
Balancing a laundry list of tunes and a small human can give you new insights into making the most of your time.
Just like anything that is important to you, you need to have a plan in place to accomplish it. Last month, I had to learn approximately 60 songs in the span of less than three weeks for a three-part livestream series. It wasn't a situation where it would be appropriate for me to read charts off a music stand. I had to make a practice plan with my family in order to have the time and resources I would need to execute this rather monumental task. I want to take you step-by-step through my strategy for tackling those tunes. Hopefully you can find tips to help refine your approach—even if you don't have a newborn.
What if you don't have something pressing to force you into laser-focusing your practice habits? How do you manage your time without a deadline to hold you accountable?
If you're reading this article, you're a self-motivated person who wants to improve. Excellent. Give yourself goals that are achievable and quantifiable to stay motivated and track your progress. Rather than a goal like “Get better at soloing" select something like “Transcribe solo on [name a specific song]" as your first weekly goal. Then, build upon those goals by using that material to achieve another objective. Small steps add up to big changes and give you the focus you need to establish good practice habits.
Preproduction
Using this soloing goal as an example, find ways to practice outside of the practice room so you can maximize time with your instrument. If you're trying to cop a solo, learn it by heart before you sit down to play it. Sing along with it over and over again to the point where you can sing it without the recording. Here's an exercise to try: Record yourself playing the chord changes and then sing melodic ideas over it. You can do so much work in advance of heading to the woodshed. And if you're a busy person, preproduction is the key to success.
Lightning Round!
Turn off notifications on your phone. When you have precious little time, an errant tweet notification can derail the 30 minutes you have set aside. Jason Isbell has been responsible for nearly as much social media worm-holing as he has musical inspiration for me. Dude's a Twitter genius. You've been warned.
Organize your practice space. You don't want to be searching for stuff when you're under the gun. I have notebooks, Sharpies, pens, and pencils at the ready along with headphones and adaptors. Take this tip from Rachel Hoffman's home organization masterwork Unf*ck Your Habitat: “A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place." If you have a place for everything, you're never looking for your stuff. And you also don't leave crap everywhere, thereby potentially annoying other people you need as allies.
Maximize good brain time. Is there a time of day that's better for your unique brain function to practice? Take advantage if you can! I'm a night owl so practicing after the baby is asleep works well for me, thankfully.
Sing! You can save yourself hours of time by singing along with parts you're trying to learn outside of your practice space. Do it while driving, while doing the dishes, while exercising, any opportunity you have to listen to music. This is how I learn all bass lines. If you can sing it, you can play it. When you sit down to learn it, you'll know it in your bones—literally. You will immediately hear when you make a mistake and be able to find the note you're looking for by singing the pitch you know you're supposed to hear. It's remarkable how well it works, especially for the students who say “But I can't sing!"
Do a little each day. Like exercise, a healthy diet, and meditation, practicing a smaller amount each day is more beneficial than one big cram session every now and then. Productivity timer cubes are super helpful as a means stay focused for small blocks of time. Even 15 highly concentrated minutes a day will pay dividends and create consistency in your practice and playing.
Take lessons. A teacher is a great way to stay accountable on your musical journey. An objective third party taking inventory of areas where you could improve and giving you homework is a surefire way to ensure you spend time with your instrument each week. Can't afford a ton of lessons? Make a commitment to learn a new technique by watching videos on the subject or treat yourself to a one-time or monthly evaluation by a musician you admire and have them map out some goals for you.
Include your loved ones. When something's important to you, you should share it and celebrate it with your loved ones. Music is the ultimate tool for shared celebration and finding ways to include your people in your practice endears them to your commitment, rather than viewing it as something that takes away from your time together.
My students always amaze me with how they get loved ones on board with their musical pursuits. One student's girlfriend loves karaoke, so he has committed to learning to play and sing a song for karaoke nights. She's excited for him to practice, knowing that they will spend special time together because of it. Another student has his wife help with interval training, playing intervals on the piano so he can guess what he's hearing. His wife loves to tease him about it, and they have a blast with it. Several of my students ask their friends and family what songs they'd like to hear. It's great fodder for learning new material and it gets the people you care about to be invested on a whole new level. And that rocks.
