17. Mastering Practice w/ Dustin Fichter

In this episode of The Music Executive, host Cinnamon Denise welcomes Dustin Fichter, an Atlanta-based musician known for his guitar skills and diverse collaborations. 

Raised with a strong jazz background and influenced by his aunt, a violinist for the Atlanta Symphony, Dustin shares his journey into music and the importance of sight reading. 

The discussion covers effective practice strategies, particularly for those with limited time, and emphasizes the significance of warming up, exploring new music, and finding one's unique musical voice. Dustin also provides insights on tailoring practice sessions for beginners and intermediate players. Tune in to hear more about his approach to music and enjoy his original tune, 'White Out Swag.'

Chapters

• 3:41 Effective Practice Strategies
• 8:10 Finding Your Unique Musical Voice

Transcript

This is The Music Executive, a show where we talk about gig tips, music, business strategies, songwriting experiences, collabs, and even more with industry professionals. Let's get into it. Hello and welcome to the Music Executive today. We have an amazing Atlanta based musician who has traveled throughout the country playing.

He's been raised in the jazz repertoire, but has gone on to collaborate with many other artists. In various different genres. So he's played with people ranging from JJ Harrison to Charles Manderson. He is an amazing guitarist, arranger and songwriter. And, uh, I think he's on his way to singing. I don't know.

We'll see if we can get a song outta him today. No, I'm kidding. But nonetheless, uh, today we have a dear friend, amazing musician, Dustin Victor. Dustin, what is your favorite TV show? I would say it's probably a tie between. Practical Jokers and always sunny in Philadelphia. Oh, that's okay. That's pretty good.

I like always sunny in Philadelphia. I do like that one. Can't beat it. It's pretty funny. Geez. So today, Dustin, tell us a little bit about where you're coming from when we talk about what we're gonna talk about today and let the audience get to know you a little bit better. I started. Getting into music from my aunt.

She used to be a violinist for the Atlanta Symphony, and she also toured with a lot of people with like John Denver and Led Zeppelin and Roger Daltry from the who, and she always kind of pushed me into music. She would give me different things, like, I think she gave me like a drum kit when I was eight years old, but I, um, uh, rolled around in the bass drum instead of playing it.

So they, or my aunt was just like, I guess that's not it. But after that, I just decided to go with guitar. And I fell in love with it pretty much ever since. And I just kept on going with it and eventually I wanted to just like pursue it because of my aunt. And she taught me basically like the importance of different things that like some, not all guitar players, I wanna say some of them like take for granted, like.

Sight reading music and understanding like how to read music and everything that came when, like I was just starting and I told her, you know, I don't understand why classical musicians read music. They should just read Guitar tab. And I was 10 years old at the time and she was like, what? What do you mean?

And I was like, well, I guess I'm gonna look at reading music from now on. And, um, I'm glad I did. And um, yeah, it's led me to some really cool opportunities I'm looking to do, um, more and I'm excited for what's gonna come up. Nice. Very nice. So Dustin's been, he was really humble with his background story, but Dustin is a graduate from Belmont University up in Nashville, Tennessee, and also the University of Louisville in Kentucky.

And he's an amazing, amazing musician. So. Hats off to your aunt who kind of led the way, and I'm sure if you would've stuck with the drums, you would've been an awesome drummer too. Because the thing about Dustin is he has a great strategy when it comes to practicing, and that's what we're gonna talk about today.

So some people will say, I don't have a lot of time to practice. So if you have a 30 minutes a day to practice, which is actually a good amount of time to get things done, would you say? Yeah, definitely. Let's talk about how we would break that down. Let's talk about the first five minutes. What would that look like?

So the first five minutes, I would say is it could probably range from like, just warming up, working on like, um, like a big tune or solo or riff. I find that by doing that it kind of motivates me, like if I'm working on something to, um, dive into it more and it just kind of like, uh, opens up. Kinda like you're playing and like your mind thinking about music and everything instead of just doing like warmup drills.

Either route is fine. I guess it just kind of depends on what you wanna tackle. Like do you wanna tackle, like proving your technique or do you wanna work on something like solo or a tune, or maybe you're working on building your improv chops. Okay, so when you say warm up, what are you saying? I mean, we're talking about guitar for right now, right?

Or we're talking It can be applicable, it can be transferrable to any other instrument. But when you're saying warmup, what does that consist of? So with guitar that really consists warming up your muscles and, uh, your fretting hand. And it's a hand that pulling the guitar neck in and also your, uh, picking hand by doing that, it just helps from like, um.

