Attempting Steve Vai's 30-Hour Guitar Workout: Day Three
See Day One and Day Two first.
I made it. Completed all thirty hours in three days, although poor time management last night kept me up until 2am in order to finish.
Hour 1: Finger Exercises
More legatos! Went through a bunch of positions on high strings doing hammer-ons and pull-offs. I worked on trills the previous day, and this takes it a step further.
I used finger patterns 1-2-4, 1-3-4, 4-2-1, 4-3-1, 1-2-1-4, 1-3-1-4, 1-2-4-2, 1-3-4-3, 1-4-2-4, and 1-4-3-4 because they occur so frequently in most scales. For each pattern, I used only left hand hammers and pulls at slow tempos, getting the timing and articulation just right.
Hour 2: Scales
Continuing the legato practice, I worked on a Holdsworth-style technique that involves limited picking. I went through all the pentatonic and diatonic positions I know, picking only when changing to a higher string. The rest is left to the left hand.
Hour 3: Chords
The third section under chords is titled "Improvisation." I'm not sure why. Vai's suggestions here don't have much to do with improvising; they're more about creating new chords. If he meant to do this on the fly, it would be improvisation, but it doesn't appear so.
Anyway, the idea is to explore new chords by constructing them yourself instead of looking them up. Try to create original sounds. Use any means you can think of. Vai suggests connecting a chord with an emotion or mapping telephone numbers in a phone book to intervals.
For the first half hour, I worked on a concept for 7th chords I thought of a while ago. Each chord is played on the top three strings in one of two positions. The first has the 3 on the third string, 11, 5, or 13 on the second, 7 on the first. The other position has the 7 on the third string, 1 or 9 on the second, 3 on the first. I dig the sound from these chords because they're sparse but still include the 3 and 7. Every possible voicing I just mentioned except 3-5-7 includes a major or minor 2nd, so they often sound a bit dissonant.
For the second half hour, I worked out all possible 2- to 4-note fourth chord voicings in E Dorian (so I could use the low E as a drone).
Hour 4: Theory
This was supposed to be the ear training hour. I started by expanding the chart of interval locations I thought of on day two. I wrote out every possible occurrence of each interval within the major and minor scales.
But why stop there? I did what any creative mind would do: I made a spreadsheet. On Google Docs, of course. Now I have a chart that shows me every possible context for every interval inside an octave. If you don't hear a minor 6th as 1-b6, you might hear it as 2-b7 or #4-2 or 7-5, etc.
Once I finished the chart, the hour was up. So I decided it was a theory hour because I didn't actually train my ears at all.
Hour 5: Ear Training
I put the chart to good use. I stuck with thirds to keep things simple. Using E and A as roots (for the open drones in the bass again), I cycled through every major and minor third on the second and third strings below the twelfth fret. With each one, I tried to hear the context against the root note in my head. If I couldn't hear it internally, I sang notes in a scale that includes the interval until I had a better idea of how it was functioning.
I think this will yield good results, so I'll keep at it. It's quite engaging. It's more than just flash cards for quick memorization. I have to hear how an interval works, what could have preceded it, and how it could resolve.
Hour 6: Reading
Same as day two, new random page in the 1001 Jazz Licks book.
Hour 7: Writing
Finished writing a solo for "St. Thomas." I played through it for a while, making changes here and there. I tried to tastefully include altered 9ths over the dominant chords. I found a few spots where they sound really good.
Hours 8-10: Jamming
First hour was SRV again, mostly "Texas Flood."
In the final two hours, I continued my exploration of combining bends and slides in blues licks. They take a great deal of hand strength and control, so I isolated each little move for a while, using all fingers, top four strings, bending both directions where possible. It will take a long time before I'm confident with these, but it will be worth it. I get more excited about this every time I work on it, and I'll probably start devoting specific practice time for it every day.
Conclusions
Well, it was much easier on my hand than I thought it would be. I've overworked my left hand a number of times on less than ten hours per day. But of these thirty hours, nine involved little guitar playing, and three more were for sight reading (really slow in my case). All the serious hand work was left to finger exercises, scales, chords, and jamming.
Steve's original 10-hour workout from 1990 had three hours for exercises, three for scales, three for chords, then an hour of jamming at the end. He claims to have never had overuse injuries in his hands. That makes him a fuckhead.
I found the open-ended jamming at the end of each day very productive. I need to do more of it. I don't think three hours every day is the right way to go though. I think I'd rather do a two-hour chunk a few times a week. It's best at night when everything is silent and I'm away from my computer with no distractions, metronomes, or YouTube. I need more concentration in this area than in any other, and I fear that making it a daily routine will inhibit that.
