Author Archives: Chad Crawford

About Chad Crawford

Chad Crawford is a lifelong guitar enthusiast and guitar instructor at Palmetto Music Institute providing private guitar lessons in Greenville, SC.

Keys to Creativity

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Among the challenges we face as developing guitar players, cultivating a sense of artistic creativity may seem among the most formidable. Many assume that creativity is a mysterious insight arising from the recesses of the fortunately gifted minds of a select few. In fact creativity is not a mystery. As with all things musical it responds to focused effort to cultivate it.

So how do you get from having “no creativity” to the point of being able to write songs and play improvisational solos?

First let us address the occasional Mozart who shows up with tremendous innate musical abilities. There is indeed a phenomenon of natural talent, but for most musicians, other artists, engineers, inventors, writers, etc., natural talent is not in fact the key to creativity. So the Mozart’s are irrelevant in terms of understanding how a person of typical native ability can develop creative prowess. Forget about natural talent, and most importantly don’t fall for the common misconception that creativity is something that you either have or do not have as a result of inheritance.

Now let us consider what creativity actually is. Is it really assembling something out of nothing in a mysterious seizure of inspiration from quarters unknown? No! Even Mozart had to sit with paper and pen and work his inspirations into orderly, flowing pitch and time relationships. Consider this quote from prolific inventor Thomas Edison, who’s record on creativity speaks for itself: “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”.

Creativity is neither an unknowable mystery, an accident, nor a fleeting peek into the ethereal mists. It is rather a predictable result of a process involving mastery of the fundamental elements of an endeavor, and then applying those fundamentals in such a way as to generate beauty of function and form. Notice that I did not say anything about creating something from nothing, or even something totally new. Creativity does not mean creating something from nothing. It means assembling the known into that which effectively solves problems or manifests beauty. It is well within the reach of anyone willing to apply themselves to the process.

Now let us consider how this applies to music, and specifically to guitar. Music is fundamentally two objective phenomenon: pitch relationships and time relationships. Musicians assemble these relationships in such a way as to create the more subjective phenomenon of an emotionally satisfying flow of tension and release. This does not require the creation of anything new, but rather a well developed awareness of how pitch and time relationships work together to create a satisfying flow of tension and release.
So let’s break it down now even more specifically to the things we need to have mastery over in order to make music that satisfies us and our intended audience.

1. Know your notes on the fretboard – everything we do as musicians involves assembling notes in melody (one after another) or harmony (in unison, such as a chord or double stop) with reference to a tonal center (key). If you do not know the notes then you are limited to playing by patterns or by ear. While playing by patterns and by ear are useful tools, if you wish to cultivate maximum creativity then you need to allow yourself as many options as possible.  If you can visualize the letter names of the notes you are playing then it is much easier to choose resolving notes for phrases, or make useful alterations to chords to achieve just the right shade of mood.

2. Know the names of the notes in the Major Keys – the Major Scale is the starting point for all we do. Everything else is an alteration of some sort to a Major Scale. If you know the names of the notes in the key you are playing, and can also see them as you play them on the fretboard, these together will give you a great deal of power to achieve a desired musical effect without having to always guess your way through things with experimentation.

3. Understand Intervals – intervals are the building blocks of the pitch aspect of music. A thorough understanding of intervals will allow you to know what effect a note is going to have before you play it. If you know your intervals then you will be able to create musical effects at will, alter scales and chords to create precise shades of emotion, and transfer musical ideas from one key to another with ease.

4. Understand the effects of the basic divisions of the beat – along with pitch relationships, relative timing between pitch events is one of the fundamental components of music. A good set of timing relationships by itself is very powerful (think of a powerful drum intro that sets the mood for a song).  If you understand the basic divisions of the beat and how to modify them to tastes then you can create strong shades of mood at will.

5. Understand scale harmonization – knowing how to translate a particular scale into chord sequences will enable you to assemble pleasing chord progressions in a matter of moments. Knowing the chords in the key and the notes in the chords will also give you a lot of useful options for resolving solo phrases.

6. Listen to a lot of music – musical inspiration is often a residual effect of exposure to other music. Saturate your creative muse with immersion into a wide variety of music, and pay attention to the individual details such as the vocals, drums, and bass. In doing so you will cultivate a deeper intuitive understanding of music, much as a child learns to speak by regular exposure to speech.

7. Start from the known – creativity is often a matter of slight alterations to common ideas. Learn the signature licks, chord types and sequences, and rhythmic ideas of the masters of your preferred style. Then experiment with alterations until you uncover ideas that express what you wish.

8. Constantly refine your technique – if you have ever wondered how an accomplished  guitarist can play something very simple and yet have it sound very beautiful and powerful, the trick is in the technique. What many experience as a “lack of creativity” is in fact a lack of technique refinement that will make an otherwise great idea sound lifeless or even just plain bad. Technique development is not just a matter of mere repetition. It is essential to pay attention to the quality of sound (a.k.a. “tone”) during technique development practice. Don’t rush through technique exercises with the goal of merely getting them over with as quickly as possible. Listen carefully to the small details. Strive to improve the quality of sound resulting from each pick stroke.

If you are breathing then you have creative potential. If you cultivate the appropriate knowledge, technique, and persistence then you can be sure that your creative muse will show itself. Get to work!

Properly Measuring Your Progress as a Guitarist

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Learning to play an instrument well is a process involving study, memorization, repetition, and refinement, all of which happen across time. It is not a matter of giant leaps but rather steady increments of progress. While a good program of instruction combined with a good practice routine yields inevitable results, at times the progress may seem very slow or non-existent. It is easy during these spells to become discouraged and possibly even give up altogether, so it is important to be able to make realistic evaluations of progress. The four steps below will help you to measure your progress realistically.

1. Avoid comparisons – it is not profitable in any way to compare your progress or your current skills to those of others, especially iconic professionals. Regardless of what you may have heard or read, no one achieves a high level of musicianship without sustained effort across a period of years. Aspiring guitarists have widely varying circumstances which lead to widely varying progress rates and skill levels. Additionally, every musician has strengths and weaknesses in various areas such that comparing your current weaknesses to another’s current strengths will leave you with a warped view of how you are doing. The only legitimate and relevant measure of progress is how you are doing today versus how you were doing last month, six months ago, and last year.

2. Avoid excessive concern with mistakes – ideally we all want to play perfectly, and continual effort towards perfecting our music is advisable. However, while learning guitar be cautious about striking a realistic balance between continual progress and reasonable allowance for mistakes and imperfections. These are a perfectly normal part of the process. They key to dealing with them is to not let them completely derail your playing, such as stopping every time you make a mistake. Avoid the temptation to think that mistakes in your playing mean that your music is no good and that you are not making any progress. Even pros make mistakes.

