Guitar is full of technical challenges. Grasping a technical problem and solving it with effortless ability is not as difficult as it should be. I have observed this countless times as a teacher, and I think that the method described here might make sense to try if a technical problem rears it's ugly head (it often does, and it still does for me, years of playing notwithstanding).
There are two ways to approach any technical challenge. The first is the most common way: With excess tension. The second is a far more enlightened approach in my opinion: Allow mistakes to come and welcome them while feeling loosey goosey. Why?
The result of responding to any technical challenge with more tension is, well, more tension. Do we need more tension? I think not. Especially if we are planning upon playing with other people and/or performing. The pressure of playing music with and for others adds enough tension already! We don't need more of it. The result of responding "Loosey Goosey" to any challenge is that we see and accept our bodies failing to do what we really want them to do in the short run, but learning to adjust to play in a way that really works later on. This means trusting ourselves to get where we want to later.
I am fond of looking at the second way because it means, in a nutshell, that I trust my body to do what is best, eventually, to beat the challenge. The real trick here is how to accept mistakes, and allow yourself to feel really really awkward until the challenge is mastered, effortlessly. Accepting mistakes however? I realize that this is not something we are looking to do, but guitar offers important challenges, just like any other persuit.
Once again I'm reminded of the ever-quotable Miles Davis: "Do not fear mistakes. There are none."
Playing guitar and learning it is often a process of finding tension and getting rid of it. I've seen people hold tension in their arms, shoulders, ankles, and even their toes believe it or not. The following is a quick recipe for how to become aware of a very unknown spot of tension while playing guitar: The Mouth.
When a person is often playing anything that stretches the limits of their technical ability, one of the first things to receive tension is most certainly the mouth. I have noticed in my own practice that as soon as I can play a musical passage without moving my lips, toungue, or mouth in general, I know I have it. I figured this out while observing people in grad school. The ones that played well made it look easy, meaning no tension in their face.
This works great for scales that I love to use when I am showing off in Guitar Center, too. Just kidding. I really don't dig that. Practicing with a mirror and focusing on my mouth movement makes it very easy to recognize when a passage or scale is completely mastered. The less tension I have, the more fludity I gain. Also, the sooner I can get my scales together, the sooner I can bask in the attention and limelight of everyone in Guitar Center while I play them at 10,000 notes per fraction of a second.
We are all well aware that nobody is perfect. If this is the case, why would anyone in their right mind expect that performers are? Performers are performers for one reason: They learned not to broadcast their mistakes with flinching. Flinching, to me, is the physical response to a mistake. Thus comes one of my favorite things to teach: How to perform without flinching.
In performance, flinching is the enemy because it lets the people watching know that a mistake has happened in the first place. There's nothing so jarring than hearing a performer cry out in embarassment over some silly mistakes. The funny thing is that to most people, mistakes don't even matter so much. Miles Davis was fond of saying, "Do not fear mistakes; There are none." In a previous post, I talked about how Yo-Yo Ma had learned let go of trying to be perfect so he could have the passion in his performances, as well as mistakes. Learning how not to flinch is the key.
Here are a couple of ways to learn not to flinch:
Ask a friend or spouse to throw paperclips at you. The less you flinch, the better.
Have a trusted and loving friend hurl small insults at you, and then have them buy you lunch afterwards.
Play guitar in a loud place where distractions are the norm.
Once again, mistakes are inevitable. It's only the reaction that counts. Getting used to distractions, internal or external, is the way to really perform music and enjoy it too.
Almost anyone can recall the scene at the end of Ghostbusters. The big bad ghost tells all four Ghostbusters that they must choose their death. Whatever pops in their minds will be the end of them. Raymond (Dan Akroyd) thinks of the "Stay-Puffed Marshmallow Man." What a great movie. New York City is soon to be eaten alive by one big marshmallow.
Again, deaferentation is a trainable ability of the brain. The brain learns to ignore other stimuli except for where it's focus is. It takes time to train the mind to produce that precious ability to ignore other stimuli and focus on something else. In our case, music and guitar. Luckily it doesn't take much effort, and there certainly isn't as much at stake unless you are a Ghostbuster.
