03-17-2021, 09:09 AM
I went to a guitar forum today and saw an interesting thread.
It was about this guy who couldn’t play Sweet Child Of Mine solo after more than a decade of playing.
The post read (paraphrased):
“How the hell can this be? No matter how much I practice, my hand simply cannot keep up, is super tired by the middle of the solo and I can barely play after cause my fingers are all shaky and tired. This solo sucks and I hate it more than anything in this life, I've been trying to play this for years and still can't play it at speed and even at half speed. I've been playing guitar for more than 10 years. “
Yikes!
Many people replied with good, common sense advice. (About isolating problem areas, relaxing excess tension and how the time you spend practicing means a big fat ZERO if you practice the wrong way.)
My over-inflated 2 cents?
No solo you play is either “hard”, or “easy”. It simply is what it is.
It becomes hard, if you:
- focus on all the mistakes you are making.
- blame the solo for being hard and wish it was easier.
- view practicing as a chore you “have to” do so you can play the music you want.
It becomes easy, when you:
- see the solo as a set of puzzles to be solved. (puzzles can be mental or physical)
- realize that the music you play is not a villain out to “get” you. The solo doesn't care how well you play it.![Smile Smile](https://onlinesequencer.net/forum/images/smilies/smile.png)
- enjoy guitar practice as a process of self-discovery & self-improvement. Not as a price that must be paid to play a piece of music.
The former sets you up for failure as you beat yourself over every mistake, like you’re competing for the world’s angriest guitar player award.
And you only work just hard enough to “nail” the music once.
The latter puts you into a Zen-like state where practicing feels like “fun meditation”. And that’s when you practice something well enough to “never get it wrong”.
And the irony? The less you focus on playing “hard parts perfectly”, the faster you make the hard parts feel easy.
Because you focus more on the process and not the result.
And that’s when all the tools of tension control, isolating the “hard” spots etc. begin to work their magic.
Change your mindset and change your results.
Here endeth the lesson.
It was about this guy who couldn’t play Sweet Child Of Mine solo after more than a decade of playing.
The post read (paraphrased):
“How the hell can this be? No matter how much I practice, my hand simply cannot keep up, is super tired by the middle of the solo and I can barely play after cause my fingers are all shaky and tired. This solo sucks and I hate it more than anything in this life, I've been trying to play this for years and still can't play it at speed and even at half speed. I've been playing guitar for more than 10 years. “
Yikes!
Many people replied with good, common sense advice. (About isolating problem areas, relaxing excess tension and how the time you spend practicing means a big fat ZERO if you practice the wrong way.)
My over-inflated 2 cents?
No solo you play is either “hard”, or “easy”. It simply is what it is.
It becomes hard, if you:
- focus on all the mistakes you are making.
- blame the solo for being hard and wish it was easier.
- view practicing as a chore you “have to” do so you can play the music you want.
It becomes easy, when you:
- see the solo as a set of puzzles to be solved. (puzzles can be mental or physical)
- realize that the music you play is not a villain out to “get” you. The solo doesn't care how well you play it.
![Smile Smile](https://onlinesequencer.net/forum/images/smilies/smile.png)
- enjoy guitar practice as a process of self-discovery & self-improvement. Not as a price that must be paid to play a piece of music.
The former sets you up for failure as you beat yourself over every mistake, like you’re competing for the world’s angriest guitar player award.
And you only work just hard enough to “nail” the music once.
The latter puts you into a Zen-like state where practicing feels like “fun meditation”. And that’s when you practice something well enough to “never get it wrong”.
And the irony? The less you focus on playing “hard parts perfectly”, the faster you make the hard parts feel easy.
Because you focus more on the process and not the result.
And that’s when all the tools of tension control, isolating the “hard” spots etc. begin to work their magic.
Change your mindset and change your results.
Here endeth the lesson.