• Thinking: What a Concept! Part One
• It's a Jungle Out There! Part Two
• Walking Exercises, on the Other Hand
• Posture On Rock Guitar
• Begin With Acoustic or Electric?
• Cramping On Bar Chords

I was very fortunate when I was growing up, because my father worked for one of the greatest companies a person could work for, especially at that time (1950's, 60's). He worked for IBM. IBM was founded by a very great and visionary individual named Thomas Watson. Mr. Watson didn't just start a company, he created and controlled an entire culture, an entire philosophy of life, which he carefully taught to all his employees.

The cornerstone of his philosophy was embodied in one word. This word was hanging on every wall in and IBM office, and, along with boxes of punch cards, this word was in my house all the time, because it was the title of the official IBM magazine that came to our house.

The word is THINK. Thomas Watson realized that "most of the trouble people get into begins with the phrase "I didn't think before I acted". It is a major step forward in our growth when we realize this truth. The next major step is when we become aware of how little thinking we actually do, especially at the times we need it most, which is when we have "problems", a word which Principled Players immediately translate into "challenges".

I got a real insight into this one time when I couldn't find my wallet, (an almost daily occurrence, because I'm usually "thinking" about something else!). I caught myself mindlessly roaming around the room, looking in all the same places I had already looked, over and over as if it were going to magically materialize! It gave me the feeling of "doing something", and allowed me to avoid the hard work of sitting down and thinking where I might have left it. But it didn't give me my wallet! In the same way, guitar players will mindlessly repeat the same ineffective actions over and over again, as if the notes are going to somehow magically appear! We will do anything but put that guitar down a second and really think about what we are doing, and why it isn't working, and what we can do about it.

I have experienced, literally, struggling with some passage of music for years, and one day solving it because I put the guitar down, started thinking about everything I was doing (fingerings, arm./hand/finger positions, etc), and began to "think of", or "create", new possibilities to experiment with. And because of doing that "thinking process", I would often "solve" those problems on the spot, or get pointed in the right direction.

If we are really honest and insightful, we may realize that, in fact, we NEVER think! We just mindlessly adopt the ideas and attitudes of what is around us, and we never actually examine, inspect, juggle, calculate these ideas and attitudes with our minds, or, just as important, "feel" these ideas and attitudes with our emotions (intuition), If we are equally honest, observant and insightful about ourselves as guitar players, we will likewise see that when confronted with problems, with things we are having trouble doing on the guitar, we don't actually THINK. Instead we mindlessly DO what we have already been doing, even though it is producing no result. We keep doing the same fingering or picking, we keep approaching it with the same hand position. We don't stop, re-examine, observe, draw conclusions, plan a new approach, and then observe and draw conclusions again.

To be a guitar player who considers continual growth to be the cornerstone of their day to day activities, practicing and playing, is to be a person who is going to be constantly confronted by one thing: PROBLEMS! Practicing is nothing but the confrontation of problems, one after another. If you are one of the gazillions of players who are NOT experiencing improvement in your playing , then please realize that you do not know how to solve problems. Don't be depressed! Be like me. I love finding out what a jerk I am, because then I can start getting better!

For more insight into how "thinking" dramatically improves the rate of our growth as guitarists, read these essays:

Aggressive Practicing
Practice Organization

Next time I will talk about exactly what thinking is, and how you can start doing it too!

Last week, I psycho-analyzed the mindset of a majority of my fellow guitar teachers, and I am sure I made a lot of new friends among them! In case there are any teachers left who I haven't offended, I would like to make another excursion into the psychology of guitar teachers!

Part of my mission with GuitarPrinciples is to educate guitar students as to what is REALLY possible for them to achieve as players. I have seen with my own eyes that it is extremely common for students to have LIMITATIONS placed upon them BY THEIR TEACHERS, for no good reason other that the fact that the teacher is really only able to produce results with students who already have "talent". Of course, the student adopts these limitations as part of their own belief system, and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. "I am tone deaf", " I have no sense of rhythm", "I'm just not musical", "I'm too old", and the litany goes on.