I will say it once more, but certainly not for the last time: Five minutes of practice per day is all you need when you are just starting guitar. High quality of attention brings huge musical gifts.
I learned a nifty word yesterday: "Deafferentation." This can be a trainable ability of the brain (and to be fair, also an unfortunate circumstance in the case of bad accidents). However, I see it to be a really good thing for guitar.
In a nutshell, if a task takes one part of the brain to complete, the brain trains itself to ignore information sent from other sides, perhaps in order to keep it's focus. For example, if a task requires the aural cortex, then perhaps the brain will learn to ignore what's happening in the amygdala in order to finish.
Deafferentation has got to be synonymous with many traditions of meditation. With many styles, it would seem that breath, a word, or chants are supposed to take the focus of the mind. Participants are often told that if their mind wanders during the meditation, it's no big deal--just come back to the object of attention. Interesting. I think this gives far more ammunition to the idea of practicing only five minutes per day.
If deafferentation is the ability of the mind to ignore other stimuli at the behest of finishing a task, then is it really wise to practice an hour a day? Is it really wise to push one's attention that far, especially when beginning guitar? I say no. I can very sincerely say that the quality of the attention one gives the guitar is directly proportional to the speed of learning. Five minutes of highly concentrated practice per day tends to give the brain an opportunity to wade into the world of music, to train it (so to speak) to learn to ignore other messages. Like messages from the amygdala?
Perhaps the goal of that five minutes of practice per day is more like training the brain to ignore other messages and focus on guitar. Perhaps it strengthens up the brain for more intense practicing, adding further and more interesting skills to the pallate. Perhaps five minutes a day of practice is really all a person needs to play guitar when they start?
As if it weren't totally obvious, I think that five minutes is just the right amount of time to practice when anyone is first starting guitar. If I need to say this a thousand times, I will. If you are beginning guitar, you do not need to practice an hour a day. You do not need to practice a half hour a day. Just five minutes. Form your own opinions, but I have my reasons:
1. Five minutes is about all the concentration that we might have at a brand new pursuit. It's more important to be casually interested in it at first, and allow the interest to grow in time as we get better at it.
2. Playing guitar is very much about escaping reality. That concentrated five minutes will help you get that in a small dosage. I think guitar can be pretty addictive after time passes, once a person reaches the point where two hours can go by and they didn't notice it. Five minutes is not a strict amount of time, but the point is not to overdo it.
3. Five minutes is hardly drudgery. On the contrary, an hour of "practice," really hard practice, will suck if you aren't into it yet, or just want to have fun doing it. I clearly remember times when I hated practicing. It just wouldn't flow. When you are trying to have fun, "No Pain No Gain" doesn't apply.
There are teachers who believe that practicing an hour a day is neccesary in the case of a beginning student, but I disagree. I firmly believe that if someone wants to have fun, they can get away with just taking the small amount of time to do it every day, and that's it. If you are planning on playing a show, or perhaps majoring in music, then maybe five minutes isn't enough practice. Hours and hours of practice? It's pretty indicative of a professional musician. If you want to have fun? Five minutes. Five good concentrated minutes. That's about all.
Sometimes, though I really hate to admit it, practicing guitar could be a whole lot easier if we watched TV while doing it. Why? When we first learn something new, it is at the cognitive level. Unless we have Super-Man-esque concentration levels, we need a distraction. Thankfully, there are CSI reruns. After we learn something new on guitar in a lesson, it is not something we need to understand so much as play.
Try this out if you don't believe me:
Try learning two new chord progressions. It could be something easy like say: G-Bminor-A-E (the Bminor is thrown in there because it isn't the most used chord in pop music). Or it could be something more in line with where you are at. Then just sit down on the couch, watch your favorite Indiana Jones movie, and then when it gets to the part where Indiana Jones is punching some evil dude, check on your progress (which is like every three minutes in those movies).
Voila. Watching TV gives your brain a break, and allows your fingers to get more nimble at playing guitar.
This blog is dedicated to the idea that learning and playing guitar should be as fun as possible. It is a fine read if you are starting to learn guitar from scratch and if you tend to search for ways to be more creative.
