Drills
Drills look to other people like sequences of notes. To me, they are sequences of motions. I create them out of music I’m working on.
Drills are short - less than 16 notes. They contain only one thing that requires my attention. That one thing is always a specific sequence of motions.
The motion is the point of the drill – not the notes. The notes can have musical meaning, or not. If they do, I tend to ignore it. Drills are about motion.
Once I select a drill, I play it starting on the low E string four times. Then up a fret, four times, and on up twelve frets. Over one string, four times, down a fret, and repeat until the fretboard is covered. Using this pattern saves me from expending any mental energy counting. It's also a habit and a discipline. (It’s more powerful than it sounds.)
I use a metronome. A metronome has three especially useful speeds: almost too slow, just right, and almost too fast. The same drill can have three different functions, depending on which speed I choose:
A drill played almost too slow lets me analyze and understand the motions, and hunt for the right ones.
The same drill played almost too fast highlights opportunities for improvement. (Other people call these “mistakes.”)
The same drill played just right helps me burn in motions I think I've already learned. There are usually opportunities for improvement here, too.
An example: I'll use the first five notes of a major scale. I'll choose a fingering that has me change strings with two consecutive downstrokes twice within the drill. That's the motion: down-change-down. That’s what I’m paying attention to, as exclusively as I can. This drill works starting on the E, A, D and G strings. Twelve frets x four strings x two string changes = 96 reps of down-change-down. Let's say 48 BPM feels just right, one drill per beat. That takes two minutes. 10 minutes is 480 reps. 10 minutes a day, every day for a week is 3,360 reps.
Remember: this drill is not about the notes. This drill is about down-change-down. And it’s not about getting through the pattern once in two minutes. It’s about one good rep 96 times. The pattern is only “how.” Down-change-down is “why.”
There's a lot more, but this is where it all starts.
