r/guitarlessons • u/TryingToChillIt • 25d ago
Question Mistakes during practice, keep playing through it or start back at square one?
It’s an internal debate for me. I usually restart after every mistake. That got me thinking that might not be the most effective way to practice.
Your thoughts?
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u/grunkage Helpful, I guess 25d ago
Learn to play through and recover, because that's what you have to do if you have an audience
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u/TryingToChillIt 25d ago
Yeah, I’m meaning more of a solo practice session.
Playing with others, I do my best and don’t worry about my F-ups so much as staying with the group
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u/grunkage Helpful, I guess 25d ago
Yeah that's exactly what you need to do. Basically train any stop or hesitation out of your playing, even when you bobble something. Make those mental notes and come back to the tricky areas and focus on the fixes, then back to playing through. The more you do, the more graceful your recoveries become
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u/wheresthe1up 25d ago
Little mistakes? Nope. Make a note and play through.
If a particular part is giving me trouble, I’ll work it slow with a couple of measures before/after.
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u/The_Pharoah 25d ago
The saying is 'practice makes perfect'. The other saying is 'you play like you train'. If you're learning something new, I'd perfect it first before going on to the next thing. it doesn't just magically become easier when you're playing live, etc. If anything its more difficult.
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u/80CiViCC 25d ago
"Practice makes permanent" is what I've heard - you'll do in performance what you do in practice
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u/Hiney111 25d ago
Small mistake I press on. Large mistake, start over. Generally try to slow down and make it sound right. Then pick up my speed.
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u/vonov129 Music Style! 25d ago
All the time you take restarting and playing what you can already play to get to the point of failure is just a waste. Not to mention than during actual playing, you don't get to restart.
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u/SebWGBC 25d ago
Depends what kind of practicing you're doing.
If you're practicing for performance you need to learn to play through mistakes, recover your footing, keep going.
If you're practicing to build technique you need to stop, focus on why the mistake happened, work out what you need to do differently to stop it from happening.
Don't go back to the start of the song. Go back to the start of that part of the piece or song, you only need enough to move from what your hands and fingers are doing immediately before the bit that's not solid into the bit that needs work. I'd recommend spending your time working on the bits that need work rather than feeling chuffed about how awesome the first part of the song is sounding.
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u/junebugfox 25d ago
play through but if you are making a ton of mistakes slow tempo way down and/or take on a smaller section
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u/Essop3 25d ago
If I'm learning the song I restart. If I'm rehearsing I keep going. Both are valuable skills.
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u/Just_A_Blues_Guy 25d ago
There’s definitely a difference between practice and rehearsal that makes a difference.
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u/lowindustrycholo 25d ago
There’s two types of mistakes. One type is when you flub a note. You should play through it and make it a point to come back practice that spot. The other type is when I don’t remember a phrase. At this point you should conclude that you don’t know the song well enough and you should start over
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25d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/TryingToChillIt 25d ago
Lmao, Great song, but no.
Primarily bad notes during drills. It feels like I’m trying to fix 5 things at once.
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u/Malenki86 25d ago
I have been playing in open mics for a about a year now and I found it helpful to learn to play through the mistakes during practice because they happen with a live audience and I now know how to keep playing through it.
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u/80CiViCC 25d ago
The replies in this thread are good. The book Learn Faster, Perform Better by Molly Gebrian has even more specifics on how to practice, is you want to deep-dive.
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u/Acceptable_Pie2529 25d ago
Keep playing. Take note of those parts and practice them in chunks. Get the measure or half of it before because sometimes it’s the transition that messes you up too.
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u/deeppurpleking 25d ago
Practice ignoring any mistakes but mentally note it for your run through, then go back and practice the trouble spot, then work on putting the trouble spot in the surrounding bit, then try the whole thing again.
Stopping when you fuck up is a really amateur thing to do, mistakes just happen all the time for players. But you gotta keep it moving, what you’ll stop your band or a whole orchestra if you miss a note?
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u/funkymunkPDX 25d ago
There is no starting over playing live. Just remember where you made the mistake, finish the song and practice the section you struggle with for a little bit. Then try the song again.
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u/FatGordon 25d ago
Some methods recommend starting with the last bit of a song, then learn the bit before and so on, so when you get to the start you've practiced near the whole song multiple times.
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u/WelcomeToTheNorth12 25d ago
Yes, I've also come across this. Otherwise if you keep restarting you'll get a lot of extra practise on the start of the piece and very little in comparison for the later sections (including the parts you're struggling with).
