Attempting Steve Vai's 30-Hour Guitar Workout: Day One
Steve Vai had an article appear in a 2004 issue of Guitar World detailing his suggested practice regimen. The article was called "Freak Show Excess: Steve Vai's 30-Hour Path to Virtuoso Enlightenment or How to Destroy Your Pop Career in One Easy Lesson". Typical Steve Vai humor abounds.
The 30-hour workout is meant to be completed over three days, ten hours each. It's an update to the original 10-hour workout published in a 1990 GW issue.
I've been practicing up to ten hours a day for the past few months, lifting ideas from Vai's articles, but I hadn't attempted to follow his workout precisely until yesterday. I'll break it down.
Hour 1: Finger Exercises
The workout begins with a heaping helping of non-musical finger exercises. I normally try to steer clear of these. Steve's reasoning is that the best path to technical proficiency is to practice something physically awkward to play, working on it slowly until it can be played flawlessly. I completely agree, but I'd rather do that with something I'll use more often than random chromatic permutations. I gave it a try anyway.
This section is divided into a number of different techniques: linear and angular exercises, tapping, sweeping, legatos, etc. I started with linear exercises yesterday. These are single string runs with minimal position or string shifting.
Hour 2: Scales
The goal here is simple: learn every scale you can in as many fingerings as you can find or create. Obviously tough to do in an hour, but if you spend an hour on this every day for a year, you'll get somewhere. Steve stresses the importance of learning the sound of every scale you practice and making sure it's totally flawless before increasing the tempo.
I kept things simple with the E major scale yesterday. I started with a 12th-fret position, 8th notes at 60bpm, and worked my way down the fretboard through all the CAGED and three note per string positions, then all over again with 8th note triplets. I kept the tempo slow so I could be really meticulous about hitting every note exactly how I wanted to.
Hour 3: Chords
The first of three sections was memorizing. I just spent an entire weekend memorizing 7th chords, so I continued. I worked on maj7, 7, m7, and m7b5 on the top four strings, all four inversions.
Hour 4: Ear Training
I already do this every day. Easy-peasy.
I use special ear training software, but Steve has a lot of suggestions for ear training with your guitar alone, most of which involve singing. My throat still hurts from a recent sickness, so I'll pick them up later.
Hour 5: Reading Music
I do this one every day too. Lemon-squeazy.
Steve's biggest point in this section is variety. Once you know how to read music, read as many different styles and instruments as you can get your hands on.
He confirmed my belief that the two keys to sight reading are recognizing patterns and looking ahead. Different styles and instruments have unique patterns to recognize, so playing a wide variety helps.
I thought this was an interesting piece of advice:
Sight read a little bit of something new and terrifying every day.
Hour 6: Writing Music
Compose in any manner you see fit. Avoid guitar tab. Write chord charts, lead sheets, melodies, orchestral arrangements, whatever. Just do something creative.
I came up with the following chords for a jazz tune, pretty simple ii-V stuff. Worked on a melody, but ran out of time.
Am7 D7 | Am7 D7 | Gmaj7 G6 | Gmaj7 G6 |
Am7 D7 | Am7 D7 | Gmaj7 G6 | Gmaj7 G6 |
Gm7 C7 | Fmaj7 D7 | Gm7 C7 | Cm7 F7|
Bm7 E7 | Bbm7 Eb7| Am7 D7 | Gmaj7 :||
Hour 7: Music Theory
Find a music theory book or ten and learn it. Keep in mind how it can apply to guitar. I spent the hour reading about counterpoint on Wikipedia.
Hours 8-10: Jamming
Steve's purpose here is on developing expressive devices like vibrato, bends, whammy bar nuances, etc. The idea is to play in context with some kind of rhythm backing track. I skipped that for the first day to isolate a few techniques. I worked on vibrato in hour 8, slides in hour 9, and combining bends and slides in hour 10.
I came up with a cool exercise on slides. Put a blindfold on. Start at the first string, first fret, first finger. Slide with that finger all the way up and down the range of the fretboard, one fret at a time, in time with a metronome. The idea is to maintain a mental picture of exactly where your finger is on the fretboard. Do this with every finger on every string. Next, try a larger interval, like whole step slides.
That's it for day one. I'm late getting started on day two, so I better go.
guitarFlame (27 Jan 2008 at 8:01am)
Well, a very interesting thing to do. I have always proposed myself to study by more "precise" ways but I haven't managed to do it yet.
E C Dumchus (6 Aug 2008 at 6:56pm)
I'm impressed and jealous. It's difficult for me to find ten hours in a week to play guitar, let alone a single day. Too many demands on my time, job, family, even my dog.
But I need to ask: do you have a goal in mind for all this work? Where do you want it to take you?