3. Avoid measuring progress by “feel” – few would attempt to measure a distance of one foot by solely considering how they feel about how long one foot is. Rather, most would simply apply a tape measure to the job. Contrarily, many attempt to measure their progress as musicians by how they feel about their playing at the moment. This is of course completely unrealistic, but it is also a common human response to a long term process.  Preoccupation with results can be wearisome if we are working towards a wildly fluctuating target such as our feelings. If your feelings about your progress are at odds with objective measures of progress then recognize the feelings as irrelevant and put them aside.

4. Utilize objective measures of progress – It is an inevitable aspect of human nature that we tend toward looking at the negative side of things. This tendency is magnified when working our way through a long term endeavor such as learning music. Counter this by using an objective standard such as a practice schedule cataloging effort toward various knowledge and skills relevant to your playing goals. Then you will be able to see plainly without the cloud of fickle feelings and negativity when you are in fact making real progress.

A Secret of Success with Guitar

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Catchy title, eh? Notice I said “A secret”, as opposed to “THE secret”. The truth is, there are many elements that contribute to success in any endeavor. They are not really secrets either, they just seem that way to people who have not perceived them yet. We are going to discuss one “secret” in this article that will be of great value to you as you strive to improve your guitar skills. This will also apply to about anything else you do in life.

I am going to guess that when you saw the title of the article you might have been expecting I was going to provide some kind of short cut that would make it easy to improve your guitar skills in a very short time. Did you? Well, sorry about that. No such luck. About the closest you are going to get to that ideal is “find a great instructor”. Unfortunately there are no easy ways to become a musician. There are only more effective and less effective methods.

If you want a straightforward bottom line about becoming a competent musician, the key concept is WORK. If you are one of these who has believed that it is all about “natural talent” I hope I can dissuade you of that view. I won’t go deep into that topic in this article, but if you want to check it out for yourself you can do some research on some of your favorite musicians and how they got to be great.

Now, if you have been a human being long enough you have probably figured something out: we don’t like work much. Work is hard and boring. We would much rather play, right? As humans we all have an inherent aversion to work known as LAZINESS. If there is any one thing that is most likely to derail your musical aspirations it is laziness. Laziness manifests in many forms, some very obvious and some not so obvious. The obvious ones are such as this, “I would rather watch TV than practice guitar exercises”.  The more insidious ones might be along these lines, “I need to practice my harmonic minor scales, but it is more gratifying to just blast away on the Pentatonic Minor I already know, so I will do that for 30 minutes and practice Harmonic Minor for 2 minutes.” Or maybe this, “I know I need to follow my practice schedule but I will ‘warm up’ with my favorite songs first and then work on my practice schedule.” 45 minutes later … you know the routine. Another one, “It seems to me that I can get this piece played easier using my ‘natural’ technique rather than following my evil teacher’s more challenging technique recommendation which requires me to concentrate.” Yet again, “I know I am supposed to repeat this slowly and methodically, but I am going to disregard that and play it as fast as possible and hope that will work better today, even though I know it never has worked better.” The biggest killer of all, “I’m really busy today and one practice session won’t make a difference anyway.” Or how about this, “I really need to practice, but I will instead waste two hours having supper and spending quality time with my family”.

Ok, maybe that last one is a bit too extreme for you who are not REALLY committed just yet! Don’t worry, you don’t have to be that radical to get pretty good on the guitar. The point is that laziness is a deadly enemy to progress. It comes out in many ways and is always on your shoulder, whispering to you – take it easy, go the easier route, find a less challenging way to do this, take a short cut, if I had any talent this would not be hard so I might as well give up, etc.. We must overcome this if we are to succeed. So, you might be thinking the answer is discipline, right? Well, yes. However, laziness is a powerful and deceptive internal adversary and the truth is that most of us do not have the wits or the kind of internal discipline we need to overcome it – by ourselves.

And there in that last phrase is an age-old, very powerful secret of success, utilized by nations, armies, corporate leaders, athletic coaches, and other kinds of team leaders across times, places, and cultures. It is powerful enough to squash the roaring demon of laziness into a pile of goo.

Do you see it yet?

Imagine this. You are on the football team and the coach passes out a sheet at the beginning of the week. On the sheet is the list of all the agonizing physical torture he wants you to inflict on yourself this week. Since he knows you have self-discipline he trusts you to see to this, meeting adjourned, see you next week. You go home and look over the list while you are watching TV and eating donuts. If you are especially self-disciplined you might even memorize the contents of the list. You may even go out and run a half mile until you get winded and it starts hurting your legs. Then you give up. After all it is 90 degrees outside and this is boring, and besides who will know or care if you cheat?

Do you think a football team would get very far with this approach to preparation?  No, of course not. That is why you are going to stay at the field with all the rest of the team and torture yourself under the observation of the coach and the peer pressure of the rest of the team.

Hopefully by now you are seeing the principle that I am getting at, but if not, I will spell it out plainly here. The “secret” I am speaking of is COMMUNITY. You may hear it called teamwork or work group or network or some other name, but the basic concept is the same – the most effective way to combat laziness is to be part of a social network where you are inherently held accountable for  the results of your work. Inclusion in a social network will provide negative feedback in the form of embarrassment if you fail to perform, and positive feedback in the form of praise and respect when you do perform. In addition, we all tend to have a competitive instinct such that we will almost automatically try to out do the people around us. Furthermore, we have an internal mechanism that feels obligation to meet the expectations of our friends. And again, it is built into us to derive great satisfaction from being part of a special group defined by our unique successes. So we have all these very powerful motivators sitting inside us, ready to do battle on our behalf against our arch-enemy laziness. These are the same motivators that have brought victory to armies, athletic teams, companies, the list goes on and on. These motivators are inert until exposed to a group environment, then they rise up and start kicking down walls!

So you have something to do here. You have all this potential power inside but it is up to you to get it activated. How do you do this? Well, you need to get involved with other musicians. Taking lessons is a great step in the right direction. Tell your family and friends that you are learning to play guitar and you are serious about it and you will not accept less of yourself than success. Try to get a friendly hobby band together if possible, or just hang out and jam as much as you can with other friends who are musicians. If you are in church you can see if they will let you join as a future back-up musician while you are learning, then you sit in on the weekly practice and try to play along. Get involved with a local musical fellowship through MeetUp.com. There are a hundred ways, but you need to do something to get yourself involved in some kind of group setting.

For my actively enrolled students I offer access to a private Internet forum. Internet forums have become explosively popular in the last decade and there are many opportunities for networking this way. However, it will do no good to look over the forums from time to time. You have to get involved. You have to get known in an environment where people are doing the same thing you are doing. You have to engage in friendly competition with people at your same level (you do not have to state this, it will happen automatically. I do not recommend telling people you want to compete with them until you know them really well). You have to let people know what your goals are and what you are doing to get there. You must show interest in their goals and progress and thus build mutual respect and goodwill. It will come back to you many times over.

