How to Learn & Practice ( Part 1)
Published: Mar 1, 2022 | Category: Uncategorized
How to Learn & Practice Part 1
How much Practice Time do I need?
& what kind of practice?
We’ve all heard about the 10.000 hours of practice to master any skill.
But what might be more important that quantity is quality.
Mindless practice is boring and depressing.
It fosters mistakes and negative self judgement.
Mindful practice s exciting and challenging.
You can deliberately focus on a tough part by breaking it down, and repeat it slowly, focusing on a particular movement, fingering. Make metal connections between fretting and striking fingers.
The small victories come in more often, setting you on an upward spiral of progress.
To learn the guitar optimally er what I suggest:
-Practice TOO SLOW. Slow way the f#$%^kdown. Your impatience is you worst enemy and that impatience will gang up with unrealistic expectations and negative judgement, choking the musician in you.
Teach your nervous system to relax, breath naturally, make all the muscles involved “heavy”, “Lazy”, “Sleepy”, what ever hack you need to teach your mind to SLOW DOWN. Rushing and fumbling, rushing through and fumblingg again is like running head first into a wall. You will give up if you don’t change your mind-set. So practice waaaay too slow.
-Analyse the movements step by sep,”under a microscope”.
-Look at the relationships, the dance between fretting and striking fingers.
-Then in a TooSLow way, play with a pulse, a groove a soon as you can. That will make that TooSLow sentence musical.
Loop it, check your body as you keep looping it, any zones of tension?
So you are taking a small piece of music out of context to practice with looping it :
How is the tone? What is the mood ? Extrapolate: What kind of story could be told with that little piece of music. Allow it to make an impression, an artistic, emotional impression.
It’s ok if you draw a blank, but if you allow yourself to identify an atmosphere, even hazy and undefined, I would call this experience a musical moment, and a victory.
Your body will feel it as music. The F bombs will be replaced by a smile.
You can keep this nugget under you hat for future noodling, and move on to the next measure or musical sentence. Repeat the process. Then link the two elements.
One hour of this mindful, deliberate practice will be worth 4 mindless practice. ( Not to be confused with noodling or doodling which can yield portend seeds of creativity, but that is another subject)
Last be not least: if you want to improve your motor skill, any motor skills fast the other secret weapon beside mindful deliberate practice is…..
Deep Sleep!
Countless studies have proven that fact. The brain processes knowledge, after the input of informations. Kinestethic knowledge ( Body Mechanics) is consolidated during deep sleep, the kind that leaves you a bit groggy.You can of course get deep sleep during a good night of sleep but also simply during a long nap.
CHears, Bertrand