Practice Patch

I

IceFive

Member
I've been working on practicing my technique and building speed/accuracy lately and so far I've just been using Scene 1 on the Petrucci Rig. While I've been able to clean up my noisy picking quite a bit, I imagine I should prob be practicing without a noise gate to ensure I catch every noise generating mistake in my technique.

I was wondering what everyone else uses for a practice preset?
 
A pitch block works great for a practice patch because different songs are in different tunings and even if they're not in 440 you can use the pitch block to tune it right to the song
 
IcicleTrepan said:
I've been working on practicing my technique and building speed/accuracy lately and so far I've just been using Scene 1 on the Petrucci Rig. While I've been able to clean up my noisy picking quite a bit, I imagine I should prob be practicing without a noise gate to ensure I catch every noise generating mistake in my technique.

I was wondering what everyone else uses for a practice preset?
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Play into a clean amp, no fx if you really want to hear what you sound like.
 
fractalz said:
Play into a clean amp, no fx if you really want to hear what you sound like.
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I agree. Real easy to play with OD and delay. Try doing the same perfectly clean. OD and FX act like a crutch imho, NOW, I mean when you are LEARNING. After you have your dexterity, strength, etc these same things are a joy.
 
Brucegregori said:
I always tell students to practice mostly with the sound they intend to use. This may be a few different sounds but that makes the most sense. Treat it less like weight lifting and more like performing.
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That's OK as long as your at a certain "skill level". Learning to play with tons of OD and FX imho is counter productive.
 
The noise gate only really does it's job when you stop playing...

While it's good to practice with the sound you will perform with, it can also be really beneficial to practice with a clean, mostly dry tone.

Distortion hides a lot. So can effects...
 
unix-guy said:
The noise gate only really does it's job when you stop playing...

While it's good to practice with the sound you will perform with, it can also be really beneficial to practice with a clean, mostly dry tone.

Distortion hides a lot. So can effects...
Click to expand...

distortion also amplifies unwanted noise, reveals problems with your damping technique, so there's that.
If what I want to practice will be played/performed heavily overdriven, I will practice it that way. If it's going to be clean, I'll practice clean.

No need to overthink this.
 
phil92 said:
distortion also amplifies unwanted noise, reveals problems with your damping technique, so there's that.
If what I want to practice will be played/performed heavily overdriven, I will practice it that way. If it's going to be clean, I'll practice clean.

No need to overthink this.
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Yes, which is why I said:
unix-guy said:
While it's good to practice with the sound you will perform with
Click to expand...
 
Brucegregori said:
I always tell students to practice mostly with the sound they intend to use. This may be a few different sounds but that makes the most sense. Treat it less like weight lifting and more like performing.
Click to expand...
OP said "practicing my technique and building speed/accuracy". For this, I would play clean. Heck, I usually practice licks on an acoustic guitar (very unforgiving) if I really want to give myself a workout. Anyone can legato their way through scales with high gain and delay/reverb. It's humbling to hear what you really have going on. The good news is you'll hear what you need to work on ASAP.

And, as a wise teacher once told me, practice slow to improve quickly. Assuming you are working on single-note soloing, find parts that are difficult to play and turn them into an exercise. It may be only 2 or 3 notes giving you trouble, but there is probably a technique you haven't gotten down yet to make it fly. Practice it slowly where you can nail it every time and then speed it up. If you are getting sloppy, slow back down...
 
fractalz said:
OP said "practicing my technique and building speed/accuracy". For this, I would play clean. Heck, I usually practice licks on an acoustic guitar (very unforgiving) if I really want to give myself a workout. Anyone can legato their way through scales with high gain and delay/reverb. It's humbling to hear what you really have going on. The good news is you'll hear what you need to work on ASAP.

And, as a wise teacher once told me, practice slow to improve quickly. Assuming you are working on single-note soloing, find parts that are difficult to play and turn them into an exercise. It may be only 2 or 3 notes giving you trouble, but there is probably a technique you haven't gotten down yet to make it fly. Practice it slowly where you can nail it every time and then speed it up. If you are getting sloppy, slow back down...
Click to expand...
There are distinct differences to playing with gain vs clean. And if your goal is playing with gain - practice that way. Gain does not make you faster in anyway. It does improve the sound of course but not the speed. Controlling playing with gain is a skill that many many students can’t do because they think practicing clean is better. If I curl with ten pounds tomorrow I can curl with twenty and on and in. The whole learning a line slow and slowing working it up many times means someone gets a life sentence on practicing and never gets to actually playing. The strategy can work for small items but in general fast phrases have a distinct pulse and should played as close to target speed as possible. For the most part students fall short because they do not understand the subdivisions within the beat vs they can’t move their hands fast enough. There is no magic here just effective practice strategy.
 
You will not build accuracy only playing clean. You need gain to reveal where you're overlapping notes. Clean tones will reveal where your fingers are weak, like with pinky pull-offs. You need both. Full stop.

And you don't get faster by practicing slow. You'll never run by walking faster; You have to run. You get more accurate playing slow, but if you want the speed, you need to push the speed up past your comfort zone. Get your muscle memory established at slower speeds, then play it fast to reveal where it gets sloppy, then slow those parts back down until you can play them accurately. But you have to push yourself into the faster territory in order to gain speed.

OP- I use the same preset, but not just scene 1.
 
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