This attachment to a group is CRITICAL, I can not over-emphasize this. It will keep you going through the many times when the path of progress takes you through spots that are tedious and frustrating. If you decline to get involved socially this way then your chances of succeeding are greatly  reduced. Contrarily, when you do connect with a group of musical peers you will not only achieve more but will also enjoy music much more. After all, music is a form of communication. It is rather pointless if you do not share it with others.

How to Become a Great Guitar Player in 9 (not so) Easy Steps

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1. Identify your goals – It is important at the outset of your musical endeavors, or if you are an intermediate player who has hit “the wall” then right now is the time for you, to determine exactly what it is you wish to accomplish. If you look around at the community of guitar players you will observe that most of the iconic players are known for one particular musical style. By focusing on one narrow specialty they were able to focus on developing the technique and knowledge pertinent to that specialty to a very high level. It is not necessary and not wise to attempt to master all styles of music, especially so for a hobbyist who is necessarily under time constraints. Determine what kind of music you most want to play and identify the technique and knowledge you need for that style. Then don’t squander precious time on things that do not apply to your goal.

2. Listen to the music you enjoy – For some rare, unusually gifted musicians most of their musical inspiration seems to come from some secret well-spring within themselves. If you are one of these you would have known it before you were able to read, so if you are reading this odds are you should not waste time trying to bypass the route most of us have to take to musical creativity: learning from those who have gone before. Identify those guitarists who you most enjoy listening to and wish to sound similar to, and spend plenty of time just listening to their songs. This will inspire you to practice, awaken your own creativity, and sharpen your discernment of pitch and time relationships.

3. Work with a good teacher – people who do not know much about making music commonly believe that music is simply an outgrowth of the personality, and so polluting the muse with organization and technical ideas is a sort of poison. That sort of thinking is why these people are not musicians, or not very good ones. For maximum results in the shortest possible time work with an expert coach who knows how to help you refine your goals, steer you toward the appropriate tools, and eliminate common useless side roads and pitfalls.

4. Master the basics – we all covet advanced playing skills and the accompanying freedom of expression. However, we don’t climb mountains by jumping from the valley straight to the peak. Rather we climb up one step at a time until we reach the peak. Trying to start out with guitar by tackling advanced songs from master guitarists is a sure path to overwhelming frustration and poor overall skills. Start with the basics, and practice them to the point that they come automatically. Then start working on the advanced stuff.

5. Practice well – We have all heard that the key to musical mastery is, “Practice, practice, practice.” While that apt cliche is indeed as true with music as it is with any realm of human endeavor, it fails to answer some very important questions: what to practice and how to practice. If you wish to become a great or even just a good musician, you should approach practice as a labor of love, with emphasis on labor. Practice should be an organized effort to achieve clearly defined goals, rather than another session of doodling with the same bits and pieces of songs from yesterday’s practice session. Random doodling is playing, not productive practice.

Here are some keys to effective practice:

–Assemble a practice schedule that addresses knowledge and technique relevant to your goals.

–Follow the instructions – “playing by feel” is the shortest path to going in circles of self-sabotage with your practice routine. It may carry you for a while, but eventually it will lead to a dead end. Whatever manner of instructional materials you are using, practice according to the instructions. When you have mastered the piece of knowledge or technique at hand you will then be able to incorporate it into that body of things which you can effectively apply by feel.

–Cultivate good habits – habit is powerful either on your behalf or to your detriment. Habit will respond to whatever you put into it, either great things or mediocre ones. Utilize good technique, proven methods, and pay attention to details during practice. Make it a habit to push your mind and hands for an increment of improvement during every practice session, rather than habitually accepting yesterday’s routine as today’s standard.

–Memorization – memory, both physical and mental, responds best to focus, repetition, relation to the already known, and consistency. This is why it is very important to have an organized practice routine and to practice as often as possible. Shorter daily practices will yield better results than weekend marathon sessions.

6. Creativity – self-expression is impossible when one is utterly distracted by managing the basic facets of musicianship. Beyond that, creativity in music is rarely a matter of coming up with something that no one has ever thought of. That is not possible at this time in history. Creativity is more a matter of taking what is already known and putting a new spin on it, or assembling it in some novel way. Every human being is creative. What most folks consider a lack of creativity is really more a lack of technical skills distracting the attention away from what the internal creative muse is trying to deliver. If you want to experience the fullest of what your internal muse has to offer, get past stumbling over the basics as soon as possible.

7. Managing Frustration – mastering music is a complex long term endeavor and some frustration with the process is inevitable. Don’t let it become a bigger thing in your mind that it is in reality. Feeling frustrated can not stop your progress in any way, unless you choose let it stop you from practicing. Avoid comparisons to other players. That has no bearing at all on your progress and so it is an utterly useless waste of time. Don’t allow perfectionism to creep into your thinking. Even pros make mistakes, and the music is still quite good despite the occasional mistake. Be sure you are following the instructions. Much undue frustration arises from trying to play by feel rather following the instructions. Allow yourself due credit for what you have accomplished, and measure your progress by objective standards rather than how you feel about your progress. Such feelings are typically unrealistically harsh and often adopt the feeling of frustration itself as a measure of progress, or lack thereof. Feeling frustrated has no bearing whatsoever on the objective reality of your progress, so don’t let your mind sabotage you with such tricks.

8. Managing Stage Fright – psychologists identify a phenomenon that occurs when we are trying to perform any kind of challenging task under direct observation. They call it “performance anxiety”. We musicians usually refer to it as “stage fright”. It is one of the most challenging aspects of music, but like all things musical it will respond to strategic efforts to bring it under control. Stage fright is a lower-level instinctive response to stress such that our bodies gear up to respond with vigorous action. Since we need to be relaxed and focused to perform music well, stage fright is detrimental and even crippling to our musical abilities. However, as powerful as this instinct is we can learn to suppress it with practice. And that brings us to step 9 …

9. Play with others – music is ultimately a means of communication and as such it is rather pointless to do it at all if we are not going to share it with others, kind of like learning a second language with no intent other than continually practicing it alone in front of a mirror. Playing with others is not only fulfilling but also helps identify weaknesses in our knowledge and technique for further study, allows us an opportunity to learn from others, and gives us experience in managing stage fright. It is also important in a general sense to include a social aspect to our experience of learning music, both in regards to celebrating our successes and sharing the burdens of the process. As soon as you can play basic chord rhythms you should seek opportunities to play with other musicians. If you have no musically inclined friends, look online into the local fellowship communities such as Meetup where you can find amateur jam sessions that allow for folks with moderate skills to participate in a group setting.

Mastering music is not easy, but it is possible even for the hobbyist with time constraints. Practice wisely and well, be patient, and never give up!

