Detailed playing

I’ve been learning a few different songs on guitar recently and one thing that I often hear that distinguishes an experienced player from an un-experienced player is detailed playing. Playing with a lot of detail means adding articulations and expression to almost every note.

For example the solo in DevilDriver’s cover of “If Drinkin’ Don’t Kill Me” has a lot of articulations in it that might be easy to miss. It’s definitely easier to play the solo without all of the articulations.

Many of the notes have slides either into them or out of them. Some of them are reverse slides. Some notes have bends and others have vibrato. Some notes are hammer-ons and some are pull-offs. Some notes are played staccato and some are played legato.

This isn’t specific to guitar music or guitar playing. This type of playing, detailed playing, is something that almost all experienced musicians do. It becomes a natural expansion of expressing yourself on your instrument. Just take a listen to any professional violin player and listen to and look at how many notes they’re adding vibrato to. Then pay attention to how that vibrato changes depending on the context of the music.

Here are some tips for how to improve the detail of your playing.

Practice slowly

This one will almost always be my first tip for how to improve anything about your playing. And I want to be clear about just how slowly I mean. Practice with each note lasting for two measures; two tied whole notes. Then practice as if every note is a whole note. Then practice with every note as a half note. And so on.

Practice so slowly that you can play each tiny detail correctly. At first this will take a lot of patience if you’ve never done this before. But as someone who uses this technique frequently, doing it repeatedly and often helps improve your playing so much that it’s worth it every time.

Sometimes it might be enough to play it through super slowly only once. Sometimes you might need to play it through slowly a few times, but you’ll get the biggest benefit out of playing it so slowly that everything is perfect.

Practice each articulation separately

If there’s one note that has a specific articulation, practice that note separately.

An example of this is “Fives” by Guthrie Govan. In the main riff, the third note has a very wide and fast vibrato, but the note isn’t that long so it can be difficult to add that much vibrato that quickly. Practicing that note separately can help a lot. Just practice playing that note as if it were a whole note with wide, fast, and even vibrato. Then try to shorten the note to the correct length. Then add it into the riff.

Isolate single notes that have difficult articulations and play them separately. It’ll make it easier to add each articulation if you’re only thinking about one note.

Practice transitions

Any difficult transitions should be practiced by themselves. Take the last two or three notes of the previous section and the first two or three notes of the upcoming section and just work on that transition. Think of the transition as being it’s own part of the music. When playing two sections you aren’t simply playing two sections in isolation, you’re also playing a transition between those sections.

We want the transitions between the sections to be played as smoothly and as accurately as the separate sections themselves. This means that we need to practice just the transitions.

Practice scales and arpeggios with articulations

Another way to get used to playing with lots of expressions is to practice scales and arpeggios this way. If you’re playing a G major scale, practice it all legato, all staccato, with different amounts of legato, with different widths of vibrato, and different speeds to vibrato. Play it with any other articulations that are specific to your instrument.

For example on guitar you could play it while adding a bend to each note or with tremolo picking. Play each note sliding up into it, down into it, up out of it, or down out of it.

On violin you can change how many notes you play with one bow or change the bowing pattern. Play scales with hooked bowing or using different parts of the bow.

This might take a lot of time if you’ve never done this before and depending on how many articulations you try to practice, so separate it between practice sessions. Practice one articulation one day and another articulation another day. You don’t need to practice everything all at once.

Final notes

Hopefully some of these tips are useful. Take whichever tips you think are useful and will help you with your playing and use them the next time you practice. Depending on what specifically is difficult for you some of these tips may be more helpful than others. Take those, use them, implement them in your practice routine, and remember the other ones for later situations that might come up.

I hope this post was useful.

ISJ