The School of Feedback Guitar Blog

If I had to do music school all over again, I am pretty sure I would have done a better job at pacing myself. The trouble with being a musician is that there is such satisfaction in finishing what we are doing. If we finish playing, composing, or recording a highly satisfying song, chances are we'll still be feeling the high of it well into our week. Some of us will listen to or play the song over and over again. I have one good friend who writes so many good songs that he burns himself out on them before he has a chance to play them for other people! Music, perhaps unlike many other things in life, is a unique thing; There is always the need to just be a little bit further along than we were before. Something always brings us back to it.

For any new student taking guitar lessons with me, it still delights me to explain why five minutes is the perfect amount of time for practice at first. Any new pursuit that we are encountering is bound to have snags. It's not sunshine all the time. Practicing five minutes a day simply helps a person commit to learning it, leaving the guitar before it gets really frustrating, and coming back to it the next day. Think of it like a mutual fund; If you schedule your investments and stick to them, the fund can only grow. And then there's interest that pays you back in the long run. The interest received in the case of guitar is why we play. It's about access to many many more songs that we would like to play. It's joining a whole community of people who are just as dedicated to learning and playing. It's perhaps the feeling of creating your first song. Five minutes will pay off in the long run. It boggles my mind why people commit to something and then just walk away when the going gets a little rough. Over-practice, over-analysis? No. What is the right amount? What helps us the most in the long run?

Five minutes a day.

It's my humble opinion (believe it or not, I'm pretty humble) that once we arrive at a destination in guitar, another one pops up. There will always be something new to learn about the instrument. I hope that I never ever learn all of it. I want to spend my entire life playing guitar and learning something new about it. I believe that the best way to do this is simply to deal with how annoying it feels to just leave practice unfinished, and come back to it the next day.

I love the book "The Inner Game of Tennis." It captures many of the subtleties about sport performance, and the book will make an impact even if you don't like tennis and want to play guitar instead. There is one concept that I want to point out, and it has to do with how to approach change. W. Timothy Gallwey, the author, describes how just about anyone can narrow down what problem they have when it comes to tennis, but only a small percentage are able to change it for the better. For example, a tennis player may be able to identify a problem in a swing, but might be trying far too hard to fix the mistake. Therein lies the issue, and I couldn't agree more: We can try to change an old habit by forcing change (ie, changing a bad habit), or we can start a new habit altogether.

Take this into consideration: If a chord progression, let's say A to D, is giving you trouble, you may already assume you know what is going on. You may assume that it's "just not fast enough," and push harder to make the chord transition. While such a way to do this might work to some degree, it's also responding to a challenge on the guitar with more tension. What about less tension? What about playing "loosey-goosey?" What about letting the body come up with it's own solution that didn't really occur in our heads first?

On a logical level, this makes sense. On an emotional level, it understandably conflicts with that need to be in control. Forcing change from an old, bad habit is like responding to a guitar problem with more tension (not so good). However, allowing the body to start a new habit without tension, and have it solve the problem naturally is way kosher. It's just the letting go that's hard.

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Teaching guitar is hard when the student hasn't been bitten by the guitar-bug yet. The best way of gauging whether a person has been smitten with guitar is if asking them to spend five minutes a day on guitar inspires thoughtfulness, or groans. If a person gets to the point where the vista of playing guitar opens up to them, where the possibilities are limitless, that five minutes of practice every day is no longer a chore. It's fun. After this point, the person plays guitar because they enjoy it, and not because some schmo like me told them to practice. 

Recommending for any student to practice an hour a day might be overkill. Students who hear that are usually filled with dread for the next lesson.  "Practice if you feel like it," admittedly my old credo, is just as bad. It encourages the student to do nothing. Five minutes is arguably just the right amount of time. Most of the time, as long as a guitar is on a guitar-stand, in plain view, begging to be played, it is easy to pick it up and play it. Give it some time, and you won't think it is a chore.

I must say that out of all the people I have taught, there were only a couple of persons who stayed in lessons even though they didn't put in five minutes a day on the guitar, even though they were not smitten enough to really play it. This is so interesting. Why stay in lessons if you don't even think about playing it outside of the lesson? Was I that funny (doubt it)?

So now I'm resolving to do something new: I am going to do a lot more teasing. It's all in good fun, and in the name of enjoying music.

Many guitar instructors tell their students to practice an hour a day. That's common advice, but that's also quite a lot of commitment. I'd rather go swimming than practice an hour a day, especially now with all this hot weather. Anyway, readers of this blog are aware that I have a different approach to practicing.

When I was in Americorps, doing trail work with ECorps (the hardest job I've ever had), there was a crew leader named Walt. He was awesome and everyone liked how he worked. One of his favorite things to do was to slowly pulverize a rock that was in the way, with a sledgehammer. "There's something nice about seeing a problem right here and just slowly breaking it with the sledgehammer. Feels good to see it give way eventually." Very apt. I think that the 75-Five idea is way to do this with guitar.

I am under the assumption that many people, when they play guitar, have this view that they must put in a lot of time every day in order to "master" it, and I think that idea is bollocks. The 75-Five idea is like this: If there is some problem that needs to be solved, one that requires a small but constant effort, if you spend only five minutes a day on it for 75 days in a row it will solve itself. Seem like a lot? Not really. That's only two and a half months of five minutes of work each day to grab a skill.

If you don't take practicing too seriously then it's not a big deal to find five minutes. Imagine where that five minutes could be. Just before you go to bed perhaps? When you wake up maybe? Perhaps even in the office at work during lunch? And 75 days later, poof! The solution presents itself. What I love about guitar is how the skills of playing it can be had if a person just put in just the smallest amount of time everyday. If you can have the will to put in five minutes a day, then any technical problem will eventually disappear. It's like hitting a huge rock with a sledgehammer.