Nature vs. Nurture: The Secret to Overcoming Fatal Guitar Technique Flaws

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After a decade of teaching guitar and interacting with other teachers and many clients, I can make a number of predictions on what any aspiring guitarist will struggle with and how the various responses to these stumbling blocks will either help or hinder progress.  The guitar is a challenging instrument, and there are any number of areas where one might encounter a temporary roadblock. Of these typical areas, there is one I have enumerated in my previous “Top Ten” article that stands out above all others as the number one barrier to progress: not following the instructions.
Allow me to clarify this concept since the phrase alone may seem too broad and actually contrary to your experience. I doubt you have ever openly refused to learn a particular chord, for example, or a basic scale pattern. This is not the sort of thing I mean when I suggest that a significant percentage of guitar students often stumble in implementing course recommendations. It is not a matter of people intentionally side-stepping the instructions. Rather it is that certain aspects of optimum physical technique run contrary to our instincts. Most students tackling a challenge in physical technique tend to unconsciously default back to instincts rather than consistently apply good technique recommendations. For the record, I am guilty of this as much as anyone, although I have improved significantly over the years in applying what the guitarist community has found to be the most effective technique development methods.

Now let me narrow this down to the specifics items that I see over and over. If any of these seem to apply to you, keep in mind that I am not writing about any specific person or experience, but rather my collective experience as a guitar student and teacher. I assure you that although some of these may apply to you, they are universal themes in the guitar community, so don’t feel like I’m singling you out to give you a hard time!

1. Tickle the strings rather than tackle them.
2. For playing open or bar chord rhythms, use a wide, fast, and light-contact pick stroke.
3. For playing individual notes or two-string intervals (fifth chords, double stops) keep the pick hand palm turned into the guitar so that the pick moves parallel to the plane of the strings with a mere flick of the wrist.
4. Apply no more pressure to the strings/frets than necessary to sound out a clear note.
5. Avoid grasping the guitar neck with the palm and thumb as if it were a baseball bat.
6. Use your elbow to change the working range of your pick – not your wrist or your shoulder.
7. When changing to an upcoming chord, avoid chopping off the last beat of the previous chord by releasing pressure too early.
8. Unless you are practicing certain exercises specifically intended to develop speed, do not practice at a tempo faster than you can play with good note articulation and two-hand synchronization.
9. When learning a new rhythm pattern, go slow and consciously count the beats and divisions of the beats, rather than trying to play the rhythm by “feel”. Once you have conscious mastery of the pattern only then should you work on keeping time by feel.

If you have taken lessons with me for any length of time, you will know that I teach these things routinely, so you may wonder why I am taking up a Newsletter column with this routine lesson fare. There is a reason I am emphasizing these things for you:  between knowing good technique and doing good technique, there is a subconscious barrier that we all struggle with: instinct. As your teacher, one of the most significant challenges I face in helping you develop your skills is your own instincts. Your basic instincts tend toward moving the fingers as a unit, favoring the index finger, using much more strength than is necessary, and handling the pick as if it is a plow. Your secondary instinct is to do  just the opposite of this. For example, when attempting to play scales for the first time, you will note that your fingers want to stay together and mute the string you are trying to pick, so you will then pull your other fingers way back from the fretboard. Then you have to slam the next finger down like a dive bomber in order to stay in time on the next note. This causes subtle delays that cap your top speed at limits far below your potential.

The first step in conquering this barrier is to be aware of these instinctive actions and over-reactions, so that you can be ready to spot them and counter with deliberate focused repetition of a balanced, optimum technique method that cooperates as far as possible with your natural physiology.  Then, apply focused attention to repetitions of good technique. Repetition of good technique results in habits, such that good technique becomes increasingly automatic, enabling to you to move between chords and notes accurately with little conscious effort.

Here is where the process breaks down: the focused repetition of good technique, and namely, the focus part. Your hands will constantly try to resort back to instinctive positions and motions, even though your conscious mind is well aware of these issues. You must pay close attention to these details of technique when you practice. This can be tedious at times, but the pay off is more than worth the effort!

Keys To Guitar Mastery: Focus

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Among the challenges we face as developing guitar players, retention of knowledge and technique is certainly high on the list of obstacles. As with any long term complex undertaking, we can take shorter or longer paths to the same end. While common sense dictates that we take the shorter path, there a number of ways to step off the shortest path without realizing it. For maximum results in the shortest possible time we need to be aware of these potential pitfalls and make every effort to avoid them.

A prevalent obstacle to maximum progress among developing guitarists is lack of deliberate focus during lessons and practice. Repetition is a potentially powerful aid to recall and technique, but repetition without deliberate focus can actually cultivate less than optimal mental and physical habits and thus hinder progress. Contrarily, repetition combined with deliberate focus will enable your mind and hands to progress at their maximum rates.

It is important to understand that deliberate focus is not the default mode of the human mind. Our tendency is to let the attention wander around to different things, and thus sustained focus on one thing requires some conscious effort. Additionally there may be no feeling of increased progress while making the extra effort to stay focused, and so there may be no immediate sense of gratification in exchange for the extra effort. However, both science and common sense reveal that all types of memory, including muscle memory, achieve their peak power in response to sustained focused attention.

So let’s look at some specific applications of deliberate focus in overcoming common pitfalls. It is not practical to attempt to cover every conceivable situation in which lack of focus will hinder your progress, but looking at a few examples will paint a clear picture of how this works. You will then need to use good judgment in applying the general idea toward finding specific tasks where lack of focus is holding you back.

1. Paying attention to instructions – it is very easy to allow the mind to wander off in the middle of an explanation, then practice something wrong all week. In some cases I have seen students so excited about learning something new that in the middle of my demonstration they take off trying to figure out what I am playing by ear rather than concentrating on the demo, which of course defeats the purpose of the demo. While I commend the passion about learning new things, this is an obvious example of not paying attention to the instructions, and the results are predictable – we have to go over it again. Whether your instruction method be a book, video, or personal one-on-one lessons,  be assured that you will get better results by controlling the impulse to take off playing as soon as you have the first hint of where to put your fingers, and instead getting your mind around the full explanation before attempting to apply it.

2. Following the instructions – assuming you have paid attention to the instructions and thus have a sufficient understanding of what to do, the next step is to apply the instructions. Certain details of optimum physical technique are often at conflict with our natural inclination toward doing what feels physically easiest for us at the moment. While few would argue whether or not following the instructions is important, some aspects of our motor skills operate at a subconscious level. While attempting scale exercises for instance, we must manage a number of things simultaneously such as note location, timing, and coordination of the picking and fretting hands. It is very easy in this kind of multi-tasking situation to allow the fingers to revert to auto-pilot while we monitor other details, and then we slip into repeating poor physical technique and allow it to become a self-defeating habit. It is very hard to break ingrained poor physical technique habits. Do not allow this to happen. Follow the instructions!

