Tommy’s 10 Top Tips For Effective Practice
We tracked down the mercurial Tommy Emmanuel at his home in Nashville and asked him what advice he would give to players who want to get the most out of their practice routine – here’s what the master told us…
Tommy Emmanuel is undeniably one of the most accomplished acoustic players in the world. But ask him how he gained his enviable chops on the instrument and he’ll explain that they came via some hardcore practising. He’ll also tell you that he thinks people hold some misconceptions about how best to spend their time in the woodshed, a lot of the time being wasted covering old ground while resisting the urge to try something new.
“When people say to me,‘What do you practise?’” he tells us,“I always say,‘I play songs.’ I practise the songs that I want to play well over and over. Having something good to practise keeps you motivated. If you just sit around and play modes and scales, you’ll get bored with that pretty quickly. They’re important for your fingering, your dexterity, your knowledge, for the smoothness of your playing – and that’s good, but don’t just do that. Play some songs and keep challenging yourself all the time.”
There’s some valuable advice right there, but what about the top 10 tips that will get you motivated and improve your technique? We’ll hand you over to the man himself…
1 Use A Metronome
“Just about every day of my life I switch on the metronome and play along with it” “A metronome is so important. When I was younger I practised with a metronome to reel myself in because my enthusiasm level was way too high. Every time I played something it just slowly sped up because I was so crazy about it. If it’s to be good and respected it needs to be in a groove; this wild animal needs to be in a controlled environment! So I learned to enjoy the discipline of roping myself in and saying,‘I’m going to play this right in the pocket.’ So when I go on stage I can fly my kite, but I’m still in charge of where it is. When you first start doing it, it’s like your enemy: it’s like this ball and chain, but if you do it enough, it’s like wings. It sets you free and suddenly you feel so comfortable with that click and then your ideas flow and you’re not worried about where the time is.”
2 Record Yourself
“You wanna hear from the listener’s perspective that everything about an arrangement is working” “Another important part of practice is recording yourself. You’ve got a new song, a new arrangement, you’ve got your hands around it, you’ve played it a lot and now you wanna hear yourself playing it. So you record it. I just record it on my phone, play it the best I can, put the guitar down, play it back, close my eyes and really scrutinise everything about it. Then, when I think it’s good enough, I’ll play it for the public.
“I started doing that kind of thing a long time ago. It was the greatest awakening for me because I thought I was pretty hot stuff until I heard myself back and then all my instincts, all my gut feelings reared up and my quality control took over and I realised I hadn’t worked hard enough and I wasn’t paying attention. I had to get to work and I just knew it. No-one told me. It was my instincts.”
3 Pace Yourself And Keep It Interesting
“There are different ways of practising – but you’ve got to keep it interesting” “If you feel like,‘Uh, I don’t wanna play today,’ then don’t. Play when you really wanna play. It used to be that if I had a lot of travelling to do, by the time soundcheck came round I’d be worried: ‘I haven’t played enough today…’ So nowadays I like to play every day. As soon as I wake up, the first thing I do is play my guitar. I don’t try to push it. I start with songs I love and that gets me started. Some people need a routine; they write it out. I don’t do that. If I have a song I need to work on, I know that I’m going to play that song and nothing else until I can play it while eating a ham sandwich.”
4 Don’t Be Afraid To Go Off-Road
“Another side of practice that I love is practising improvising because it’s much more adventurous” “I’ll take a 12-bar cycle and start in E and begin improvising. I get a groove going and I start playing what I would sing and I try to play phrases that are structured. Then I do some call and response, then I move up to F and keep going. So I’m literally practising being spontaneous. And even if I mess up I keep going – as long as the idea was worth going for. So I practise being spontaneous. I practise structured songs. I practise songs that are difficult. I play songs that aren’t, just for the fun of playing them and I practise with the metronome and I record myself. There are a few things going on in there at once!”
Listen And Learn
“I’ve never used transcriptions or tabs, I only use my ears…” “I encourage people to use their ears. You should be able to listen to a song and tell what key it’s in and where the chords are going and you should understand the relationship from the B to the E to the C# and all that kind of stuff. The problem is that most people haven’t done that because everything’s available to them. With It’s Never Too Late, there are 300 versions on YouTube and everybody’s downloaded the tab. Another classic example is my arrangement of Close To You. What I hear is that people have learned the positions and they are playing them; the melody comes out, but no-one has listened to Karen Carpenter sing it. Do you know the words of the song? These are things that I feel are important. How are you going to interpret the song if you don’t know anything to do with what the song’s about?”
6 Do Your Research
“Chet Atkins used to always say to me, ‘Learn the melody as the composer intended’” “When Martin Taylor and I decided to have a go at The Nearness Of You, before we even got together on the song we listened to Sarah Vaughan sing it, Ella Fitzgerald sing it and Frank Sinatra sing it. There are three pages out of the Encyclopaedia Of Great Arrangements! We learned the words and then I said,‘Okay, I’m going to do it this way and I’m going to play the melody a bit like how Sarah Vaughan sang it.’Then Martin came up with his chords and we moulded our version. So when you’re learning a new piece, first of all you don’t do anything else until you’ve got that new piece under your hands. If it’s a song that has words, you had better listen either to the original version, or at least someone with good credibility that would interpret the melody correctly.”
Know Your Scales
“Learning the scales backwards and forwards in the different shapes is a good way for you to understand, look there’s more than one F on the guitar!” “Learn your scales, forwards and backwards in the different positions so you’ve got lots and lots of ways of getting around the fretboard without getting lost. Start with the F down at the end of the fretboard and work your way up. So if you use any one position to play those scales you’ll have that area to work from; move on to the next and you’ll have that area and so on until you’ve got the whole fretboard covered. Joe Pass talked about learning the fretboard and he said,‘See it in blocks’ and it really works. So major, minor, b9, diminished, raised 5th, all those modes and scales are really helpful for you to get your ideas. A guy like Larry Carlton can hear someone play and know that he knows this scale and he knows that mode and he can dissect it and say exactly what it is.”
A Good Guitar Setup Is Priceless
“People don’t know that you can get the guitar set up so it’s a lot easier for you to play” “Almost on a daily basis I’ll have people ask, ‘Do you ever get carpal tunnel?’,‘Do you get repetitive strain?’ or ‘I had to stop playing and wear this brace.’ People think,‘I’ve got to be dedicated, I’ve got to push through this…’ and they’re treating the guitar like they’re a body builder or something. It’s not that way at all. How are you going to express yourself on an instrument if the action’s so high you can’t get it to sustain or you can’t hold the strings down? No-one’s told them you can get the action set lower or you can straighten the neck.You can do anything you want with the instrument to make it how you like and so that’s an important thing. Every guitar comes with factory settings – no buzz and the strings a little bit high and you’re allowed to lower it! But everyone does the same thing, you know.”
9 Find Out What Works Best For The Song
“It’s really up to the individual to find out what works for them – it’s always the song that determines what technique I use”