Now I'll consolidate all the info above into a real-world situation and share my practice plan for that 60-song, three-part livestream I mentioned…
Preproduction
I had to do as much prep work ahead of time as possible so I could capitalize on the time I would have to leave my baby with another willing and helpful adult. There are several steps I always take before I sit down to practice new songs. Here are the highlights:
Organize the Music and Listen
Listen to the music you're working on as much as possible. I listen while driving, pushing the baby in her stroller, in headphones next to her while she's napping, etc… Consolidate songs into a playlist in a medium that's easy to access while driving so you're not fumbling with your phone. You don't want some stuff in Dropbox, some stuff on YouTube, and some stuff in Spotify. Organizing your material upfront will save you lots of time later on.
Write Charts
I wrote my charts largely in the car in parking lots while running errands and while the baby was napping. (I write charts by ear and you can too! See my article on The Nashville Number System for more tips.) You can also ask for charts from fellow musicians on the gig (tactfully, please, and return the favor when someone asks you) or source them online if it's a cover gig.
Practice in Your Head
I know myself well enough to recognize when I truly know a song. I can visualize my hands on the fretboard while listening to it and if I get to a spot where the image doesn't come quickly, I know it'll need some attention. I then listen through the songs while reading the charts I wrote in those Nashville parking lots and highlight the trouble spots and anything else that surfaces as questionable.
Get the Setlist
If possible, get the setlist in advance. Then grab a couple pieces of hardy card stock paper and two different colored Sharpies. Write the songs in order in alternating, high contrast colors. This way your eye can find your notes quickly on the floor.
Now to execute a practice plan and juggle a small human…
I had 60 songs to learn that were divided over three 90-minute sets of roughly 20 songs each with about a week between each performance.
I focused on the shows in chronological order and spent all my time listening to those 20 songs, over and over for three or four days before touching an instrument.
My practice time was divided into two 90-minute sessions per day over the course of the two days before each show. One was in the morning when someone could watch the baby and one in the evening after she was asleep.
First Day Practice Sessions
I split the setlist in half and tackled 10 songs at the morning session and the remaining 10 at the evening session. Ninety minutes is about what I need to run 10 songs I've never played (but on which I have done proper preproduction). Some songs I'll only need to run once to get them under my hands, some might need a couple of run-throughs.
I play through each song, focusing on trouble spots, running those sections a few times.
I notate (usually with a highlighter or an asterisk) any trouble spots on my chart I didn't catch during the critical listening and charting pre-practice phase.
Second Day Practice Sessions
I redo the same approach, only this time I try not to look at my charts. As I play along, I take note when I find myself asking “How does that bridge go?" or “Am I in at the top of the song?" I write those notes down in Sharpie next to the song title on my setlist.
And now I present my setlist for the final livestream, which ended up being 16 songs in length. This is written using the Nashville Number System and is a peek into my process. Thanks to my husband and mother-in-law for working with me to make my practice time a reality and best of luck to all of you busy folks out there looking to get the most out of your precious time.
To quote the author Harvey Mackay:
Time is free, but it's priceless. You can't own it, but you can use it.
You can't keep it, but you can spend it. Once you've lost it, you can
never get it back.
Make the most of it, friends!
Mooer Prime Minimax M2 Intelligent Pedal boasts 194 effects models, 80 preset slots, MNRS and third-party sample file compatibility, an 80-minute looping module, internal drum machine, high-precision tuner, Bluetooth support, and a rechargeable lithium battery.
Over the last few years, Mooer has released several Prime multi-effects devices, including the Prime P1, P2, S1, and most recently in 2024, the Prime Minimax M1. Excitingly, the company is kicking off 2025 with a brand new addition to the Prime family–the Prime Minimax M2 Intelligent Pedal.