3. Frustration – nothing will derail your focus faster than allowing the feeling of frustration to take over your consciousness. This is a certain path to lagging progress, which leads to more frustration, and so it becomes a cycle of self-sabotage. Don’t let it happen. Assuming you are following a good program of instruction and are actually following the instructions accurately, indulging frustration is a waste of your time and effort. Do not allow frustration to become your measuring line of how well you are doing. Frustration is a typical human response to any complex endeavor and it does not necessarily mean you are doing things wrong. If you know you are working on what you are supposed to be working on to reach your goals then when you feel frustrated you should put it aside and stay focused on what you are working on instead.

4. Timing – while learning to apply new scales or develop efficient chord changes, it is common to focus on simply getting the finger motions done to neglect of the critical timing details that make these things sound clear and smooth so that you acheive a good sense of musical flow. Pay attention that each note of a solo gets a clear pick stroke and “air time”. Stay focused on matching your notes up to the underlying beat. Make sure that you are continually pushing yourself for faster chord changing so that each pick stroke of your chords is clear, rather than chopping off the last pick stroke of a chord just before the chord change. That is a lot to manage simultaneously, but it will get easier with time and repetition until you can do it automatically. In the interim, stay focused on timing!

5. Speed/overplaying –  beginner to intermediate level guitar players often show a tendency during solos toward filling every perception of space with as many notes as possible. While an intelligently executed run of sixteenth note triplets can add a lot of intensity to a solo, this is not the same phenomenon as simply blasting every bit of space of with a battery of memorized scale patterns. While soloing you should be focused on timing, note articulation, and creating a sense of tension and release. Do not allow yourself to fall into mindless ripping of scale patterns. Blasting scale patterns at top speed is practice, not playing. While playing focus on the flow of tension and release so that you are saying something with your music rather than simply showing off your mastery of scale patterns.

Keep in mind … focus is a choice rather than a “talent”. You will never develop a mental habit of deliberate focus without determined effort to make it so. It does get easier with time and repetition so get started today looking for deficiencies in your level of focus. The results will be worth the effort.

Finding the Right Guitar Teacher for YOU!

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By Chad Crawford, PMI Blues/Classic Rock Guitar Instructor

Imagine this plan for buying car: call the two or three dealerships nearest your house, find the cheapest car available on these lots, and buy that one without  any further consideration.  Does this seem like a good plan to you? I hope not! And yet, this is how many folks approach the search for music instruction. If you are one of these then I hope to persuade you that music instruction, just like cars, comes in many levels of quality, features, and cost. You need to know something of how to find the right teacher for you before you even begin looking for a guitar teacher!

So let’s take another look at the car analogy. How do we know what car to buy? Well first of all, we know that however much it is going to cost this is going to be more than we want to spend, so we may as well put that aside for the moment. We start with what we need in a vehicle. If we need to carry four or five people routinely, we need a large sedan. If we need to carry four or five people AND a bunch of equipment pertaining to extracurricular activities for the kids, we need an SUV. If the need is for general purpose cargo hauling, then of course we need a truck. Towing a boat? We need a big motor. No boat? More concerned with fuel economy? Then a smaller motor is in order. We pick the vehicle FIRST, before even considering where to buy or how much to pay.

Once we know the vehicle we need, we might do a bit of research on the web, ask some friends, etc., to find what brand and type are most reliable. Then we find out the nearest places we can find such a vehicle. Only then do we go looking for an actual example of the vehicle on a lot somewhere … not necessarily only the closest lot to home. Why not the closest lot? Because the closest lot may not have the car that most closely matches all of our goals and preferences, and of course at this point we are looking for a car that we can afford!

So then, the final decision is the result of a balance of multiple considerations. And so it should be with a wise choice pertaining to selecting a good guitar teacher. You are going to spend a year or three or five of your life with your guitar teacher, and hundreds or maybe thousands of dollars. Is it wise to make such a life-impacting decision with no forethought? It is conceivable that one by sheer luck could go the closest music shop, pick the cheapest teacher, and end up with the best possible teacher for them. It is also conceivable to win the lottery. The odds are about the same for both scenarios.
What are the steps for identifying a good guitar teacher?

As a beginner or early intermediate guitarist you may have difficulty discerning if a particular teacher is the right one for you. The right teacher for you may be different at varying stages of your progress. The idea is here is to eliminate the ones you KNOW are not right, and then make an informed guess as to which one will be the most appropriate for your goals and other pertinent considerations. By following the steps below you will greatly increase your odds of correctly identifying the right teacher for you early on, and avoid wasting precious time and money with a poor match.

Step 1. Know the facts: Not all teachers are the same. Some teachers are mediocre, some are great, and most are in between. Not all good players are good teachers. A music degree does not automatically make for a good music teacher. Cost is certainly a factor for all of us in considering any kind of financial investment. However, as with most any other investment, generally you will get what you pay for. If a mediocre teacher charges you half the price of a good teacher, but it takes you four or five times as long to reach your goals, you have come out  behind both financially and in terms of your guitar skills. Likewise, if the closest teacher to your house is not the right teacher for you, the few minutes of driving time you save per trip will be swallowed up in the extra months or possibly years it takes to reach your goals.

It is very important to remember here that you are looking for a person at this point – not a location or a price. We will come back to cost and location later. Learning an instrument takes a lot of time and money. You do not have time to waste with a mediocre teacher, and if you are like most folks you do not have money to throw away either. If you have to pay more per lesson and/or drive somewhat  farther to get a good teacher who can get you results, do it!

Step 2. Define your goals: You need to know what your end goals are before you go looking for a teacher to help you reach them. The guitar is a very versatile instrument. A classical style guitar is very different from a heavy rock guitar. The physical techniques AND knowledge required to play them well are very different. Just like most other areas of human endeavor, you may have some interest in a wide range of specifics, but you will only be able to excel in ONE of these areas. Identify the style of music that you most enjoy and want to be able to play well. You will need a teacher who knows how to develop the knowledge and physical skills specific to this style.  There is some overlap between styles, such as Blues and Classic Rock. However, if you want to excel at bluegrass flat picking, a heavy rock oriented player/teacher is not going to be your best choice.

You also need to consider how far you want to go with guitar. Hobbyist, pro, or something in between? If your goal is campfire hobbyist with just enough skills to carry simple folk tunes, then the average Joe teacher at the closest shop might work for you. If your goal is at the other end of the spectrum, then you need an experienced teacher with a strong grounding in music theory and performance.

Step 3: Seek out the teachers in your general area that appear to be a match for your goals. This does not need to take six months, but it need not be confined to a day or two either. Yellow pages blurbs often have very little information, often only an address and phone number. You may have to make a number of phone calls, and ask a number of your musically experienced friends who they recommend. Many teachers now have personal web sites that you can examine for clues as to whether they are a match for your goals.

Most importantly, try to get an interview with the teacher before investing in any lessons with them. You can do this by phone, but a face to face interview is best. A personal interview is a chance for you to perceive your potential teacher’s personality and character. In addition to your guitar-specific goals, you will need a teacher who you enjoy, respect, and trust. At first your lessons are going to be exciting and fun, but there WILL come a time when it starts to get challenging. If you do not like your teacher and do not trust his or her competence as a teacher, it is going to be hard for you to stay motivated to keep showing up for lessons when you run into the inevitable frustrations.

