Practice with Context

Elevate your practice sessions with real world usage.

The Biggest Pitfall of Practice

The first music lessons that most people get involve practicing a certain technique or scale. Guitarists tend to start with strumming patterns. These patterns can follow a slow count of “One, &, two, &, three, &” and could be played as, “1-Down, 2-Down, 3-Down, &-UP”. Another option for any instrument is to learn the C Major Scale. The student could then play that scale ascending as “C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C” and then descending as “C, B, A, G, F, E, D, C”. Combing this with a four count beat of “One, two, three, four” helps the student stay in time as they play the notes of the scale.

And that is the pit fall.

By learning “Down, Down, Down, Up” and “One, two, three, four” we get locked into practicing something that lacks context. A better option would be to play the strumming pattern on a chord where the first beat is on the bass notes and the other strumming is on the non-bass notes. Now the strumming patterns includes the strong beat on “one”, the strong beat gets the bass end, and the right hand must articulate which to strings play and which strings to avoid playing.

We can also put the major scale pattern into context by playing every other note ascending and the notes we skipped descending. So, ascending the student would play “C, E, G, B” and descending “C, A, F, D” would be played. Now the student is playing a CMaj7 arpeggio ascending and a Dm7 arpeggio descending. The student could also reverse this with “D, F, A, C” ascending and “B, G, E, C” descending. This allows the student to learn the scale, timing, and two arpeggios forward and backwards. Another advantage is that scales, chords, and arpeggios can be viewed as the same thing by the student.

Rather than separating musical concepts into dogmatic ideas we can avoid having a student learn unspoken rules like, “scales are just patterns of notes” or “strumming involves all of the string”. Now we are learning broader concepts like, “scales connect us to ideas” and “strumming gives a voice to rhythm”. No matter what level of knowledge you have, context will help connect your practice to real usage.

Visualizing Context

I like to use new concepts against simple examples. For instance, if I want to learn my C Major scale notes I’ll start with a C or C Maj7 arpeggio. Next, I’ll pick another chord from the C Major scale, like Dm or Dm7. And that is it. There is no need to over-complicate things.

Above is a portion of the neck of a guitar with the C Major scale shown. The body of the guitar is to the right of the diagram and the head-stock is to the left. The lowest horizontal line is the lowest toned string, and the highest horizontal line is the highest toned string.

I’ve color coded each note to reflect one octave from C to C. The blue notes are the lower tones, the red notes are the higher tones, and the single purple note is where blue and red overlap.

I could just play this forward and backward one octave at a time to get used to the notes, where I put my fingers, and so on. That would be a decent place to start so that I could get used to this scale, but putting this into context through usage would make such a pattern more effective.

Above is the same scale with the notes of a CMaj7 chord shown with two “shapes”. A shape allows instruments that can play chords to be visualized by the player. An instrument like a flute can only play one note at a time. To create a shape for the flute the player would need to recognize a fingering pattern that plays one note at a time, but the collection of notes equals a chord. Technically that is what an arpeggio is: a collection of notes that is equivalent to a chord.

Regardless of the instrument, thinking in terms of “shapes” allows us to fit a shape withing a pattern. The chart above shows the “patterns” of the C Major scale as two octaves along with two “shapes” that fit each octave.

To add some context, we can also look to the notes of a Dm chord: D, F, and A. This gives us two more “shapes” in the same “pattern”. Now I can practice my C Major scale without thinking about a scale. Instead, I have four shapes (shown in green and orange) that help me focus on a small set of notes within the scale.

Hearing Context

Ultimately, we want to play something that sounds good. Using the same four shapes I can play a vamp of CMaj7 and Dm repeating. I can play one note at a time or multiple notes at a time. The only other thing to do is incorporate some other aspect of music, like a sense of rhythm or function of a note.

Having a good rhythm foundation is important for any musician. Starting with a very slow four count beat I can play strictly on “one, two, three, four”. Then I can add in the “&s”. Playing on any part of “one, &, two, &, three, &, four, &” helps me to stay in time and get used to using specific beats. Maybe I want to end a short phrase on “one” and hold that note. Another option would be to start a phrase on the “&” after “one”. I could even break the beat down for a moment and count “one, &, two, &” followed by “three, ah, &, ah” and then use “four, &” to practice some shorter durations.

We can also turn to the function of notes and chords to help us express a scale. The C Major scale gives us some suspension chords like Csus2 (C-D-G) and Csus4 (C-F-G). The notes that make these suspensions are D and F, so we can think of them as the “suspension points” for chords and melodies. The way this works is by ending a CMaj7 arpeggio phrase (which means to play the notes C, E, G, and B how you like) with the note D or F at the end. You can make this even more pronounced by omitting the note E, because that is the same note that D and F replace.

If the CMaj7 phrase ends with the note D, then it is felt as a CMaj7sus2. The same thing happens when ending CMaj7 with F because it is felt as a CMaj7sus4. The “suspension” comes from suspending the third degree note of E up or down to the next note. When we play this as a chord, the third degree note is omitted. Just like with a chord, we can play a melody that omits the third degree note and ends on a suspension note like D or F to “suspend the melody”.

Now my CMaj7 shapes can be connected to the notes D or F to create a sense of suspension. Think of it like asking a question. I can use any rhythm with the notes C, E, G, and B that can then move to D or F to ask a question. This is then followed up with an answer that could end with just the note C or some phrase that leads us to a C major chord.

This is just one example of how we can use a chord that fits the scale to (1) create an arpeggio and (2) focus on the notes that make that chord unique. Other ways to use this would be playing Dm6 as D, F, B and using the note B as the leading tone of C. Now we have a chord (Dm6) that includes a note (B) that leads us to our Tonic note (C).

Creating Your Own Context

There are plenty of other ways to use context in practice. While playing songs by your favorite artists can be a real world example, you’ll end up being locked in to a song that has no room to grow. The only way to use a pre-written song is to try things like swapping major and minor predominant chords. Doing something like this would force yourself to think about what you are doing and appreciate the consequence of trying something new.

You may want to try something abstract like playing a blues scale but in the context of a waltz groove. You could also play a jazz chord progression with a laid back country music feel. Even a simple challenge like avoiding the fifth degree note of any chord or arpeggio can create a unique context that adds to your practice session and help you to avoid playing overly structured scales.

If you find it hard to expand on your practicing, then try asking “What if I...?” and see where that leads you. Even asking “What if I don’t play..?” can help you to focus on something new and engaging. Right now I am practicing using augmented chords with the thought, “What if one of the notes in an augmented chord is a leading tone of the third degree of a major chord?” This is a long winded question, but it puts a chord into a context and allows me to explore that idea. Now my practice session has gone from the plain old C Major scale to how the notes C, E, and Ab lead me to a major-third. And who knows where those three notes will take me? I guess we’ll have to talk about that another time.