Uh, in the long run having like a bunch of injuries going on. 'cause like there's some players, they kinda get really tense and they're picking hand and it's just from like, just going for like tackling something instead of just like warming up. Which is like doing like hand synchronization exercises or like, just like practicing a with the metronome at a really slow tempo.

But by doing that, it will lead to like really bad like, um, injury. Like, uh, you could hurt your shoulder, you could hurt your, uh, back or neck. I know a bunch of players that have done that over the years and they like had to get like surgery. Definitely. Regret not doing their warmup right now. What happens after the warmup?

So after that, I would say, well, it honestly depends on where you are as a musician. So like if you're just starting out, I always tell my students to like, go explore some new type of music. And after doing that warmup, just like find another guitar player or artist you really like. And just work on trying to play like them.

So you can do that after you warm up. And if you want to do something a little bit more, I don't know, like building your musicianship and like your technique and everything, you can work on sight reading music, and. Also like even more like building up your technique. It just all depends on the type of route you wanna do.

There's an endless amount of possibilities you can tell, right? Well it What if for you, you're teaching in, if you're teaching a beginner player and they're looking to learn a song and your lesson is about learning a particular song, how would you tell them to break up their 30 minute? The middle of their 30 minute practice session.

So would you say to be learning the riffs of the song, or how would you really approach them? Okay, so I would approach it by just learning the riffs of the song I. 'cause they're a beginner. And by learning the rifts, it'll get 'em that one step closer to kind of being like that, uh, musician. And eventually, like with all my students, I really love to kind of teach them to find their own voice as a musician.

I think that's super important. I've always kind of strive towards that. That's eventually what we go towards. But with that, like just mainly the rifts and after they get the rifts. We'll go over probably like tone of whoever's playing guitar. That's another really, um, important thing too. Hmm. Okay. So I wanna talk about, I.

The finding your voice as a musician, what does that mean when you say that? For me, that really means like taking all your influences and just molding it together into one thing. So that can either be like all guitar players or it could be like taking a couple guitar players and like a couple of other like instrumentalists.

If someone really likes, I don't know, like, uh, Steve Vi and um, they like Herbie Hancock. Those are like two completely different, uh, musicians. But by taking both of those things and combining it with you as a musician, that's making like something that's really you and it's super individualized because taking both things and you're taking each type of like attribute that they have and you're putting it into yourself.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, we've spent about 20 minutes practicing at this point, so what are we doing in the last 10 minutes? I would say that it really kind of depends again on what your kind of level is and what you're, um, trying to do. There's something that I used to do. Someone taught me this a long time ago and seems really, uh, kinda like, I don't know, crazy or something, but like set your timer for like 10 minutes and you just try to play as fast as you can and not really think about what you're doing.

When I first started this, it seemed really. It's kinda like, I don't know, just stupid honestly, but like by doing this, it's really actually building up your kinda like muscles and your picking hand and your fretting hand because you're playing so fast, you're not really worrying about anything else.

It's really, really, uh, effective if you keep on doing it, that's a really great thing for beginners. And it also teaches beginners to like not take it so seriously. I feel like. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's like a really daunting thing to start a new instrument because there's so many different things to explore and especially with guitar 'cause there's like so many different ways you could play a note.

It's like all over the neck. I would say for the more kind of like intermediate player, it really doesn't depend as much I would say like I. If I'm like working on a song for 30 minutes, I would try to nail doing that song without thinking about all the certain steps that have gone into learning that song.

So basically just like without music or maybe just trying to nail the sound. And I'll do that probably for like 10 minutes a day. And the most important thing about these practice sessions is like you have to. Kinda keep in mind where you were. So like the next day you can be like, oh, I improved right here, or I need to work on this.

'cause it's all about improvement and getting somewhere new with practice sessions, you don't wanna stay in like the one place and uh, just like run in circles over and over again. Yeah, and I think the thing with practicing that we all want is to. Hear a difference, right? Yeah. Like we want to be like, oh, or, or, or even feel a difference like, oh, that feels easier than it did yesterday.

Or, you know, if you, sometimes I know Dustin, you've told me sometimes when I'm practicing, record yourself and then listen to it and come listen to the difference between a week of you playing, right. Yeah, so that's another, another thing we want to hear and even feel a difference sometimes see a difference.

You know, if you're watching your technique, you're watching videos of yourself playing. So these are all really good things. Is there anything else you wanted to add? I. No, that's about it. But for all the viewers out there, you can hit me up on, uh, Instagram and you can see me on jazz guitar today. I, I write for them.

Yeah, that's about it. What you're about to hear. It is a tune called White Out Swag by Dustin Victor, and he has created this tune. It's really fun to listen to, really fun to jam too. So I hope you enjoy it and love music and yoga. Y'all, y'all be easy. Talk to you soon.

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