When do you get time to play?

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TelePaul

TelePaul

J to the R O C
Since I've started working in January in my first real job after college, I've had no time to practice. I can snatch a half-hour here in the evenings but gone are the days where I could practice for three or four hours at a time. And it's really starting to show. i tried tracking a simple acoustic tune last night, a few open chords, but my hand cramped up and my fingers couldn't find the notes, all dexterity was gone. It was scary!

It's not so bad for electric rhythm, where I can kind of just bash away. But anything requiring any sort of dexterity seems to have become extremely difficult overnight. I can only assume this gets even tougher with a wife and kids to keep happy too. Should I just quit now? :eek:
 
TelePaul said:
Since I've started working in January in my first real job after college, I've had no time to practice. I can snatch a half-hour here in the evenings but gone are the days where I could practice for three or four hours at a time. And it's really starting to show. i tried tracking a simple acoustic tune last night, a few open chords, but my hand cramped up and my fingers couldn't find the notes, all dexterity was gone. It was scary!

It's not so bad for electric rhythm, where I can kind of just bash away. But anything requiring any sort of dexterity seems to have become extremely difficult overnight. I can only assume this gets even tougher with a wife and kids to keep happy too. Should I just quit now? :eek:
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Yes, it does get harder. But no, don't quit. I got so mad I quit for like 8 years in my twenties after I got married. BIG mistake.

I have no set schedule. It comes and goes. But I've actually had some good time on my acoustic just tonight (it's 3:40 am here). My "day job" is shooting, editing and producing video. And even on my brand-new super-duper editing workstation, HD video footage takes a while to load and render after it's edited. Then it takes another chunk of time to export. Then yet another decent chunk of time to format and write to DVD (if the project is going on a DVD--some do, some don't.)

My point is, that when I'm working late at night on a video, I always keep a guitar in a stand right next to my desk. Any more than a minute or two of processing on the vid (and some tasks take 15-30 minutes!) and I pick it up and pick at it.

It's not the same as intense, focused practice time--but it keeps my fingers familiar with the fretboard! :D

Good luck and keep pressing on.
 
Quit!

The job, not the guitar! :D

Seriously, if you quit, you may not be able to get it back later when you've changed your mind (and you will). I quit 30 years ago, and I haven't been able to get it back yet. It's like a foreign object and/or a foerign language to me now, whereas I used to only feel natural when I had a guitar in my hand.

I'm not saying that it's like this for everyone, obviously. I'm just saying don't take the chance.
 
TelePaul said:
When do you get time to play?
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When I'm not wasting time on the Internet! :D


TelePaul said:
Since I've started working in January in my first real job after college, I've had no time to practice. I can snatch a half-hour here in the evenings but gone are the days where I could practice for three or four hours at a time.

............


Should I just quit now? :eek:
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Kidding aside...I know what you mean...it's hard to find the time to just play every day for a few hours, and trying to play just for 20-30 minutes is usually unsatisfying, as it often takes that long just to warm up.

For me, the weekends and Mondays (I work a 4 day week) are when I can play for a few hours at a clip....and usually by Monday I've "overplayed" a bit, but that's just the way it goes. Once in awhile if I can get home early enough during the week, I can play for a couple of hours.

Maybe your cramping is coming from overplaying after not playing for awhile...?
Did you maybe strain your hands at work or something...?


Don't quit! :)
 
I don't think it's about "getting" time to play - for me it's more about making time to play. Somedays it might feel a bit forced, but when actual inspiration is low, practice your mechanics instead, just do it.

If you want to pretend playing music is a part of your life or a part of yourself, I reckon you should have no trouble finding 20-30mins every day, somehow. /zen
 
TelePaul said:
I can only assume this gets even tougher with a wife and kids to keep happy too. Should I just quit now? :eek:
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Nah.
Firstly, having a wife and kids gives you scope to do other dextrous things with your hands and fingers that can help keep them in some semblence of shape.
Secondly, is it necesary to practice or play every single day ? For some, yep. For others, not at all. Only you can determine that.
Thirdly, time is a funny thing. There's paradoxically plenty of it and seemingly little of it. If you're looking to be a pro, making a living at this and whatnot, ignore everything that I might have said. But I've found over the centuries, sorry years, that playing comes in fits and starts. Perhaps because there are more important things to me in life, I have always been able to take it or leave it, but if I go a while without playing, I think I've lost it and I'm crap and have hit the ceiling.......but with some application I can always get back to it.
It's much too early to think of quitting. Maybe in about 37 years ?
 
I lost all of my speed and dexterity 13 years ago when I got married and life started happening. Keep with it, you'll find your balance and where guitar fits in. The main thing is to enjoying playing. You can still grow musically even if you don't have the unlimited hours to spend practicing anymore. Since my playing time became more limited, I focus more on the little things and making sure that the notes really say what I want them to say.....even if they have to speak a little slower these days. ;) Some nights I get to play an hour or so, some nights not at all....and some nights I sit down in my chair, grab my guitar and end up falling asleep holding it before I even pluck a note.
 
25 years playing, 18 of it with kids/job. The first couple of years, I practiced for hours a day. Since the kid thing, there have been plenty of days when I didn't pick it up. From year 7 through year 17, it was pretty much just the acoustic.