If nothing else, going through the workout helped me get started on a few topics I need to practice more often: writing, vibrato and bending nuances, seriously exploring new territory. I doubt I'll ever use this exact workout again; the whole point of the article was to help the reader construct their own practice routine.
I think I'll stick with the strategy I've been using for a while. I pick a few things that I need to work on every day. Lately it's been ear training, sight reading, and SRV. Aside from that, I keep a list of anything that could possibly take up an hour of practice time. This gives me the flexibility to work on whatever's most intriguing at the moment and to delve further into specific areas of playing. For instance, I might spend an hour on slides every day for a week, then move to sweep picking every day the following week, etc. It's easier to build off of previous practice of a technique if it hasn't been so long since I examined it.
That's all for now. For more of Steve's teachings, visit Little Black Dots on his official site.
Jeff (30 Mar 2008 at 11:43am)
This is an awesome task you took on man! 30 hours is a daunting goal. It's nice to see dedication like that. Even if you don't plan on using this practice method in the future, it really shows character and a lot of self drive to be able to discipline yourself in such a way. I see a lot of great things happening for you in the future. Keep up the great stuff!
Joe (30 Mar 2008 at 11:52am)
Thanks for the kind words, Jeff. I'm actually thinking of doing a 24-hour marathon session this week, just for the hell of it. We'll see if it pans out.
Andrew (8 Aug 2008 at 1:59am)
A few summers ago I did this exercise 2 times in a week, about 5 times in the whole summer. And yes, that summer I lost all social skills.
Florian (24 Jan 2009 at 1:01pm)
Hey, thanks for the blog. I found Steve Vai book, but one page is missing. I looked everywhere on the web and could not find it. Could you tell me where to find it please ?
Thanks a lot.
Florian
tylor (17 Jul 2009 at 9:55pm)
yea im 15 and ddecided to take up the challenge
im on my second day and it is apain i thought about giving up it takes self dicipline and good for u for finishing it
Joe (17 Jul 2009 at 10:23pm)
Hi Tylor,
Others might advise differently, but I always just stop doing something if I really think it's a pain. The trick is to think a ways ahead, decide exactly what you want, how you'll go about getting it, and whether it's worth the effort. So if you discover that practicing 10 hours a day is more trouble than it's worth, and you don't love doing it, then by all means don't do it. Find something you love doing and spend more time on that.
Just keep in mind that meeting goals will often require spending time on things you don't love, things that aren't fun. It's always a trade-off, a constant assessment of whether the goal is worth the work. I happen to love every moment that a guitar is in my hands, so it's a no-brainer for me.
Also consider that I didn't even pick up a guitar until I was 15, and didn't try Steve Vai's stuff until I'd been playing for 10 years.
Best of luck to you.
Tylor (17 Jul 2009 at 10:38pm)
I love playing guitar love practicing it to
But I had trouble at the reading music and whiting music part
Because I don't know how to read music
I probibly spend an hour on finger strength a day anyway
I normaly do steve's exersice from guitar world
1234-2341-3412-4123 down strings then up over and over at 80bpm
But when I look into the future I want to be in berkley,GIT, or Juliard
And I think I want make it if I don't practice all the time
Besides Steve Vais my mentor
Devin (14 Sep 2009 at 7:09pm)
I too am 15, and have been looking around for people who have done this. I have Steve's 10-hour guitar workout on Guitar Pro, but I never have much time to do this excercise. I fiddle around with it whenever I can, and from that I feel as though I am getting a workout. I'm just almost suprised that someone like yourself would have the ambition (and time) to go about doing this. Congratulations!
Joe (14 Sep 2009 at 7:20pm)
Hi Devin. Everyone has the time. It's just a matter of not filling it with other things. Like laundry. Shit.
GuitarChallenges (6 Apr 2012 at 1:17pm)
I tried this workout as well.
I thought it would be extremely hard to follow the schedule motivation-wise, but it actually turned out to be pretty easy and fun!
I chose to follow his workout 100 %, and there were some of the parts I felt i didn't benefit from, but all in all a great workout.
It helped me determine my strengths and weaknesses, try out something new and made me able to create my own personalised schedule.
I think every serious guitarist should try this one out.
Magilla66 (7 Jul 2016 at 1:33pm)
Hey Joe,
Thanks for the write-up on the 30-hour workout experience, gives dimension to the practical application of Vai's approach to skill building. I'm starting slowly on the 10-hour workout first, as I've been playing guitar far too long without any real goals in mind. Playing the "not-so-fun" non-musical drills were definitely a non-starter when I was 10, but I'm pushing myself to do all of them now at 50 because I refuse to play sloppy guitar during the next 50 years of my life.
Tony
Joe (17 Oct 2016 at 2:07pm)
Right on!