Posts Tagged practice
The Rehearsal Survival/Excel Guide
1.Be set up and ready to play by start time, even if no one else is. Doing this will communicate volumes about how seriously you take rehearsals. Do this, sound great, and you will be a well-trusted guitar player.
2. Listen to the music, know your parts.
3.Be ready for anything. Changes happen at the last minute. Be flexible and ready for the unexpected. Treat every surprise with a cheerful and optimistic heart and you will be a cherished guitar player.
4. Have your pedal board ready. Double check connections if you need to. Make sure set up will be easy for you. You should only have to plug in a couple cables and a power chord. This will minimize your set up time so you can focus on more important things…like tuning.
5. Tune before every song. Do this quietly without any sound coming out of your amp or PA.
6. Don’t play Metallica Riffs between songs. I may or may not know this from experience.
7. Have a Volume Plan of Attack. We have all heard it before: “Can you turn down?” You know it’s going to happen so come up with a strategy for dealing with volume without hurting your town. There are lots of options so be creative.
8. Prepare yourself to play what the songs needs, not necessarily what you first want to play. Put the needs of the song above your own. I just put a put a Proco Rat on my pedal board. For those who don’t know, the Rat spits out gain like a fire hose. I showed up to rehearsal with anticipation of testing it out just to find out that we had a pretty mellow set that Sunday. The new pedal got no playing time that weekend, but the songs got what they needed. As much as it hurts for me to say, the song takes priority over personal preference.
9. Play John Mayer Riffs, but only on occasion.
Stay sharp.
-Jed
What the Playstation 3 taught me about playing guitar
Posted by Jed in Technique And Practice on September 29th, 2009
Like many of you, I just discovered that we can buy a Playstation 3 for $299.99. Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles.
This caught my attention. Sweet action-packed excitement in full 1080p glory. Not to mention it can read Blu Rays.
When this historically low price came out, I told a friend that I might have to finally get one. Why not? It’s a historically low price.
A couple weeks passed and I still didn’t get one. Maybe I was waiting for some magical leprechaun to drop an extra 300 bucks in my money clip, or maybe I was waiting for the price to drop another hundred bucks.
My friend recently asked me if I had bought one. After telling him that I hadn’t, he asked why. “It just doesn’t seem worth the money, I guess.”
“Did you ever buy games systems when you were younger?” This seemed like a random question to me, but I went with it.
“Not really. I never spent much money on games systems. I was always buying guitar pedals. I guess playing guitar just seemed more fun.”
My friend laughed, “And that’s why you can play like Lincoln Brewster and the rest of us can’t.” (This is not to say that I am the only one in the world who can play like Lincoln or that I can even really be put on the same level of playing as Lincoln. I can personally say that I know five people who can mimic his playing well, and I am acquainted with two who could really give him a run for his money. It is just that my friend and I were with a select group of people, many of whom couldn’t play guitar, none of which had a chance of sounding like Lincoln Brewster.)
The Attitudes That Automatically Improve Your Playing
There are two mentalities my friend illustrated in that discussion that can turn you (and me and anyone else who may be reading) into a really good and proficient guitarist. I have seen time and again that when these attitudes are adopted players start to improve by leaps and bounds.
Attitude #1: Love picking up the guitar.
This is elemental yet profound. When picking up the guitar is more fascinating than picking up an Xbox controller, improvement will happen.
I have a theory: We don’t just get better at things we do often, we get better at things we love to do. When we really enjoy playing guitar our mind is more relaxed, open to new things, and more alert to what it is experiencing.
If we don’t enjoy playing guitar then we never get past feeling like it is a chore. All of our energy is taken up thinking how much we don’t like doing what we are doing.
Attitude #2: Love pushing the limits.
When you do pick up the guitar, find excitement in pushing yourself. Stay relaxed, but don’t be afraid to sound bad while trying something new and more challenging.
This is sort of like the gamer who plays a Tony Hawk game. Every time he plays the game, he polishes some old tricks then attempts some new ones. The little Tony Hawk icon falls with a bone-crushing splatter, but that doesn’t stop our gamer (his bones are fine).
In seconds, the gamer has revaluated how to perform the trick and is trying it again. This process for the gamer is fun and exciting.
When we adopt this attitude it makes making progress fun and accelerates our playing.
