Guitar Lessons in Bed Stuy Brooklyn

Category: Point of View

Best Way For Singer-Songwriters To Draw Attention? Play Quietly

Cast A Spell With Your Guitar series Part 1 – Play Quietly

Cast A Spell With Your Guitar

Great solo performers can cast a spell on their audience with a sense of personal intimacy and you can too if you use dynamics well. What creates closeness between people? Think about it:

low lights – quiet – listening – space – closeness – patience

This translates into music as silence between notes, simplicity, low volume. Just like when you speak quietly to a friend they pay more attention to hear what you’re saying. It’s like a secret for their ears only.

YOUR dynamic range is fixed, either by the settings of the sound system or the lack of one. For your dramatic moments to have an impact on your fans’ feelings you need to set your basic groove at a medium or quiet level so that when you get loud and big, they FEEL it. If you start out fairly loud you have no room to expand upward, only downward.

Experiment 1 – Try playing one of your tunes as quietly as you can on your own. The lower you go, the more tools you’ll have to really connect with your fans. Put down the phone and try it.

(Coming in part 2: Using Silence)

September 26, 2019
Feel the Space Between the Notes

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 present one.

When you do this the most remarkable thing usually happens: you relax. It makes playing so much easier and more enjoyable. You improve with ease.

June 20, 2018
Guitarists, Rather Than Going for What’s ‘Right’…

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 what we are doing well. If you’re caught in the trap of “WRONGNESS” try this:

For now, rather than going for what’s ‘right’, go for what you think sounds good. Learning music is a process and you are somewhere in the middle of it so, for now, go for your good tempo, your best rhythm, your best note choices.

Listen for what you are playing that is good and build from there. Perfection is the result, not the method.

September 11, 2014
Don’t Like Repetitive Guitar Practice?

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 to emphasize the cool parts of the music when you perform.
If you hate it, try this:
Every day set a timer for 3-8 minutes. Practice one repetitive thing until the timer goes off. Stop.

Play something fun.

September 4, 2014
Hypnotize Yourself With Your Guitar

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 to it? You just keep playing and notice everything?

That is a very aware, flexible, and non-judgmental state of mind. Be aware that you can also space out and go on auto-pilot this way. It’s a delicate balance. But if you go for what sounds good and explore it, you can improve your playing and be completely immersed in it at the same time.

August 29, 2014
Should I Practice Guitar on Vacation?

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.

August 16, 2014
Don’t MAKE Your Kids Practice Guitar 30 Minutes a Day

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.

July 31, 2014
Practice Guitar Every Day? Yes. And no.

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.

June 25, 2014
Why Practice Guitar Slow?

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.

June 17, 2014
Mistakes in Guitar Practice Are Good News

They show you where you can improve. If you try to avoid them you won’t know where where to focus your practice. The trick is to be open to mistakes.

If you’re open, you’ll find your trouble spots while you’re in the practice room. But if you try to avoid mistakes, you’ll find those blind spots on stage. Not cool.

If you listen to a mistake without judgement you may find a solution to a problem, a development of your melody, or a whole new style. Be like Hendrix & others who really listened, leading them to deliberately crank their amps to get that “bad” distorted sound.

May 20, 2014