100 Days of Practice 2025 Kickoff

By Andrew Watts

For 2025, I am going to start with a “100 days of practice” for the second year in a row. Last year I just kept track on a 10x10 grid on a sheet of letter paper. This year I’ve decided this year to supplement with blog posts - probably on a roughly weekly schedule - talking about what I actually did and what I intend to do the next week.

What I’ve mostly done for the last decade is play bass and guitar in Rocksmith 2014 (which I bought a few weeks after release). It’s done an OK job at bootstrapping things and being motivating by playing with actual songs, but it can only take you so far without doing some outside work to build skills (while still being a fun thing to play along with).

Last Christmas-time I also subscribed to Musora and did their “30 Day Drummer” from Drumeo (on a practice pad!) as part of my 100 Days. Recently I’ve been doing some lessons from Guitareo as well, trying to conciously learn some technique and licks and break out of just following streaks down a note highway in Rocksmith, which doesn’t seem to lend itself to long term memory for me.

Another resource I’ve vastly been underusing is Talking Bass. I’ve bought multiple lesson packs over the last few years with the intent of working through them. And then I just forget. This year I want to at least make progress on the sight reading and technique builder courses.

Here’s what I’m planning to do with 2025, starting with the first 100 days:

  • Guitar My general goal for guitar is to spend more time practicing plugged into an amp working on specific material. One initial thing is going to be Guitareo’s “Iconic Chord Progressions”, which is a two week course running from January 6th - 19th with daily ~10 minute play along lessons of common chord progressions.
  • Drums Since I did the “30 Day Drummer” (again, on a practice pad), I’ve bought an electronic drum kit (a Roland TD-27KV2) and set up a nice drum space in the basement. But I’ve not spent much time doing anything but doodling around on the classic “money beat”. Luckily, Drumeo is starting the year with “30 Day Drummer Part II”, which runs January 6th - February 4th. It’s ~10 minute daily play along lessons, building on the content from the original course. I’ve also previously signed up for “30 Day Jazz” and “30 Day Double Bass” (in the two-foot-pedal drum sense), which are over (and I missed because I didn’t have a kit yet), but still accessible.
  • Mandolin Hey, a couple years ago I bought a mandolin. It pretty much just sits in its gig bag near its guitar and bass friends. The last two Christmases, my wife has bought me mandolin lesson books (an Alfred beginner book and a Hal Leonard classical book), and I’ve bought a couple myself (A fake book for pop songs and a simple classical mando book). Let’s pick it up and learn some basics. Also some of those books don’t have tab, so a good opportunity to start learning treble clef.
  • Bass The instrument I’ve played the most in the past decade is the bass. But - as mentioned - mostly in Rocksmith. I plugged into an amp a couple weeks ago and realized two things: 1. I can’t remember how to play anything from just memory and 2. My technique needs a lot of work. Lots of unintended notes ringing out and poor dynamics. Like guitar, I need to spend some time plugged into an amp and focus on technique and actually learning some parts. And learn to read some bass clef with that Talking Bass course.