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I received the
following e-mail from a young guitar player about 9 or 10
months ago……
"My friend and I started playing guitar at the same time,
the very same day even. We both practice about the same amount
of time, but he is already so much better than I am. His playing
is getting better and better at a faster rate. Mine is lagging
behind. I do make small improvements however I become frequently
frustrated cuz I try just as hard as he does. Sometimes I
wonder if he is just more talented than I. To reach his rate
of growth I would have to practice 10 hours a day as he only
needs 1 hour. I cannot dedicate 10 hours per day so what can
I do? Bottom line -- I still SUCK after three and one half
years of playing six to seven days a week!"
I know both of these guitar players and can verify that the
friend's progress has been more significant than the author
of the email above. And everything written in the email was
basically true (at the time it was written). I gave this guy
two main pieces of advice:
1. Do NOT compare yourself to your friend. Do not let your
friend (or anyone else) set the standard for you to aspire
to. One should have fixed in his/her mind the vision of the
type of player one wants to become. Generally speaking, you
don't want your "next door neighbor" to be the definition
of your ideal long term "vision". If I could magically
take your friend's skills away would you feel better about
yourself simply because he was not as good as you? Keep in
mind that your skills would be the same as they are now, the
only difference is that your friend's skills were taken away
or diminished. Your attitude about your own progress should
be centered completely around where you are in the journey
to realize your goals.
2. After you have reconciled your thoughts with the first
piece of advice, you are ready for the second. In general,
the greatest players are not great because they were naturally
talented. In every case, truly great players become great
(and make a lot of progress in relatively shorter periods
of time) because their practice habits are EFFECTIVE. You
see, they not only put in the time and effort as you do, but
that time and effort is focused and effective. It appears
that your practice habits have not been effective. I do not
believe you lack the necessary potential to make significant
progress. You just aren't being effective. You seem to believe
that you "CANNOT". I propose that you can, but that
you simply "HAVE NOT". Certainly you are trying,
but the efforts are bearing little fruit…
…I went on to tell him a story of how I generally approach
increased practice effectiveness when working through a specific
challenge (which all players at some point will face), read
it below. There are many reasons why some players make less
than average progress while spending a decent amount of time
practicing. In most cases however, the problem is almost always
the same.
I had suspected his lack of progress was due to ineffective
practice approaches and habits. He thought the equal time
he spent should have brought equal results. But that is a
fallacy, a myth. Time is like a road. And there are lots of
different types of roads such as: dirt roads, gravel roads,
brick roads, concrete roads, tar roads, and auto racing tracks
(roads). His friend was driving (practicing) on a high quality
road that can enable the car (his guitar playing) to move
at the fastest pace. The email author was on a road made of
loose gravel, rocks and littered with pot holes. The poor
quality of the road is similar to poor quality practicing
habits. Poor practice habits put one on a bad road and therefore
the progress will be rough and slow. Effective practicing
will put you on a race track where maximum traction and conditions
are there to allow the maximum rate of progress.
I once had a new student (named Chris) who came to me because
he couldn't play Stairway to Heaven smoothly. In one of our
first lessons together I asked Chris to play it (Stairway
to Heaven) for me, 3 consecutive times. Each time Chris played
the beginning of the song he could not make the chord change
between the 3rd and 4th chords in time and cleanly. He practiced
the song for months but could not get to the fourth chord
(D/F#) correctly. I asked him some questions about how he
was practicing and then I asked him to "practice the
song for 15 minutes right here in front of me and I would
just sit back quietly and listen". After 15 minutes of
that, I could see the problem was not that Chris lacked the
potential to play it. It was clear that he had been struggling
with this song because of ineffective use of his practice
time.
I noticed several minor problems that he was doing over and
over again that was creating obstacles for him. But the greatest
problem wasn't in the way he attempted to play it, it was
in his "approach to practicing" it. In those 15
minutes he practiced in front of me, he played the entire
first section of the song. Which meant he actually only "practiced"
the hard part 21 times (yes I was counting!). So we spent
the next 15 minutes "ISOLATING THE PROBLEM AREA"
and just focused on that. That meant he wasn't allowed to
practice anything he could already do well (which was the
rest of that section of the song). I made him focus on only
the difficult chord and position change. In the course of
15 minutes he had practiced this "problem spot"
536 times! (Yes…like a nerd, I was again counting!). In 15
minutes he could still not play it perfectly yet, but significant
progress was made. I told him to practice in this exact same
way for 15 minutes a day for the next 7 days. When he came
back for his next lesson, I asked him to play the entire section
of the song and he played it perfectly every time.
What changed? Well actually he practiced the song LESS (in
terms of numbers of minutes per day) but he did practice the
problem area more than 3,500 times in a total of 1.75 hours
total during the week. What has happened was he got off the
pot-hole- gravel-road and moved to a race track. Since then
he has learned to practice all extraordinarily challenging
things in this way…and the results show in a huge way. There
are many reasons for Chris's huge long-term success as a musician,
but certainly the effectiveness of practicing is close to
the top of the list. Chris has become a virtuoso guitarist
and professional musician. You can hear the results for yourself
here There are lots of ways to improve the quality of your
practice-time-effectiveness and thus your results. To get
started, I recommend the following:
1. Before practicing, have your goals in mind before you begin
and make them specific. Don't just say, I'm going to practice
Stairway to Heaven, say, "I'm going to work specifically
on getting to that D/F# ONLY for 15 minutes", or "I'm
going to practice the 7th and 8th measures of the guitar solo
for 12 minutes".
2. When practicing ALWAYS ask yourself if you are using your
practice time in the most effective ways.
3. Video record yourself practicing for 30 minutes. 1 week
later watch the video recording and ask yourself this question,
"If was a teacher (watching my student practice for 30
minutes, what might I suggest to him/her to improve the quality
of the practicing I am observing). Then implement those suggestions
the next time you practice.
About
the author
Tom Hess is professional touring virtuoso guitarist, composer
and teacher. You can read more info about Tom at: http://tomhess.net |
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