Play a note, or chord, and just listen. Meet that note. Look it in the eye. Hear its personality. Don’t move to another one until you’ve actually listened to the […]
Read more
No joke. Try it: Set the metronome to a slow, comfortable pace. Play just one note on each beat. Then speed up just a tiny bit…. Feel that tense rushing. […]
Read more
Music is so much more fluid than we often treat it. When we get caught up in whether we are playing it “right”, we run the risk of not hearing […]
Read more
Repetition is one of the most effective tools in learning music. Yes, it can be boring, but it helps you memorize the technical stuff so your mind can be free […]
Read more
You know when you’ve been playing for about 45 minutes and you start to notice every little detail, everything you get right and get wrong, but you don’t really react […]
Read more
So you can bring the guitar into your comfort zone. We often approach the guitar as something we need to wrap ourselves around. We end up in awkward positions because […]
Read more
In my book, vacations are ways to get out of our daily grind so that we can relax and bring more enjoyment into our lives. So I say “play if […]
Read more
Best school? Best guitar? Practice every day? All helpful. But not if your kid doesn’t want to play. Kids who do well are in families that place a value on […]
Read more
But do have them play something every day. It’s the “every day” part that does the trick. Kids get discouraged when they have to do stuff that’s hard. If they […]
Read more
They should have been called “pop-offs”. I don’t mean any disrespect to the great Pete Seeger who brought us modern tablature and named the pull-off, it’s just that if you […]
Read more