Re: Practicing by playing songs

RichL wrote:

I don't think there's anything wrong at all in your approach. The key
is, "I do notice that my playing is improving". As your playing
progresses, and you challenge yourself more, do you find specific areas
where you're getting stuck? If so, try to find songs that have similar
challenges and work on them. But a song-based approach can be highly
successful, in my view. Don't get hung up because you think you're
"supposed" to be doing scales and exercises. For some of us, they're a
waste of time in comparison with learning increasingly challenging
songs.

I think the scales and theory stuff is much more interesting when it comes up AFTER you've learned a million or so songs. Then you have something to relate it to. It's actually explaining or describing something that you have an interest in explaining or describing. In my case, I played for more than 20 years before I started getting interested in theory, and I got interested in it because I'd reached a point where it would be of some use to me. Before that, ears, instinct, and attitude were the engines of my music, and they still are the primary engines.
It's like learning a language. The "grammar first" approach usually ends up with the student knowing "about" the language, but not able to speak or understand it very well. A better approach is to learn how to say some things by ear, and after that learn the grammar that explains how the sentences are put together. In the case of a first language, most people do just fine without ever learning any grammatical theory at all, ever. That can be the case with music and music theory too.

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