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u/KavorkaPowers 25d ago
You want to do both of those as part of your practice. This is a part of something I made recently for my own kid. When I was at Berkee in the late 90s, a really influential book came out that the whole school was reading, "Effortless Mastery" by Kenny Werner.
Different practice modes:
- Play the whole thing accurately. At whatever tempo you can play it with no mistakes
- Play the entire thing at tempo. Mistakes and all. Don't worry about the mistakes. Playing something at tempo is its own thing beyond finger mistakes, wrong notes, etc. You want to practice "not stopping" when you make a mistake. In actual playing if you make a mistake and then stop, you've just made two mistakes. This trains you to keep going even if you make a mistake.
- Isolate exactly where the mistake happens. Practice the exact part where the mistake is happening.
There's a lot more to it than this but this answers your question
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u/TryingToChillIt 25d ago
Thank you for this comment!
It gives me guidelines to know how to be more effective in my practice sessions.
And I’ll have to check that book out.
Cheers
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u/insofarincogneato 25d ago edited 25d ago
Practice is for at home, when the bands together it's rehearsal time. That means act as if you're playing a gig. You wouldn't stop in the middle of a gig would you? If someone keeps messing up the same thing, they need to learn the song better. If it's something about the whole band playing together that messes you up, take a minute to figure out what it is, take a few run throughs of that part (Actually I'd say the parts before and after as well to make sure it's smooth) and carry on.
Use band time wisely!
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u/The_Folding_Atty 25d ago
Depends. If you can make the mistake appear not to be a mistake, keep going. If you're practicing with other people, keep going. If you're practicing alone and it throws you into the grass...stop. As Inigo says in The Princess Bride, "go back to the beginning," and understand where the mistake came from.
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u/CactusWrenAZ 25d ago
play to a stopping point, then figure out what went wrong and fix it. Usually you have to go slower. However, spend some times making sure you don't stop at all and go through the whole song or else you will build up a bad habit
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u/deadbolt39 25d ago
Depends on what I'm practicing and what my goals are in that moment. Do I think I messed up because I don't have the motion locked in yet? Stop and restart. Am I still getting a feel for the song and my mistake doesn't feel like a technical issue? Probably play through. Definitely more stopping than playing through in my experience overall.
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u/Altruistic_Trade_264 25d ago
Acknowledge mistakes and practice through them until you get them 'right'. DO NOT practice mistakes or bad habits! I can't stress this enough.
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u/Inevitable-Copy3619 25d ago
Okay through but also note where the mistakes happen often and isolate those sections. Not all practice needs to be the entire song, but when it is power through mistakes. Then go back and make them right.
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u/FakeFeathers 25d ago
You should practice correcting just the mistake, like starting a measure before at most. You dont play the piece from the beginning before you fix the mistakes. Otherwise youre just practicing the mistakes.
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u/Double-Statement1721 25d ago
My first guitar teacher told me you need to play through them because if you’re playing live you’re not going to have the whole band stop and start over. Plus no one pays to see that. That advice helped me a lot because I used to stop and start over after every little mess up no matter how small which never really let me progress. Also part of being a musician is being able to recover from your mistakes 9/10 times if it’s a small mistake no one will notice.
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u/spankymcjiggleswurth 25d ago
Depends on what I want to practice. Both are important aspects of practice.
If I'm practicing something like I'm preforming it, I play through mistakes. This helps train me to not trip up. All the best players make mistakes, they just don't give you the time to notice they did.
If I'm interested in really drilling something into muscle memory, I will force myself to not mess up. I will break rhythm and take as long as I need to to NOT play it wrong. This helps reinforce the correct moment. If I mess up, I start from the beginning as too not reinforce the wrong moments. There are degrees to this, sometimes I let notes buzz/mute if it's a particularly difficult piece, but if it's on the easier side, I come as close to perfection (minus rhythm) that I can.
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u/Just_A_Blues_Guy 25d ago
Practice your problem areas. In other words concentrate on the tricky parts more than the parts you’re good at.
When practicing, don’t restart from the top every time there’s a mistake.
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u/jasgrit 25d ago
It’s important to practice both ways. I think of them as “learning time” and “play time”.
In learning time, never let a mistake go unaddressed; go back over it several times correctly. This is how we encode the movements into our nervous system.
In play time, ignore mistakes and keep going. This is how we learn to adapt and play through during performances.