Within this small multi-effects device, a whole lot of functionality is packed in, including an impressive 194 effects models, including overdrive, preamp simulators, cabinet models, delays, reverbs, modulation effects, etc., and more. In typical Mooer style, though, the company took things a step further by offering limitless flexibility through the support of its in-house MNRS sample files, as well as third-party IR sample files. Essentially, this means that users can download additional tonal emulations and effects from the Mooer Cloud and third-party sources to the device, which they can then save across 80 preset slots.
As with some past models in the Prime series, the M2 sports a convenient touchscreen design, facilitating easy browsing through the devices banks of presets. However, guitarists are not limited to interfacing with the pedal in this way, as it also features two footswitches, both of which can be used to switch between presets in each bank. There is even a MIDI jack built into the device, enabling users to connect their MIDI controllers to extend the control functions, and the MOOER F4 wireless footswitch support is also supported. Essentially, these augmentation options facilitate additional footswitches to ensure switching preset tones is always as quick and seamless as possible within any workflow.
While the Prime M2 Intelligent Pedal is primarily designed for effects and tonal simulations, it also comes packed with an array of other useful features. For example, it contains a looping module with a hefty 80-minute capacity, in addition to 10 recording save slots to ensure that any looping creations can be kept for future use in performances. Similar to past looper modules in Mooer's products, users are also free to overdub their recordings and even undo or redo their overdubs, offering a lot of real-time flexibility for creating loop-based musical structures.
As if the addition of a looper wasn’t enough, this feature is also synchronizable with an internal drum machine and metronome, a combination that includes 56 drum grooves and 4 metronome varieties. Ultimately, it’s a reminder that Mooer clearly recognizes and wishes to solve the struggles that musicians have when attempting to produce precise loops while staying in time. Upon commencing recording, the drum machine can produce four initial beats to serve as a count-in cue, and of course, this can be combined with the device's tap-tempo control for dynamic use. Best of all, this feature can also be applied to modulation and delay effects, ensuring that they work perfectly in time with any performance.
Extra features are included to complete this all-in-one pedal, including a high-precision tunerwith fully customizable frequency ranges. Guitarists can even leverage the M2’s built-inBluetooth input support, allowing them to practice, jam, and even produce looped musicalstructures over their favorite backing tracks, band prototypes, and musical pieces.
Perhaps unsurprisingly for existing Mooer product users, the Prime M2 also boasts an impressive variety of audio routing systems. As was previously mentioned, that includes Bluetooth input, as well as industry standards such as dual-channel stereo output, perfect for stereo delay and modulation effects. It also supports headphone output for those who wish to practice in silence, and even OTG recording, which means that guitarists can record their creations directly to their smartphone whilst on the go.
Speaking of on-the-go, Mooer is continuing its recent portable-play focus with the Prime M2Intelligent Pedal, as it is fitted with a built-in rechargeable lithium battery with a battery life of up to 6 hours. Ultimately, this means that even a lack of local power sources won’t get in the way of rehearsals and live performances. Combined with the pedal’s lightweight and small build, it truly is an ideal addition to the pedalboard of any traveling musician.
Overall, the Prime M2 Intelligent Pedal is set to be an impressive new addition to the Prime series. It features augmented functionality when compared to past models, yet still in a minimalist and easy-to-use package, keeping the size small and light yet still packing in footswitches, a touch screen, and other flexible control systems.
Features:
- 194 built-in effect models and tonal emulations
- 80 preset slots for storing downloaded MNRS and third-party sample files
- Compatibility with the MOOER Cloud tone-sharing platform
- Built-in 80-minute looping module
- Record, overdub, pause, delete, and playback functions for looping
- Internal drum machine module, stocked with 56 drum grooves
- 4 unique metronomes
- Synchronization between drum machine and looper
- Convenient count-in cue function support from the metronome
- High-precision and customizable tuner module
- 2 multi-function footswitches
- 1.28-inch touchscreen interface
- LED digital display
- LED charge indicator
- Portable USB/OTG recording
- Direct compatibility with the MOOER prime mobile APP and MOOER Studio desktop software for preset management
- Bluetooth 5.0 audio playback
- 3000mAh integrated lithium battery with up to 6 hours of use time
- DC 5V/2A power supply and charging
- 3 hours charging time
- Low weight of 228g
- Compact, at 74mm (L), 125mm (W), and 49mm (H)
- Sample rate of 44.1kHz
- Bit depth of 24bit
- Compatible with MOOER F4 wireless footswitch
- 3.5mm MIDI port
- Mono TS ¼” input
- Stereo TS ¼” output
- 3.5mm headphone output
- Power switch button
The Prime Minimax M2 Intelligent Pedal will be available from the official distributors or retailersworldwide.
