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 you want to, but be sure to play for fun”.
We often spend more time with family and friends on vacation, which can be great times to jam or play for someone. I just had a week-long vacation which actually gave me time to practice the basics, which I loved! So play, or don’t play, but be sure it’s not a grind.
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 playing music:
The instrument is easy to get to and in good condition
No one is nagging them to practice
No one is saying “Stop playing the same thing over and over!”
Family members (parents, mainly) listen in a general way, from another room, while kids play; comments and questions afterwards.
Someone is interested in what the child is playing, and verbally noting their progress.
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 only play every 3 days it’s always hard.
Playing London Bridge once a day starts as a small challenge. By the end of the week they’re bragging about how easy it is.
Then they get the rush that spurs them on to play longer. They are more familiar with the success that practice brings and they’re more likely to dive in on their own.
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 only pull your finger off of the string, it may not ring. If you pop the string with the edge of your fingertip, you’ll hear it ring out.
Try it.
Play a note on the first string (bottom) and instead of lifting your finger up and away from the string, pop the string by pulling down and away, sort of plucking it with your fingertip.
We play with our finger TIPS.
I know that seems obvious, but we often don’t do it. If we spend some time getting used to this weird use of our hand, playing guitar becomes easier. The reason is this:
The bone does 70% of the work.
When the finger gradually curves to come straight down onto the string, much less energy is needed. The bones of your finger form an arch, which taps down onto the string like a C-clamp with half the effort than if we use the padded bottom of our finger.
Bored with playing the same predictable rhythms when you’re improvising? Break it up using the rhythms in names.
Say these names aloud and feel the rhythmic pulses in them, especially where the stressed syllables are:
Jimi Hendrix
Nirvana
Elliot Easton
John Lee Hooker
Bohemian Rhapsody
The Grateful Dead
Queens Of The Stone Age
Florence And The Machine
Red Hot Chili Peppers
The stressed syllable is the downbeat. Now try this:
A player asked me yesterday if he could postpone his lesson a week because he didn’t get to play much that week. Of course, that’s fine with me, but I thought I’d share a little of what I’ve learned regarding this, both as a student and a teacher.
Consistent practice is very important but we do have times when we just can’t practice consistently. If we feel that we can’t move ahead until we make up for that lost time, we may be right, but we also may just be being hard on ourselves. This could lead to feeling a little guilty when we can’t get to the guitar and if that builds up, we may feel so bad about it that we quit playing. That’s the mistake, not missing some playing time.
One of the more powerful aspects of steady lessons is that they keep you on the path to your goals, even when you’ve had a crazy week(s) with no time to practice. If it gets to where you’re not able to practice for 6 weeks, then that may be time to reevaluate.
Well, you may have heard several reasons, but this is my favorite:
To witness what you actually do instead of what you think you should be doing.
We are usually so caught up in trying to match some ideal in our head that we can’t hear what we actually sound like.
Play slowly so you can notice what you notice. Then you can fix things.
In the beginning there was cacophony, and it was good. But not everybody thought so.
Several hundred years ago, Christian monks discovered how to play several notes simultaneously in a way that, to them, sounded like Heaven.
Hark!
Choose a scale and select every other note of it until you have 3 notes (notes 1,3,5)
Play these 3 notes at the same time and that’s a chord.
If you add the next note using the “every other” pattern (the 7th) then you have 7th chord. Keep playing the scale higher and you’ll come across the 9th, 11th, and 13th notes, giving you the 9th, 11th, and 13th chords.
Now you know everything about music. Go outside and play.
Yeah, it’s a killer. Try this:
Don’t strum all the way to the moment that the tough chord should be played and then changing chords (that’s like pressing pause while you’re playing, and even the tone-deaf know that ain’t right).
When you’re headed straight for a tough chord, say Q#minor14 (see pic), only play on the first beat of the easy chord before it (G). Use the next 3 beats to change to Q#minor14. You’ll only hear G on the first beat beat, but if you keep the count going in your head while you change, you’ll play Q#minor14 right on time, keeping the song together.
This is a lot better than the “Wait just a, I’ve almost..I’ve…” approach.
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