Love Conquers All
When we love picking up the guitar more than the Playstation controller, not only will we enjoy practicing, but practicing will become more productive.
Full-Proof Strategy for Escaping Your Rut
Posted by Jed in Uncategorized on July 15th, 2009
Perhaps I’m just picky, or perhaps I have unreasonable expectations,
If you have followed this blog or just read the about page you can probably tell that I don’t like ruts. I despise them.
Ruts are those times in our guitar-playing-life when we seem to be stuck to certain (and old and boring) patterns of playing. They can be creative ruts. For instance, using the same box of tricks over again until even the young mother of eight who sits in the front row can predict every lick and effect you will use.
Or they can be technical, like never being able to play certain riffs and solos as well as they should be.
These periods of stagnation are awful. The only thing worse than a rut is the feeling that you will never be able to get out of them.
What we need is a strategy for improvement, so even though we may still be in the rut, we at least know there is a way out.
Here are some tips.
Face the Obstacle
Take a good look at what part of your playing you are dissatisfied with. Is it soloing, a finger-picking, or are you just dissatisfied with your tone?
Take a good look at what you feel you are lacking. Sometimes this can be counter-intuitive. Some of us would rather just ignore it for a while, look at it every ten days or so, then hope that on some lucky day we will magically be free from our rut.
This never works.
Have the courage to face the obstacle in front of you. Once you do that, then you can beat it.
Write it Down
Try to describe your rut. Identify it in the clearest language you can. This will demystify your rut, making a plan of attack more clear.
When you clearly identify the source of your frustration, it has less power over you.
Find a Solution
Sometimes a solution will present itself once you have clearly outlined the rut.
Other times it won’t.
Have no fear. The answer is out there. You are not alone in your rut. In fact, the more you look around, you might see that your rut is more like a Motel 6 rather than a Pit of Despair. Others have checked in and the good news is they have also checked out.
Here are some posts to get you started.
If your rut is more technical click here.
If your rut is more creative click here.
Start a Checklist
This checklist is your plan of attack for demolishing your rut. Once you have found a solution, the next step is to take action. Start a check list of things you can do on a regular basis, whether it is once a day or once a week. That will help you climb your way out of the rut.
Why a Checklist?
Because it is a practical and easy reference to keep track of your progress.
How To Treat a Checklist
A checklist is like a hammer; they are both tools. You can use a hammer to pound nails into wood or you can use it to pound nails into your foot. You can use a checklist to help you or you can use it to beat yourself up. Don’t do the latter.
The checklist is meant to serve you, not the other way around. Don’t serve the checklist. Use it to get yourself out of the rut.
Be Encouraged
Allow yourself to be encouraged by the little steps you take. Every step in the right direction is a step you can be proud of. Letting yourself be encouraged by little steps will fuel the bigger steps to come.
Keep sharp.
-Jed
How to Program Your Fingers into Greatness
Posted by Jed in Uncategorized on March 17th, 2009
Do you remember the scene in The Matrix when Neo is “training?” Morpheus looks over at Neo strapped to a chair with a jack in his head and Neo says with tired surprise in his voice, “I know Kung Fu.”
Neo had Kung Fu programmed into his mind like a computer program. What may surprise you is that your fingers are not so dissimilar. In order for our fingers to learn they have to be programmed.
Unfortunately for us we can’t just plug a jack into our fingers and use binary code to program them. The way we program our fingers is by repetition. Remember the Law of Guitar Playing: the way we do things once is most likely how we will do it again.
This brings up an interesting dynamic to playing guitar: if you play it badly once you are more likely going to play it badly again. Before you get depressed you need to know the exception to this rule: just because you play something slow doesn’t mean you can’t play it fast next time and vice versa.
The question is how can we use repetition to “program” our fingers to do what we want them to do? Here’s how.
• Play it slow and perfect. To play an unfamiliar passage “perfectly” you have to play it slowly.
• Use a metronome. Unlike us metronomes are perfect. To program our fingers perfectly we need to play to something that is perfect.
• Don’t attempt to play it fast until you are satisfied with how you play it slow.
• Relax man. Muscle tension is like a computer virus. Debug your muscles by practicing as relaxed as possible.
Programming your fingers can take longer than it took Tank to program Neo’s mind, but the effects are just as significant. Start the process now and you will be a Guitar Fu master sooner than you think.
You can sound good.
-Jed