But I used to get stuck in technique "ruts" that I don't get stuck in now (kind of hard to get stuck in a rut when your wheels are not spinning, I guess), and sometimes it seems like my manual dexterity actually improves if I stop for a few days. Of the songs I wrote, I bet 80% of my favorite ones came *after* wife/kids.
 
I usually can only crank up my guitar later in the evening, my wife works a 3rd shift job and is trying to sleep through the afternoon and early evening...gotta do what you gotta do! I have a thinline Tele style electric that is a great guitar for strumming in the living room, good enough volume unamplified to have some fun.

I realized recently that I've been playing for close to 40 years now and never had the reason or decision to quit-damn...where did the time go.....:eek:
 
With everything I have going on daily it came down to either playing guitar or fucking the wife. Luckily I was able to get her to keep her back straight and now I can do both.
 
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Sirnothingness said:
With everything I have going on daily it came down to either playing guitar of fucking the wife. Luckily I was able to get her to keep her back straight and now I can do both.
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Excellent plan. Glad it's working for you. :D
 
When I was in high school and was aspiring to be a shredder like all of the guys on TV at the time, I was playing 2-3 hours a day between getting home from school and when the parents came home from work. I spent a solid 4 years of high school playing like that, and it did pay off.

Once college came around and I realized that my tastes in music were truly awful, and I lost interest in the whole shredding thing. Plus I just didn't have time to practice much in a dorm room with a roommate. Mostly acoustic stuff. Got in good with the football jocks by learning alterna-rock songs from the radio. But I'd still find times when my tail-chasing roommate was out getting some strange to be alone and play just a little louder than I should. 4 years of that really puts a dent in the technique. But by then I was listening to the Dead and Phish and didn't really care about technique.

Then I got a job, bought my LP, but was stuck in an apartment. any guitar player that lives in an apartment building knows what I went through. Just like the dorm room basically. This is when lunch time became my main playing time. Nobody else is around!

Got a house and stuck with the lunch time plan. 30 minutes per day (60 minutes when I could get away with it) and go back to work sweating and happy. I live close enough that it's only a 10 minute commute, 20 minutes round-trip, so with 5 or 10 minutes to shove down some lunch, I still had 20 or 30 minutes to play. And play I did. And fortunately, my tastes in music evolved (or actually exploded with the MP3 era).

Then came the tube amp. So now I play fucking loud :) So it's best to play at lunchtime still since nobody is home to complain (here or the neighbors).

OK after the novel, I guess my point is that you'll adapt. Your technique will adapt to what you're able to put into it. There will still be songs that you'll never forget how to play, even if it doesn't come off clean. But so what? Loving your family is just as good as loving your guitar. Find a happy medium. And enjoy it all while you can.
 
do what I do and play for a living.
That way you'll never have time to do anything else ...... because you have to work every single freakin' day to make enough money to almost pay your bills.
:laughings:

But it's been good for my chops ....... playing the best I ever have by a large margin.
So maybe when I'm living under an overpass I'll be able to play a song and keep the homeless beaters from killing me outright.
 
The North Texas area around Denton is pretty unusual for live music playing.

On Friday nights, you'll find 4 to 10 people playing in front of the old Denton courthouse on the square, and again on Saturday morning (see below). On the second and fourth Friday, they have a jam session at the old church in Slidell, with free food for everybody.

On the first, third, and fifth Saturday nights, the have another jam, complete with PA, at the Valero gas station in Bolivar, Texas, while there's another jam on the second and fourth Saturday at the Grocery Store in Greenwood, Texas.

Here's an iPhone movie of the Denton Square jam (with me taking a solo on Dobro at 2:41):

Jam at the Denton Courthouse Square

So, yeah, there's plenty of opportunities to practice and play here in North Texas.
 
I guess that it didn't occur to me that not everybody lives the mostly reclusive lifestyle I've worked myself into. I'm not much of a social person, so I never grew up as much of a social musician. Those jams sound like fun.

Honestly though, I'd be terrified to try to jam with strangers at this point. I'm so used to playing alone that I'd be a nightmare to team with. I'd be the jackass that throws everybody off. Let's just say that it's a good thing that a click track doesn't lose patience. Or maybe it does and that's why my brand new studio PC decided to abandon its heat sink and fan :) It was a mercy killing!
 
Tadpui said:
I guess that it didn't occur to me that not everybody lives the mostly reclusive lifestyle I've worked myself into. I'm not much of a social person, so I never grew up as much of a social musician. Those jams sound like fun.

Honestly though, I'd be terrified to try to jam with strangers at this point. I'm so used to playing alone that I'd be a nightmare to team with. I'd be the jackass that throws everybody off.
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I'm often a little nervy jamming with people I don't know or aren't used to playing with, especially when they're doodling before we start and I see their brilliance and think "Oh no....". On percussion, I never worry. On guitar or bass, I sweat ! But once we get into it......
Even if you're not a social person, you do yourself only good playing with other people. I know the tools afford us the scope to do everything ourselves these days, but in my opinion, rarely does collaboration come in second best.
 
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