Step 4: Interview your prospective teacher.  Now, let me qualify this. There is no need to approach a potential instructor with a cold list of demands. When I say “interview”, I do not mean as if you are questioning a suspect. I simply mean to ask some pertinent questions of your potential teacher within the context of a friendly conversation. Here are the things you want to find out …

–What styles do they teach? If circumstance permit, inquire of this before you share what kind of style you are interested in learning. You are looking for someone who plays and teaches in a style that is the same or closely related to the style you want to learn. If the answer is “I teach all styles”, find another teacher. Be careful with this. If you call a music shop or school and ask this question, they may answer, “All styles”. For a shop or school, it may well be that they have multiple teachers who specialize in various styles. In this case, you need to try to get an interview with the teacher who is most specialized in your style.

–What kind of person are you dealing with? This is a more subtle criteria without cut & dry identifiers. What you are looking for is a person who is genuinely interested in you as a person and is internally motivated toward helping you reach your goals – a person with a “teacher’s heart”.  To illustrate this kind of instinctive measure, I refer you back to your school teachers and athletic coaches. You probably remember some who you knew really cared about you and your success, and some who didn’t. Which teachers and coaches got the best results from you and for you? If your potential teacher is cold, acts as if you are a bother to their busy schedule, or as if your questions are insulting and irritating, you will know this is a person who does not have a teacher’s heart. Find someone else.

At the risk of being a bit redundant and tedious, let me tell you that I can NOT overemphasize how important this is! You may not care so much about how your teacher feels about your progress and results. But you do want the results. That is what it boils down to for you: one with a teacher’s heart will be passionate about your results. Driven by this passion, they do what it takes to become effective at teaching, and you reap the rewards of this effort. I have had guitar instructors with true teacher’s hearts, and others who were lacking in this vital element of effective teaching. The difference in results is exponential.

–Organized, structured program of instruction. Sadly, many guitar teachers have no idea what they are going to teach you until you sit down in front of them every week. You want a teacher who utilizes organized reference material such as a recognized teaching manual, proven method, their own custom course, or a combination of these, as well as a means for tracking your progress.. You do NOT want a teacher who is going to passively let you tell them what to teach you. A teacher like that is only interested in one thing – collecting your tuition for as long as possible. If you knew what you needed to learn and how to learn it, you would not need a teacher. A good teacher will strike a balance between your short term goals and their greater expertise as to what you need to know. You want a teacher who will push you to learn and consistently utilize proper physical technique, help you set up a practice schedule, help you identify & reach short & long term goals, etc.

–Considerate of your goals. There are many guitar teachers out there who couldn’t care less about your goals. They just want to want to get paid for playing & talking about themselves and guitar. They are pretty easy to spot … most of the time you spend with them consists of you listening to them play. A potential teacher should in fact ask you some questions … your previous experience, your current skill set, and your goals. The focus of your time with any instructor should be on YOUR SKILLS, not theirs. Of course they will need to demonstrate things for you, but the general focus of your time should be on improving your skills, not showcasing their own.

–Trained to teach. Teaching is a complex art form entirely separate from musical expertise. There are some people who are naturally gifted at communications and this lends itself well to teaching. You may be able to find a good guitar teacher who has not had any specific training in teaching. However, your odds of finding a good teacher are higher if you can find someone who has specific training in teaching as well as good musical abilities. Your odds are even better if you can find someone who has specific training in teaching guitar.

–Finally … you will want to inquire about costs. Be sure that you find out not only the costs of the lessons, but the costs associated with any books or other required materials, such as a metronome.

Step 5: Weigh your options and make a decision. You now know the locations and prices of a number of teachers who appear to be qualified as a good teacher for you. You will have various impressions of the various teachers and probably have an order of preference as to which ones you would most like to work with. Now it is up to you to balance these preferences against costs, driving time, and how important it is to you to reach your guitar goals compared to other things you could do with your time & money.

Work hard and stick with it until you win. It is worth it. Best wishes for your success!

The author of this article will be very interested in discussing your interest in the guitar during a free no-obligation interview with you. Click HERE to schedule an appointment.

 

Copyright © 2005 Palmetto Music Institute. All Rights Reserved.

Managing Frustration

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Managing Frustration

If you have been learning guitar for any length of time then you know that musical mastery  is a journey rather than a destination. As with any significant endeavor, the process involves working on individual elements of knowledge and skill and then assembling these pieces toward a finished product over time. Given a good course of instruction, this is a systematic process with predictable results. However, for best results we must also take into account the human elements of dealing with elaborate long term processes.

We find that the human psyche does not always respond favorably to study and repetition in the absence of immediate satisfaction from desired results. As guitarists we must retain a sizable amount of information and master physical tasks such as chords, chord changing, scales, and phrasing. Both the mental and physical aspects require repetition, repetition, and more repetition to the point of making them second nature. Alongside this process arises the predictable human response to delayed gratification: frustration.

Frustration is a feeling of dissatisfaction arising in response to not having what we want in the present moment. It is an inevitable aspect of any long term complex endeavor, and so you can be sure that you are not the only one suffering from it, nor does its presence have any bearing on whether or not you have “talent” for music.  Although it is not a pleasant feeling, like all feelings it can be an asset or a hindrance depending on how we respond to it.

First let us consider the less problematic level of frustration. In my lessons I often make analogy to the angry baker hovering outside the oven door with the light on and watching the bread rise ever so slowly. Although he has done everything he is supposed to do and the results are inevitable, while watching the bread rise in its normal course of process he laments that he does not already have some bread, questions whether he is a competent chef with culinary talent since he has no bread in hand at present, and throws the recipe book across the room while screaming at the stove for not having already delivered the bread he has labored for. Silly baker! The problem for this frustrated chef is that he is indulging unrealistic expectations about how long it takes to have the satisfaction of freshly baked  bread. The solution for the baker is to refer back to the recipe and get a realistic idea of how long it takes for the bread to bake.

So how long does it take to learn to play guitar to the point that you can express yourself freely? Well, that is not so straightforward to answer as the bread analogy. It is going to vary a great deal from person to person due to a number of factors, but what you should understand is that it is going to happen over a period of months and years rather than weeks, so be realistic. If you are allowing yourself to become overwhelmed with frustration over some new song, skill, or technique that you started working on two weeks ago, that is not realistic and it does not help you in any way. So stop it!

Now let’s consider the more troublesome deeper level of frustration that arises after you have in fact been doing all the right things that you know to do for a long time and it still seems that you are not getting anywhere. This is the kind of frustration that can ruin your experience of guitar and often leads to reluctance to practice, long periods away from the guitar, or giving up altogether. Therefore, we must have strategies to deal with this kind of frustration in order to prevent it from derailing our musical endeavors.