For more information, please visit mooeraudio.com.
Kirk Hammett has partnered with Gibson Publishing to release The Collection: Kirk Hammett, a premium hardcover coffee-table photo book where Kirk tells the stories behind his rare and collectible instruments.
“I am thrilled to announce the launch of The Collection: Kirk Hammett. I’ve worked diligently on this curated collection of vintage and modern guitars for the book. I feel the book captures the rich history and artistry behind each of these unique and rare instruments. Every picture tells a story and thanks to Ross Halfin and his exceptional photography, every picture in this book is worth a million words! This book could not be possible without the help of Gibson, so I’d like to thank them for making my passion for Greeny, and guitars a reality. I hope all of you enjoy this journey as much as I did.”
“It’s exciting the time has come to release The Collection: Kirk Hammett by Gibson,” adds Cesar Gueikian, President and CEO of Gibson. “We have been working on this project with Kirk for years now, and I had the opportunity to work closely with Kirk on the composition of the collection for the book. It was a thrill to put this together and it took a village to get it done! I hope everyone appreciates the work that went into this book and enjoys every story behind the guitars.”
The Collection: Kirk Hammett, Custom Edition is limited to just 300 numbered copies signed by KIRK HAMMETT and comes in a huge 19 x 14.5” (490 x 370mm) presentation box featuring custom artwork and an outstanding case candy package. In addition to the large-format 17 x 12” (432 x 310mm) hardcover version of the book with a stunning lenticular cover, the boxset includes a frameable 16 x 11.6” (407 x 295mm) art print of a Ross Halfin portrait of KIRK HAMMETT signed by both Halfin and the Metallica guitarist. Other case candy includes an Axe Heaven miniature replica of Hammett’s 1979 Gibson Flying V with case and stand, an exclusive pick tin complete with six Dunlop® Kirk Hammett signature Jazz III guitar picks, and a Gibson Publishing Certificate of Authenticity.
Explore The Collection: Kirk Hammett book HERE.
The collection includes Cobalt strings with a Paradigm Core, Tim Henson Signature Classical Strings, and the Tim Henson Signature FretWrap by Gruv Gear.
Engineered for maximum output, clarity, and durability, these strings feature:
- Cobalt with a Paradigm Core (not RPS) for added durability
- Nano-treated for maximum lifespan and corrosion resistance
- Gauges 9.5, 12, 16, 26, 36, 46 (Turbo Slinky set)
- Available individually or as part of the Tim Henson Signature Bundle
Tim Henson Signature Classical Strings
Crafted for dynamic, percussive tonality, these strings pair fluorocarbon trebles with silver-plated copper basses to deliver exceptional response and clarity.
- Gauges: 24, 27, 33, 30, 36, 42
- Available individually or as part of the Tim Henson Signature Bundle
Tim Henson Signature FretWrap by Gruv Gear
An essential string-dampening tool, the Tim Henson Signature FretWrap is designed for cleaner playing by eliminating unwanted overtones and sympathetic vibrations.
- Features Tim Henson’s custom ‘Cherub Logo’ design
- Size Small, fits 4-string basses, 6-string electric/acoustic guitars, and ukuleles
- Ideal for live performance and studio recording
- Ernie Ball collaboration with Gruv Gear
- Available individually or as part of the Tim Henson Signature Bundle
The Ernie Ball Tim Henson Accessory Bundle Kit
For players who want the complete Tim Henson experience, the Ernie Ball Tim HensonSignature Bundle Kit includes:
- Tim Henson Signature Electric Strings (9.5-46)
- Tim Henson Signature Classical Strings (Medium Tension)
- Tim Henson Signature FretWrap by Gruv Gear (Small)
- Tim Henson Signature Cable (Exclusive 10ft white dual-conductor cable, only available in the bundle)
The Tim Henson Signature String & Accessory Collection is available starting today, March 19, 2025, at authorized Ernie Ball dealers worldwide.
