Learn Guitar Slow!

Learn Guitar in Three Weeks!

How about three days?

Better yet, three hours...

It all sounds a little ridiculous to anyone who has ever attempted to wrap their thumb behind the neck of a guitar and make some noise. Hard to believe, but as it happens, this "get it all done as quickly and efficiently as possible” pressure is really the foundation of a lot of pedagogy and the allure of get-a-lot-of-hard-stuff-done-quick is at the heart of most good guitar teaching.

What is the alternative to aim directed movement, hyper-vigilance, informed musical analysis, and the detection of poor habits of movement? Without these wouldn’t my playing tend to veer toward sounding like a hot and sloppy mess? Yes you're right, it would. Still it is worth considering if, in our quest to perfect the perfect practice prototype, we haven't tossed out a baby or two in all the dirty bath water.

Here's the premise. A guitarist is someone who plays guitar. In fact, the best thing you can do with guitar is play it-and the longer the better. Practice it, play it, tune it, record yourself playing it -the sky's the limit and God forbid something takes 10 minutes to learn instead of 5. One of the verses of my favorite song in nursery school wen like this :The more we get together, together, together the more more get together the happier we'll be.

Has guitar become a daily chore because it is something you are just trying to fit in to your life rather than something that seems to surround your life in a happy way? When it comes to the guitar, time, as they say, is of the essence. Gary Marcus in his book Guitar Zero uses the Yiddish term "sitzfleisch" (Sit flesh) -the sheer ability to sit until you a something done.

More scales, arpeggios, pieces and practice strategies? Maybe our first strategy should be to sit a little longer with our six string friend everyday. Last year I found I was unhappy with my practice time so I stopped teaching one day a week and took some of the time for practice. Why? Because it’s fun. I like playing guitar and taking or making the extra time to do it is a main ingredient to improve my playing.

This Could be the Start of Something Small

“I just want to have fun playing guitar,” he said to me thirty years ago, then pressed the button. I sat in his living room floating in a cloud of cigar smoke in a row house behind the High School I attended. The overweight mailman sat in his underwear with his old guitar lying against the dinning room table. Bad music came out of the cassette player. Real bad. It was his real bad music.

Mr. mailman was afraid of playing for me so he recorded his pieces for the lesson and let me hear the mistakes on tape. I realized that there was more than just stage fright -there was also apparently living room fright as well and we were both experiencing it simultaneously.

I got the feeling that one of my first guitar students preferred to tape himself playing more than practice. Getting down to business of practice can be tricky business. Of course, the whole reason for practice is just play. I hope don’t practice tomorrow but I hope you play a whole lot. I also hope your attempt at expanding your guitar time today will lead to the start of something small -a small amount of extra time effortlessly tacked on to your daily guitar sessions.

Let’s hear about your experience with the guitar today. Your experience could mean a lot to someone out there who thought they were the only one who ...

Recital Meltdown
(Chock full o’ stress here at CGS)

I heard that smoking cuts years off your life; every time a recital pops up I think I may give it a try. Those two days a year in the fall and spring are my least favorite of the year and things get plain chock full o’ stress here at CGS. The first text message I ever received on my cell phone was right before a recital. “I’m in the parking lot. I’m not coming in.” People get nervous before they play. I do too. Personally, I have had two recitals this month and the anxiety never goes completely away. People handle the stress in different ways. I remember one teenager sat in the chair without playing a note and scowled menacingly at the audience one at a time hoping they would go away. They did not, but I asked her to.
Recitals are expensive, ungrateful, time confusing affairs. My pet peeve? It isn’t the people who don’t play well that bother me; it’s the ones who play well - and then get up and leave before the recital is over. I guess they assume that everyone else came just to here them play! I know what you’re thinking: All this begs the question “Why do it then? You can still teach guitar without recitals -all the other guitar teachers in Columbia do.”
The problem is I don’t teach guitar. I teach people. I have many guitars and I have never taught any of them. I tell people when they come that there are no contracts involved, but that is not entirely true. When you sit across from someone who wants to up their guitar game, you make a contract with them. “If you do this, and this, then this will happen. The recital is when that contract takes shape. The recital is the deal closer and it a primary and indispensable key for growth as a player.
I finally figured out how to have a studio of great players, by having a studio of great players. Hearing other guitarists who are working through the same pieces as you, or pieces you will someday play is invaluable to progress. Being involved in a studio means that your practice helps out everyone who hears you play. The recital is the lab where a lot of the real foundation for progress develops. That is why I do it!
This year we are going to have an optional dress rehearsal at our house the night before. I hope you’ll come. In the meantime, let’s hear about how you deal with recital craziness.

Zoiks, This Has Been a Crazy Week for Practice

Practice make perfect.
Practice doesn't make perfect, it makes permanent.
Perfect practice makes perfect.
Fast practice, slow results, slow practice, fast results, no practice, no
results.
Do, or do not, there is no try - Yoda

No matter how much you buy into the practice cliches the truth remains the same; nothing can kill you best intentions like a crazy week. An illness in the family, and extra project at work or school, or a much deserved weekend away from home will usually wreak havoc on your weekly results with the guitar. So what to do because, guess what, the crazy week is here to stay. Here's how I deal with it: I don't practice -and then I do practice.
I remember in driving school one my classmates asked the instructor what to do if an accident with an oncoming car was completely unavoidable? “hit it,” he said. It was good advice.
In a sky diving class I heard a student asked what they should do if their auxiliary parachute does not open. “Don't stop trying,” he wisely recommended.
Okay, it's three in the morning and you finally finished that big project you needed to have done by tomorrow. There is no way you are going to take your guitar out and start enjoying playing Blackbird. So what to do? Just don't practice. Skip it, forget about it. And then ... think about your week coming up. Pick a long time when nothing is going on and you might enjoy playing, then guard that stretch of time like a hawk. Remember, practice time is either scheduled or captured it is never happened upon.
If you scheduling fails, then it is time to resort to plan B -and then B very sure to B there!
Everyone has trouble finding time to practice. What do you do to try to make it work? I’d like to hear about it.