1. Acceptance – just as every rose comes with thorns, every long term endeavor has its frustrations. Frustration through the process of long term endeavors is an inevitable aspect of the human experience. It is not unique to you. It is perfectly normal, and it does not mean that you have no “talent” for guitar. Even if you have the best practice routine ever conceived, bucket loads of native ability, the best teacher in the galaxy, and six hours a day to practice, you are still going to experience some frustration, as has every musician who has ever trod this path.

2. Short term goals – one way we can mitigate frustration is to allow ourselves an occasional victory by setting up short term goals regarding various specific aspects of our skill set. If your only goal is “to play guitar” then you are setting yourself up for massive, crippling frustration because you are never going to be finished learning to play guitar. Your goals should be specific, relevant to your overall playing goals, and appropriate to your current skill set. If you are new to guitar then appropriate goals might be along the lines of getting control of changes between common open position chords such that you can execute them without losing time, more times than not. That is achievable within a matter of months, providing you some sense of progress and accomplishment. For an intermediate level player the goal might be more along the lines of being able to move between the pentatonic scale shapes without getting lost or out of time. Write your goals down so that you can have a record of your progress.

3. Avoid comparisons – while it is useful to analyze what others are doing well and incorporate those skills into our own, it does no good whatsoever to evaluate your overall competence as a musician by making comparisons of your current skill set to that of others. For instance, some of my clients already had a good skill set and previous lessons when starting with me, so if you started as a beginner and compare your skills after six months to those of some of my other six month clients, you will of course come up short. You have no way to know what advantages any other player may have compared to you, and even if you did this sort of comparison still does not help you in any way. As for comparisons to pros, bear in mind that you are setting yourself up to compete with people who have practiced for hours per day for many years, and their recordings (even the “live” ones) are multiple takes, and further doctored to edit out mistakes. The only comparison you can make that has any value toward increasing your skills is the comparison to what you were doing last week, six months ago, a year ago, and so forth.

4. Follow the instructions – it is often the case that students of guitar do not make the most of practice time because they do not fully follow the instructions. This is particularly noticeable in regards to details of technique. Do not allow yourself to mindlessly crank out repetitions of exercises with little attention to the details of your technique. This will rob you of the full benefit of the repetitions and will in fact reinforce counterproductive technique habits. Technique is the primary barrier to self-expression for intermediate guitarists, and it is the result of poor habits during the beginning stages. While it can seem overwhelming to manage technique details on top of just getting the exercises played, it really only takes a little bit of extra effort to pay attention to technique. Unless you are specifically working on speed itself, always practice at speeds that allow you to execute well so that you develop efficient technique over time. If you are struggling just to get the exercise played at all and have no attention left for technique, this means you are playing too fast. Slow down. Exercising patience and self-control regarding development of your technique will save you a lot of frustration later.

5. Give yourself due credit – the primary problem with frustration is that we tend to allow it to fill up our view of how we are doing with guitar, and thus it can ruin our enjoyment of learning music. Bear in mind that as a guitarist you will always be focused on learning something new, and thus there will always be some level of frustration before you. Do not allow your view of your guitar endeavors to focus on nothing other than this frustration. If you have got far enough with guitar to be wrestling with frustration then you have already learned to do some things well. Give yourself credit for those things, include them in your practice routine, and enjoy them while you wait for new things to fall into place through repetition. If all you are experiencing with guitar is frustration it is because you are choosing to see only what you can’t do yet and ignoring what you are doing well. It is a mind trap that we can all fall prey to and you will do best to avoid it.

6. Use it – even though frustration is an uncomfortable feeling it does have an upside in that it can provide helpful clues as to what we need to do next to improve our skills. If you are working on an exercise or song and you keep falling apart at one spot, this is a clue that you need to isolate that one spot for extra attention. If you feel frustration that you have ceased to make any progress with guitar this may be a clue that you are not practicing enough, not following the instructions, do not have clearly defined goals, suffer technique deficiencies, or in some other way need to make adjustments to your practice routine. When you run up against a barrier that provokes frustration, use this as an indicator that you need to look around and uncover the source of the problem that is holding you back. Rather than give up in frustration, discuss this with your instructor.

7. Avoid perfectionism – if you are inclined to want to do everything to perfection, you will do best to drop that ideal now. Of course we want to have perfection as the ultimate ideological standard, but we need to balance that with reality. You are never going to play guitar to the point that you never make any mistakes. Even pros with years of training and experience make mistakes, although you rarely hear them because either you haven’t yet the ear for pitch and time to hear them, or else audio engineers edit them out of the recordings. Do everything you do as well as you can and strive for excellence of course, but do not feel like you have to perfect every detail of every exercise or song before you move on to new material. It is a balancing act and you will develop increasingly good judgment as to where the balance is as you progress in music.

8. Employ Objective Standards – progress does not always feel like progress. If you are practicing the right things, in the right way, in the right order, then you ARE making progress even if you do not feel like it at times. If you are judging your progress solely by how you feel about your playing then you are setting yourself up for a guaranteed case of catastrophic frustration. Look back to how you were doing with the same material six months ago, follow a practice schedule with clearly defined goals, and use a metronome to objectively measure your timing.

Practice patience. Learning to express yourself freely with the guitar is a complex endeavor, the result of a process that you realize success with in stages over time. Do not expect short term success regarding long term goals. Break it down into manageable pieces and work on short term success with these realistic goals. If you want to win at guitar or anything else then remember this  – never give up!

Eight Things a Guitarist Must Know

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If we were to attempt to consider everything there is to know as a musician this article would turn into a book. However, it is not needful to know everything there is to know about music in order to make some great music with the guitar. Many widely recognized and highly regarded guitar songs are relatively simple and fall well within the guidelines of routine hobbyist musician fare. If you have a good command of the basics identified below you will have most of what you need to play fluently in the popular music styles.