For more information, please visit ernieball.com.
Ernie Ball: Tim Henson Signature Electric Guitar Strings - YouTube
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.Teamwork makes the dream work for the Charleston, South Carolina, twosome, who trade off multi-instrumental duties throughout their sets.
Michael Trent and Cary Ann Hearst have been making music as Shovels & Rope since 2008. The husband-and-wife duo from South Carolina specialize in rootsy, bluesy rock, Americana, and alt-country, but they don’t confine themselves to traditional two-piece arrangements. They switch off on vocal, guitar, percussion, and synth duty throughout their shows, orchestrating a full-band ruckus with all available limbs.
Their seventh full-length, Something Is Working Up Above My Head, released in September last year, and while touring in support of it, they stopped at Nashville’s Brooklyn Bowl in late February. PG’s John Bohlinger caught up with Trent before the gig to see what tools he and Hearst use to maintain their musical juggling act.
Brought to you by D’Addario.Black Bird
Trent’s not a guitar snob: Generally speaking, he plays whatever he can get his hands on. While playing Eddie Vedder’s Ohana Fest, someone loaned him this Gretsch Black Falcon, and he fell in love with it. He likes its size compared to the broader White Falcon. It’s also the band’s only electric, so if it goes down, it’s back to acoustic. Hearst takes turns on it, too.
Trent loads the heaviest strings he can onto it, which is a set of .013s. It lives in standard tuning.
Ol' Faithful
As Trent explains, he and Hearst have done some DIY decorating on this beautiful Gibson J-45—it’s adorned with sweat droplets, stains, and fingernail dust. It runs direct to the venue’s front-of-house system with an LR Baggs pickup. This one is strung with Martin heavy or medium gauge strings; lighter ones are too prone to snapping under Trent’s heavy picking hand (which holds a Dunlop Max-Grip .88 mm pick). And it rolls around in an Enki tour case.
On Call
These second-stringers—a Loar archtop and an LR Baggs-equipped Recording King—are on hand in case of broken strings or other malfunctions.
Need for Tweed
Trent doesn’t trust amps with too many knobs, so this tweed Fender Blues Junior does the trick. It can get fairly loud, so there’s a Universal Audio OX Amp Top Box on hand to tame it for some stages.
Shovels & Rope's Pedalboard
Because Trent and Hearst trade off bass, guitar, keys, and percussion duties, all four of their limbs are active through the set. Whoever is on guitars works this board, with an MXR Blue Box, Electro-Harmonix Nano Big Muff, EarthQuaker Devices Hummingbird, and Boss OC-5, plus a pair of Walrus Canvas Tuners for the electric and acoustic. Utility boxes on the board include a Walrus Canvas Passive Re-Amp, Radial J48, Livewire ABY1, and a Mesa Stowaway input buffer.
A Roland PK-5 MIDI controller, operated by foot, sits on the lower edge of the board. It controls the board for “Thing 2,” one of two MicroKORG synths onstage.
Thing 1 and Thing 2
There’s no one backstage helping Hearst and Trent cook up all their racket; they handle every sound themselves, manually. During the first few sets of a tour, you’re liable to see some headaches, like forgetting to switch synth patches during a song, but eventually they hit a rhythm.
Affectionately given Seuss-ian nicknames, this pair of microKORGs handles bass notes through the set, among other things, via the foot-controlled PK5. “Thing 1” is set up at the drum station, and runs through a board with an EHX Nano Big Muff, EHX Bass9, EHX Nano Holy Grail, and a Radial Pro DI. A Walrus Aetos keeps them all powered up.
The board for “Thing 2,” beside the guitar amps, includes an EHX Mel9 and Bass9 powered by a Truetone 1 SPOT Pro, plus a Radial ProD2.