Joe (11 Aug 2008 at 9:34pm)
Sometimes I don't have specific goals in mind for particular exercises, and that doesn't bother me. I might think of a seemingly pointless exercise and run it into the ground just because I'm curious. The results are usually positive, as it allows me to do something unconventional.
Overall, the work is partly an end in itself. I love studying music and this instrument, and putting all this time in is a joy regardless of the results. In the long run, I just want to devote my life to creating and studying music. Short term, that translates to getting good enough to make a living at this and do it full-time indefinitely.
sarge1875 (16 Dec 2008 at 11:37am)
Interesting did it pay off?
Me (16 Sep 2009 at 7:21pm)
Hey, just wondering how do you manage to do 10 hours of practicing a day? :S
Joe (16 Sep 2009 at 8:07pm)
Hello Me,
Check out my About this Blog section. I wrote this post nearly two years ago (wow!) when I had recently quit my job to practice guitar full time. I did that for a year and have since gone back to a day job, and I'm now attending school for jazz guitar. So I don't see many 10-hour practice days anymore. Once in a while on a weekend.
Joe
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Maarten (11 Dec 2009 at 2:47pm)
Hey folks, I got my copy of the 30 hour steve vai's drilling. I am really excited this program, I dont know the exact reason. I gues i am really attrected to this approach. Especially when i have experience of 4 year playing guitar, it is a lot of time. And i realize that im sick and tired to just fool arround and making nearly to non progres. So that is one of my starting point to begin with this program. I hope this course of learing and traing of some kind will help me take the first baby step in making reall progress.
If someone have any advice or reall good information on some subject..... everything.... tell me please. I would be happy to learn it.
Btw i am starting tomorrow...
Suc6 everbody doing thise course:p
Peace!
John Vu (14 Jan 2011 at 1:24pm)
For me, the take away message from Steve's practice regimen is two things.
1. You have to practice and continue to practice to get better and maintain technique. "Better" to me is reaching my potential and progressing over time.
2. Practice must include a PLAN that has the variety of things listed in the original post.
You mentioned 30 hours for Steve but does that mean 30 hours non stop or how many breaks in between. I'm sure that Steve took a lot of breaks in between. I personally would not attempt to practice for more than 3 hours. Any more than that wouldn't be a healthy lifestyle or activity.
At any rate, I definitely see the benefit of practice and having a good practice plan.
Joe (14 Jan 2011 at 1:40pm)
Hi John,
Vai's 30 hours are spread over three days, ten hours each day. I took several little breaks when I tried it.
I've learned since writing this post that the most helpful impetus in my own practicing is performance. Working towards a clear goal of a specific performance is far more productive than working towards the nebulous ideas of being technically proficient or reaching a professional level, etc. I find that every time I get out and play in front of people and spend some time preparing for it, my results are focused and salient. So any time I'm without a gig in my immediate future, I go create opportunities to prepare; jazz jams, rehearsals, jamming with friends, taking lessons.
Joe
misterfuzzyhead (30 Mar 2011 at 2:30pm)
I believe people can get really good when just playing 15 - 20 mins a day as long as its done everyday - I like to practice 15-20mins at a time through out the day - helps me :)
Joe (30 Mar 2011 at 10:15pm)
Surely, but very slowly, 15-20 min/day will yield improvement. Whether that's an optimum duration depends entirely on the player though. A beginner can discover something new, practice it, and noticeably improve in a few minutes every day. A pro, on the other hand, perhaps Vai himself, would need far more time than that just to warm up and maintain the chops they need for whatever gigs are most imminent. But as you imply, the real discipline is in the long-term daily commitment rather than in any single block of time.
shivam saha (4 Nov 2011 at 10:10pm)
im helped by it,,,,,,,
mojo321 (17 Feb 2014 at 11:56am)
I have found after 20 years of playing, that my playing is extremely better after 90 minutes of pushing myself than it was an the beginning of the 90 minutes. When I wait until the next night to practice again, it takes me another 60 minutes to get back up to where I left off the night before. If I wait three days, it take the whole 90 minutes again. So there IS merit in huge massive chunks of practicing....HOWEVER, this ONLY applies when you are working in the realm of, say quadruplets at 150-170 BPM. When playing the blues, I can go for a week and still be able to play the same riffs no problem. But to play Crushing Day, I have to be FULLY warmed up. I imagine that when you practice 10 hours a day, you would ALWAYS be warmed up! (I don't know, though, cause I've never done it...)
Joe (17 Feb 2014 at 1:52pm)
Yep! I've always found that the things I'm working on (i.e. skills/songs learned within the past year) take a while to get warmed up, while more entrenched abilities are easier to bring out instantly.