1. Notes of the fretboard – it may seem like a daunting task to memorize all of the notes along the entire guitar fretboard. However, as with anything the trick is to break the task into manageable pieces. It is particularly important to know the notes on the sixth and fifth strings since these notes will be the root notes of your common chords and the reference notes for your scale box patterns. Divide the fretboard into parts according to various schemes and memorize the notes of the parts. Keep doing this week after week. Eventually you will know the notes on the fretboard without having to think about them.
2. Common Chords – the possibilities for chords seems endless, but you do not need to know every possible chord in order to play most popular music styles. Give priority to this list: Major, Minor, Suspended Second, Suspended Fourth, Dominant Seventh, Major Seventh, Minor Seventh, Fifth. Know the fingering for these chords in the open position and also the E and A form bar chords, and you will be able to cover most chords that come up in popular music.
3. Common Scales – Major, Minor, Major Pentatonic, Minor Pentatonic. It is important to know each of these scales in the various positions along the fretboard rather than just the first box pattern. Also, know how to find the beginning note of each pattern on the sixth string without having to always refer to the sixth string root note of pattern one. Then you will not be stuck with always having to start your solo in Pattern One.
4. Scale Pattern Root Notes – learn the locations of all of the root notes within all of the scale patterns along the fretboard. These will serve as a useful reference for finding resolving notes for your solos, and will also help with quickly identifying the locations of other nearby resolving note choices once you get past simply resolving to the root.
5. Major and Minor Keys – pick a key per week to memorize. Keep doing this until you know each of the notes in every key. Know the Relative Minor key associated with each Major Key. The Circle of Fifths is a great aid to learning these relationships.
6. Scale Harmonizations – know the chord sequences for the Major and Minor Keys. For Major keys the Triad chords are Major-Minor-Minor-Major-Major-Minor-Diminished. For Minor keys the sequence is Minor-Diminished-Major-Minor-Minor-Major-Major. You may see these written out as Roman Numerals in this fashion: Major key  I-ii-iii-IV-V-vi-vii, Minor Key i-ii-III-iv-v-VI-VII. Example, chords in the key of C Major: C Dm Em F G Am B. Chords in the key of C Minor: Cm D E Fm Gm A B. If you understand these sequences then you will find that it becomes much easier to decipher the chords of songs you wish to learn, and to assemble your own chord progressions for songs you are writing.
7. Interval formulas for Major and Minor Keys – The Major Scales consists of the following intervals: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8, with eight being a repeat of the root note in the next octave. For the Minor Scale the intervals are as follows: 1-2-b3-4-5-b6-b7-8. If you understand these two interval formulas, then it is very easy to see how to covert a major key to a minor key by simply lowering the third, sixth, and seventh intervals by a half step, for instance. Combine this kind of knowledge with knowing where these intervals fall on the fretboard in relation to one another and you will be able to pick out chords, solo phrases, and appropriate resolving notes with ease.
8. Timing Basics – know how to count out 4/4, 3/4, and 6/8 time signatures. Know how to play scales in quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes, eighth note triplets, and sixteenth note triplets.  Practice playing scales with a metronome to ensure your timing is accurate.

This list certainly does not cover all that a guitarists could benefit from knowing However, if you have these topics mastered to the point that they become second nature to you then you will have much of popular music covered, and you will have a much easier time absorbing and managing other more complex musical concepts. It is a lot to learn. Break it into manageable pieces and do a little every week for as long as it takes.

Mastering Musical Memory

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One of the greatest areas of struggle for most guitarists is remembering the numerous chords, scales, chord progressions, and other odds and ends that we must employ to reproduce our favorite songs or to improvise. While there is no way to make memorization of large amounts of information easy, there are things we can do to make it more predictable and consistent and thus produce better results and faster progress in our playing.

Psychologists advise that lifestyle greatly affects memory. While this article is specifically directed at musical pursuits rather than memory in general, it is worth mentioning that a healthy diet, regular exercise, and adequate sleep allow our memories to function at their maximum potential. If you want the best results from your musical endeavors, take good care of yourself!

For us musicians, we need to focus specifically on two components of memory: procedural memory and declarative memory. Procedural memory, for our purposes, refers to that aspect of recall pertaining to executing physical tasks. In musician lingo we often refer to this as muscle memory. Declarative memory is that aspect of memory that allows us to recall facts and figures, such as chord shapes, scale patterns, and the intervals of  the root notes of chord progressions. So now that we have a view of the two aspects of memory we need to master, let’s look at some specific strategies.

Improving Muscle Memory

1. Repetition – there is no substitute for repetition. You may have heard something of the old adage among guitar players about “playing until my fingers bleed”. While this may sound like a ridiculous hyperbole, I have in fact literally practiced extreme bends for certain licks to the point that one of my fingernails began to separate from the nail bed and seep blood. While I don’t recommend this, it does illustrate the point that repetition is the key to muscle memory. The more you repeat good executions of a given technique, the better you will play it. This is also incidentally one of the keys to overcoming “stage fright” – embed your skills so deeply into your muscle memory that you can execute them accurately regardless of any distractions.

2. Consistency – you will get much better results from your muscle memory by practicing a moderate amount of repetition daily as opposed to trying to cram in a large block of repetitions on the weekend or  the day before your next lesson.

3. Focus – repetition of slop leads to playing slop. It is extremely important to pay attention when practicing scales, for instance. Be sure that you are relaxed and using the most efficient motions possible for each note. When you are learning something new it is important to practice it at a speed that will allow you to play it accurately and efficiently. That often means “excruciatingly slow”. If that is what it means then do it that way. You will never have speed without slop until you thoroughly train your muscle memory to execute the required motions as efficiently and accurately as possible. Then gradually increase speed, maintaining a balance between speed and accurate execution.

4. Test – it is critical that you push the limits of your muscle memory by testing it routinely. Once you have learned a scale pattern then work on playing through it without looking at your fret hand fingers. Likewise, once you have learned a new chord then get started with applying the chord in a chord progression without looking at your fretting hand. Observe mistakes, correct them, and repeat. This will greatly increase your speed in mastering technique.

Improving Recall

1. Focus – as with muscle memory, focused attention on the details of new information will greatly increase your ability to recall that information. While this may seem obvious, it is important to be aware that we all have a tendency to allow our thoughts to drift randomly. For maximum understanding and recall it is imperative to willfully interrupt the random flow of thought and focus your attention while trying to digest new information.

2. Focus – see item 1. This is so important that I am repeating it to help you remember it!

3. Relation – as often as possible, try to relate new information to things that you already know. For instance, if you know the first position A Major chord shape then it is not so difficult to recall that the A7 is simply A Major minus the middle note. Likewise, all of the A form bar chords are an offshoot of the A Major chord shape, so if you know the A Major well then the various bar forms are not so hard to remember.

4. Isolation – break complicated sets of information into parts and memorize the individual parts first, then assemble them into the complete set. For instance, with a new scale pattern memorize the notes on two strings. Then move to the next pair of strings, then the next. Then go back and put them all together into the complete pattern. For a tablature score, learn one line. Then move to the next and learn that one. Then play the two together. Then learn the next line, and then add that to previous two. Repeat until the song is complete. Then repeat until your fingers bleed!

5.  Consistency – as with muscle memory, recall responds well to repeated exposure to the same information. This is why it is much more productive to practice a half hour a day than to run practice marathons on the weekends.

6. Vocalize – where feasible, find some way to say out loud what you are trying to memorize. Speaking things aids the memory in storing them. Example: when trying to memorize notes along the fretboard, say the notes out loud as you are playing them. This will greatly speed up your ability to recall the names of the notes.

Following these recommendations will greatly increase the rate of speed of your mastery of all things guitar. We all struggle with memory, but these strategies will assist you in increasing the rate at which you conquer various elements of musicianship. Remember this: never give up!