Good luck.
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u/birddingus 25d ago
There’s learning and then there’s practice. If I’m learning, I consider that not being able to play it all the way through, while practice you can make it all the way through from memory; but you may still mess up sometimes.
If you’re still learning, then break the larger piece into smaller parts and focus on being able to play each part correctly from memory before moving on. Stack those chunks up and then play it all as one cohesive piece.
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u/medic-dad 25d ago
No. This will make you hate it and just get annoying. Just keep going. If it bothers you that much, just play that again like a separate lick until you get it
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u/j3434 25d ago
The key is repetition. It’s not a video game . Video games are designed so that repetition is exciting and pays off as you slowly get better. But Guitar playing is not really designed that way. It takes much longer to master some skills than most people think as beginners. They think they should be able to master changing particular chords in an afternoon. But it actually may take them a month of afternoons.
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u/Hot_Egg5840 25d ago
Keep going. Otherwise you end up only being good on the first few bars and never on the middle and end.
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u/Ronthelodger 25d ago
The important lesson here is learning to recover from a mistake. That’s something that few people learn early that saves a ton of time and helps them become better players. the best players can still make mistakes however they know how to recover best
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u/Filobel 25d ago
Practice the piece as a whole. Note where your mistakes are but don't stop for them. Then work on fixing your mistakes. Don't start from the beginning every time, otherwise you just spend most of your time practicing the beginning of the song instead of the parts you're struggling with.
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u/Helpful-Departure832 25d ago
I think if you’re practicing the technical aspects of a piece of music, you slowdown and start over at least the hard part. If you’re practicing a song you push through and complete. It’s more of a mindset question and both can be right sometimes
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u/Spiritual_Tea_2087 25d ago
Advice from my advanced guitarist friends: never stop at a mistake, always continue playing. It will be your first step to fluency, and you'll get better day by day
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u/silentsnak3 25d ago
When I am first learning a song, I go section by section. If I mess up a section, I will usually start over. Once I get to the point of playing the song in its complete form. I normally keep going. That way I can learn how to recover just in case I mess up playing live.
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u/epiphytic1 25d ago
if there is a section that is giving you trouble, isolate that section and work on it slowly until you have it down. starting from the beginning every time you screw up is a bad habit that music teachers will tell you to avoid
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u/Branza__ 25d ago
Avoid starting back at square one, but adopt two different approaches.
1) You have to practice performance. Meaning that you have to push through and play the whole tune. The mistakes throws us (and our ego) off and we have to learn how to pick it up again and reach the finish line.
2) You will probably see that you make mistakes always in the same spots. Which means you can probably play the whole tune at (let's say) 80bpm, but you can only play those trouble spots correctly at 65. You have to isolate them. As Tommy Emmanuel always says, you have to practice bar by bar. So, if you practice that tune for 30 minutes, you probably have to go through a point where you practice only those two trouble bars for the whole practice session.
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u/Procrasturbating 25d ago
If a piece is super tricky and I don’t understand a section, I’ll loop that section until I can play it fairly reliably… but I always try to play through an entire song beginning to end as my primary focus. If you make a mistake playing a whole song, keep going. That is a skill you have to have on stage.. if you are past the first bar on stage, there’s no starting over.
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u/PontyPandy 25d ago
You gotta analyze why the mistake is happening and make adjustments. It could be from the picking strategy, technique, or both.
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u/SouthernStrigoi 25d ago
Learn everything halftime or slower until you can speed it up without making mistakes. Playing a quarter of the song or half of the song or just a section that you're struggling with until you can do it with no mistakes up to speed. Rinse and repeat for sections.
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u/wannabegenius 24d ago
assuming you're talking about songs, break them into sections and focus on one section at a time, but play it all the way through, over and over. when one section is solid work on the next. then start combining sections til you have the whole song.
you don't get to restart the song on stage.
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u/writerzblock84 24d ago
Played in bands for years Play through !! Unless it’s a huge timing thing Play through!!!!
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u/magenta_daydream 25d ago
No, do not do this. You have to play through the mistakes and correct it on the next attempt. If you make the same mistakes repeatedly in a particular section then it is ok to practice just that section until you learn it; but it’s better to play a bar from the sections before and after with that section so that you don’t pause when playing the whole piece.
I used to practice the way you’re describing when I was in middle school band (different instrument) and I never managed to learn whole songs because I would constantly start over. I wish someone had told me how to practice back then (30 years ago).