do it when it’s at 80% speed. However, at 83% speed it becomes too taxing to use this method and I resort to just moving my wrist. Each tempo feels entirely different, even if it’s just 1 BPM faster or slower. What I did with Hail and Nightmare and even my own solos, is that I would practice each solo at one BPM for literally 30 minutes straight. To where you’re actually annoyed with it. Then the next day I’d increase the tempo only by ONE. You need to let your muscles get use to it. It’s like working out (I always use this example). You wouldn’t work out for 2 hours and constantly increase your bench press by 5 pounds every time you do 10 reps right at your current weight. That’s too much on the body at once, you need to allow your muscles time to rest. Or next thing you know, as a weightlifter you can’t lift your arms the next day, or as a guitarist you can’t play as well as you could the previous day because your playing muscles are stressed. Believe it or not, by this method in three days i was able to increase the tempo by 25 BPM solidly! My Nightmare videos totally prove it! So perhaps you could try this method. I wish you luck! That entire song is nuts with arpeggios and the solos are definitely weird.

 

[Matt Wildman]

I’ll give that method a shot, thanks Jak!

 

[Dan Shipway]

Messing up is natural, we cant replicate everything perferct every time and under every circumstance. What you’ve gotta do is not let it change your mindset, after my economy picking I struggled to get it that fast but thats OK, even syn has messed up, Exhibit A.

The worst thing you can do is say you can’t becuase nothing ever gets done from that.