THE BEAST

During a conversation with UG's David Slavković, The Haunted guitarist and established YouTuber, Ola Englund, talked about his guitar practice regimen these days.
You can check out a part of the interview below.
You're an experienced guitar player, and you're a busy man. How do you practice at this point? What does your practice routine look like? Do you have any need to practice right now?
"[Laughs] I think the practice part of my guitar playing is what has suffered the absolute most [laughs] the past couple of years.
"I don't really play that much guitar. That's kind of sad actually, how little guitar I'm playing. I'm playing when I'm doing my demos and when I'm writing music.
"But it's not the same when I was a teenager. I would play for two hours or one hour here and there. It's definitely not the same. Now it's more, like, if I get the chance to.
"If the kids have their iPads or whatever in the evening, I can squeeze in 10 minutes just sitting and noodling for a bit.
"But the only time I actually practice is when I need to nail a solo for a recording, something I've written over my ability so I have to practice it. That's the only time I kind of practice. Other than that, it's basically no practice at all.
"Which is sad, I definitely wish I had more time for that. But I have to bust my ass to keep myself afloat. Just like everyone else."
If you cannot play that solo you've written, if it's difficult to play the solo that you came up with, do you first hear it in your head and then try and reproduce it, or...? How does that writing process go for you?
"Usually it's like this: I have a song that's, like, fixed beats per minute, but then when I try to improvise something, I can improvise it slower by just listening to myself playing.
"And then, like, 'Oh, fuck, this sounds killer!' And then it's like 'Okay,' and then I put on the song. And it's, like, 'Oh, this song is faster than what I was writing.' And then I just have to practice it up.
"I mean, I don't really write that hard of solos. And you can probably hear it on my album. I'm kind of a slow and melodic type of guy with occasional small bursts. I'm not a super awesome lead player, but I play what I know I can play well.
"And I have to practice myself just to keep my chops up. That's what I do and what I need to do when I record my videos, and the albums obviously. And then, give it a week and I've forgotten all about it. [Laughs]
"But the good thing about that is that I've started making the tab books for the album so I can actually go back and just check. 'Oh, how did I do this?' And it's like 'Oh, yeah, that's it.' And then I can re-learn and it's a lot quicker for me."

Via UltimateGuitar