jumpinjeff
Forum Replies Created
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Four Years! well done @bugmeist . You have stumbled onto my final frontier. Tension. How to get rid of it, all of it, body and mind. It is the gateway to effortless, instinctual playing. Relaxing while playing is a practice but once I set my intention to explore tension free playing the benefits of the practice increased speed and precision exponentially as well as boosting the fun factor. Fast progress in the coming year.
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You are in fantastic luck @trevor_finally_learns_guitar , all next week is dedicated to strengthening your pinky. It is a 5 day pinky challenge. That is the quick easy answer. The long less satisfying answer is over time your hand, wrist,fingers (including the pinky) will get stronger and more flexible allowing you to play more relaxed with varied hand positions that put your fingers into their most advantageous positions to achieve the sound you desire. The only way to accomplish that is by playing every day.
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The walls we hit are pretty much our own creation. I found most of the time I did I was suffering from expectations. The question is do you have clear direction, enough to get you through the wall? And mind you I am not saying you stand before one: only you determine that. Is your playing fun every time you pick up your guitar? That goes a long way to making the endless journey (learning how to play guitar) a journey worth remembering. So two questions and we’ll go from there.
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These lessons are not linear they are circular. There is no start, no finish. If I miss lessons I have learned to just keep going. In reality I may have missed some lessons but the information will not be lost to me. It will come around again and in the meantime I have all these cool lesson coming up. I found my progress was fastest when I hit the lesson as hard as I felt necessary (time and boredom were my definers of “necessary”) and then move on. It hasn’t gotten old yet.
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On the splash page for the forum there is a search feature right below the heading/title. It is a rectangular box with a button that says….Search.
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Yes @the-old-coach I have several thoughts, the most important at this moment is…by gosh T-O-C, you have learned to play guitar rather than learned the choreography to play a song. Well done. Now you play all and any. And I think that most of the time you are having fun, am I right?
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Hi @Kinga I am really liking all the things I am reading in the topic you started.
There is a little trick I learned from Tony P: Find something that you do every day (for me it was getting up outta bed in the morning) tie your 10 minute guitar playing session to that existing habit. Maybe for you it is a cup of coffee in the morning, or brushing you teeth at night or whatever, you get my drift. Own your choice of whether or not you have played on a given day and if you miss, understand you have bigger things going on. That is a good thing, right? By working your playing time into an existing habit you will not miss on account of oversight. Which gets to that last thing: analysis. Don’t worry about the missed times. Get fired up about today’s session. Take a look at yesterday. Was it a good session or did it get skipped. if skipped why? It is in the answer to “why” where the door to consistency is unlocked.
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Hi @Free-Dan , That is a perfect summery of my whole guitar learning experience. I moved from the feeling that what I was trying to do was impossible to…if I follow instruction, keep my head down, let go of my feelings surrounding the new skill/passage/speed/chord and keep to my commitment of 10 min a day no matter what, then I will continue to progress. This has kept me going and improving and making the impossible possible with the help of easy to follow and clear directions for the last 7 1/2 years. Took me a long time to figure it out so kudos to you for figuring this out early on!
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Food for the guitar playing soul @Kitman . 👍
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I would add one other thing: Tension….tension is the reason to go slowly, slowly enough to eliminate it from your mind and fingers. When tension has been eliminated, then bump up your metronome speed, mind your tension then bump the speed again.
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@Steve2150 , I am checking back to verify that you found the Search.🤞
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Glad you are better enough to cruise the forum. The trick is to avoid long term joint/tendon inflammation by readying your hands and fingers for what you are and will demand of them. Good “doc” talk. As humorous as it is there is truth enough to take notice. I tended to discount the amount of prep it would take for me to be able to play the things that I wanted to play. Too many repetitive stress injuries and the stories of them has made me extra prudent when it comes to overdo but hey, then again, I am an itinerant overdoer. When you get that stabbing pain in the meat between your index and thumb stop shake it out, stretch it out and when the cramp subsides get right back at it. I am convinced that part of the learning process is figuring out what pain signals are irritants easily remedied by managing tension, position vs. the pain signals to really take head and remedy with rest and non- invasive remedies.
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Every thing Stillhand says here is spot on. I have trigger fingers on both pinkies (too many years on pneumatic hammers) but as long as I stretch and pay attention to the tension manager, in our cases the locking of the joint (among others) is my hint to relax, address the source of tension and keep that neutral arch of my fingers ready to go. Practicing this mindset in my playing opened a whole new world. Did I mention stretching? Yes, good. The best hand finger stretching is what I call silly putty stretching. Too fast too hard and snap but go slowly, and the ensuing flexibility is a welcome surprise.
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Too darn cool N-light. It was as if you were in my mind. Love, love, love, the strategy of getting the rhythm pattern established with only the picking hand.
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‘Sup @trevor_finally_learns_guitar , I couldn’t say it any better than what Loraine said. I will add this because it is easy for me to remember: If you chase speed, it will take forever but if you sneak up on it, you will find it sooner than you would have thought.