How to practice for 3+ hours a day, every day(not clickbait)

Yo, Jojo here. Talking to you on my commute home from work. Been watching way too many videos. Consuming, consuming, consuming. So I figured it's time for me to create a little bit. And I wanted to do more of these, like, talking head style, just like kind of off the cuff. So today you saw the title. I'm going to talk about a not clickbait, totally real way to practice, like, three to four hours a day, every day without missing days. How the hell could this be possible, right? When we have sleep and work and school and our commute and our jobs? And I totally understand what you guys are saying. And believe me, when I hear people talk about stuff like that, I'm skeptical too. Like, oh, really? You practice three hours every single day. You did that for a whole year. Okay. I mean, I'm sure there's probably some people that did it. But really what I want to talk to you guys about, though, is a shift in how you think about, like, what practices and also how you think about music. So this whole channel is about showing you guys how to think about music in numbers instead of letters. Because letters are fine for, like, reading sheet music, but ultimately it's extremely limiting because your knowledge is like, in a. It doesn't tell me. It doesn't give me much information other than, like, the absolute pitch of that note. But say that, you know, it's like the. One of our key. That is valuable information. It gives me a context of, like, where to place it and so how. Back to the central question. How is it possible to practice for three to four hours a day or more? In my opinion, and in my experience, there's really only one way to do this, and it involves two things. The first thing, like I mentioned earlier, you have to be thinking about this stuff in numbers, okay? Or solfege. But really I think numbers are better, but it's good to. No solfege as well. And two, you need to use the most perfect instrument in the whole world, in the whole universe, the human voice, right? Because training your ear, which a lot of people watching this channel, I'm sure want to be able to do, to be able to hear a song for the first time and then immediately be able to play it or hear songs going on around you and be able to join in, you know, while, you know, after playing a single note on your instrument or. And really, really, this is what I think the most powerful part of it is. Some of you guys are songwriters, composers, beat makers, right? But what I think a lot of you guys don't Consider yourselves is an improviser, and you really should, because improvisation and composition are really the same thing. They're literally two sides of the exact same coin. And once you develop your skills in improvisation, composition starts to take a slightly different. You see it through a different lens, because what it becomes is less of you. Just like throwing random pain in the wall and seeing what sticks. You can cultivate your ability to take a quiet moment, open your ears, open your heart, and the real creatives who talk about this, the universe starts to whisper stuff into your ears. Dead serious about this. And when you develop your skills at improvisation, you're able understand what it is and immediately translate it out into this 3D space that we. That we live in. And so back to. Once again, the central question, how do we do this? The short answer is, you sing the numbers and you. You hear the numbers, right? So if you're. And you take advantage of all the opportunities around you, right? I worked at this Korean barbecue restaurant for a while. I was a host. And a lot of the job was just, like, fold napkins and, like, setting up these plates for, like, when the big rushes would come in and there would be this playlist that would go on, you know, constantly. And so I was hearing a lot of the same songs over and over, you know, like, top 100 hits type type stuff. And it was actually amazing practice because I was just sitting there doing this repetitive task of folding the napkins and listening to the music. And what I did and what I would encourage you guys to do is get obsessed about this. Develop an obsession, okay? This method that I'm talking about, this is not for people that just, like, want to get a little bit better. This is for people that really love this music thing and, you know, want to take this rabbit hole deep. And so what I would do is I would listen to the songs playing on my work radio, and I would not let a single song go by where I didn't learn the progression by ear, right? And a lot of you guys, probably most of you are like, okay, well, I'm so far away from that. Like, that sounds like something you have to be born with or something like that. And some people do have perfect pitch, but even then, perfect pitch is really overrated. What needs to happen is away from the radio, you need to start developing a connection between your voice and these numbers. For example, if you've seen any of my other videos, I've talked about this. It's like, the best way to improve is an improviser. You play something like you know, 1.

2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 6, 5, 4, 3, 4, 3, 2, one.

And so once you're able to sing these numbers, what starts to happen is you're just listening to songs, and you just start to connect the pieces of the puzzle. Because there's only so many combinations. You know, if it's like a major chord followed by another major chord, a whole step up, it's like, there's not that many options for that. It's most likely gonna be the four chord to the V chord. And so this can taken, like, into your days. You can be on your commute singing these numbers, but without the numbers, you're not really. Without numbers or soul face. You're not really able to analyze the music around you without having an instrument. This is pretty much the only way that I know of, at least to start strengthening this connection. And the more you do it, the better it gets. The question I want you guys to ask yourself, it's like, don't think about where you are now or even in, like, a year or two. Like, guys, this is a journey for life. Okay? Where are you going to be 30 years from now? What do you want to be able to do with these skills? Do you want to be the guy that just, like, can play a couple of chords and a couple of songs that he's memorized or. And I'm not saying everybody's going to get here, but the highest level of improvisation is, like, basically spontaneous composition. And, you know, I don't say this to brag, but more of just what's possible. I'm sure there's people that can do stuff like this and beyond, but I'm at the point where, like, if it's a song that I've heard before, you know, multiple times, and it's pretty ingrained. I can play it on any instrument without ever having had to have practiced it. Because it's like improvisation at a certain point is just the ability to translate what you hear into an instrument or a sound. Really. You know, it starts with your voice. So it's like any song I've ever heard, I can effortlessly reproduce because of this experience I've had with the numbers. Like, I don't know why this one just pops in my head. I. I haven't done this before with this song, but there's like, I ran out of storage anyway. So if you had a song like hey there, Delilah. I have not, like, done this before, but I've heard the song many times. It would be something like, you know.

Hey, there, Delilah, what's it like in New York City? I'm a thousand miles away but, girl, tonight you look so pretty so it's.

Like in my mind, if I were to. If I were to hear that song, and it's kind of. I kind of am hearing it. I'm hearing it inside of my head. But say it was coming from the radio. What you want to start to develop is your ability to hear tonality. And so this first note, duh, it's like, where can I hear that note going? I can hear it going, Oh, there's my one. So if this is one, and I.

Started on, I want five, four, three, two, one.

So in the case of hey there, Delilah, the melody goes like this.

5, 5, 5, 5, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 5, 4, 3, 4, 5, 5, five, five, five, four, three, four, five, five, five, six, five, four, three, two, three, four, four, four, three, two. 1, 2, 3, 3, 2, 1, 2.

So I've practiced this a lot. I practiced this for hundreds of hours because I can practice three to four hours every day without skipping a day. Because I can do this with my mind without having an instrument. I just want to let you know that because I can sing those numbers with my voice, it would be effortless for me to play this on any instrument, in any key. In any key, because all I have to do is find out which one's one. I'm probably not even singing it in the original key. And I can play it on any instrument. I could even play it on an instrument that I'm not even familiar with, as long as I figure out how to play those first five notes of the scale. Right? And so this is hopefully just get you guys hip to a new perspective, a new way of looking at things and at what's possible if you guys aren't using numbers, if you're not thinking about these as a matrix, how everything is connected. There are certain abilities that you quite simply will never develop, no matter. That's why you have old people who have been playing for their whole lives since they were, like, 11 years old. And, like, they, like, can't play Happy Birthday if you. If you tell them, like, a random key. It's. It's something that doesn't get developed if you don't practice it. And it's like, I haven't even been playing guitar for that long, relatively speaking. I mean, I've been playing for less than four years. And I've been able to come to this level because, one, because I was obsessed with it, but two, because this type of knowledge that you get with your voice. It permeates through all instruments that you play. Learn to see the matrix. That is it for this time. Let's see you guys later. Let me know. Oh, also, P.S. because I didn't really directly answer this. So basically, you take the ability that I just showed you guys to be able to hear something and then apply numbers to it. And to do that for the chords of a song, pretty much all you have to do is just listen to what the bass is playing, because 99 times, maybe 95 out of 100 times, the bass is just going to be playing the root of the chords. So it's like once you train your ability to hear these melodies and apply numbers to them, all you have to do is do that to the bass. And oftentimes, especially with pop music, it's like the same four chords the whole time. So you get a lot of chances and a lot of time to practice this. But, yes, use your voice. Use numbers. See you next time.