Last week, I included a letter from a player commenting on how guitar teachers seem to have this egotistical "we must do it my way, with the music I like" approach to every student. He wondered why guitar teachers in particular are so obnoxious in this way. I said I would print a letter from a life long guitar teacher I came into contact with on the web when I first started to promote "The Principles". Being my usual naive self, I sent this guy my book, figuring he would see how wonderful it is!

Well, not only didn't he think my book was wonderful, he disclosed a whole lot about his philosophy of teaching. I showed his remarks to a friend, who made a very perceptive comment. She said "he is threatened by the statement you are making that anyone can learn to play the guitar well. He wants to feel that he has some special talent, not available to everyone."

After much reflection, I believe my friend is right.

Here are excerpts from the letter I received, only a few days after I sent him my book.......

Dear Jamie,

Your book on "correct" practice techniques represents an approach which I fundamentally disagree with. Although most of what I say here is my own personal opinion, I do need to take issue with a statement you make which I believe is highly misleading. You say, "I firmly believe that anyone can learn to play the guitar as well as they want to, if they have the correct information and use the correct approach." This is simply not true.

There are many journeyman basketball players who work every bit as hard as Michael Jordan, who maybe use the same practice techniques as Michael Jordan, who wish they could be as good as Michael Jordan, who never will. We are all given a certain amount of talent or potential.

I also think that your statement that "anyone can play...as well as they want to.." seems to make the assumption that it's all about technique and mechanics. How can you possibly think this when it is clear that some people have better ears than others, some have more natural rhythm, some are more naturally creative, some have less personal baggage.

I once had a student who, when I played two notes a fifth apart, could not hear which one was higher or lower. We worked for a year to get to where he could hear differences between notes. Fortunately, we set very modest goals, and he got a great deal of satisfaction from hearing music in ways he had never heard it before. Do you honestly believe he could go as far as he wanted to, just by learning to move his fingers in a certain way? I believe this statement can cause potential harm to someone reading it, who naively believing that they have no limitations, would then feel that they have failed if they have done all the "correct" things and still not gotten to where they wanted to.

It could cause a marginally talented person to think they have done something "wrong" when they have followed the formula and failed.

Now, the first thing I want you to notice about this teacher's reaction is his passionate and steadfast opposition to my book, EVEN THOUGH HE DIDN'T READ IT! Because of what he said, and because he responded within a few days, I am quite confident he read the preface, and perhaps glanced through the book. He certainly didn't give it the time and thought that anyone who is using "The Principles" knows is required to even BEGIN to see the potential of this method of approaching the learning process as it relates to guitar.

He was poised to dis-agree from the beginning. Like most guitar teachers, he was quite proud of his particular viewpoints (as I am of mine), and he was ready to assert them as superior to someone else's, even if he really had no understanding of what someone else's viewpoint is (a mistake I never make). This teacher is obviously much more interested in passionately asserting his own viewpoints, and vehemently disagreeing with a different viewpoint, than in even UNDERSTANDING what he is dis-agreeing with! He is harshly judging a different viewpoint, even though he has taken no time or trouble to know it, or understand it. What do you think would happen to you if you came in for lessons, and presented him with some "teaching challenges" he hasn't seen before, and required a different approach than he is used to using? Do you think he would take the time and trouble to understand where you were coming from, especially if he had never seen anyone coming from that place before (which happens often as the years go by, there are a lot of different types of people out there!).

You would be labeled as one of those people with very limited "talent" and "potential".

This ego based, sell-protective "attitude of limitation" is the primary characteristic you must be on guard against in lessons. You will be affected by it, you will inherit the legacy of that limitation, even as the teacher himself suffers it without knowing it. (This does not mean you cannot learn anything from a teacher like this, you can learn a lot because they obviously have a lot of knowledge, you must step carefully however, especially if you are coming from a different place musically and temperamentally.

The next thing I want you to notice is the statement "we are all given a certain amount of talent and potential". This is an extremely arrogant statement. It is the assumption of putting yourself in the position of not only assessing for someone where they are (talent), but also how far they will be able to go (potential).

I cannot count the number of great people I have read of, who at one time or another were told by some "expert" in their field, that they would never amount to anything, or achieve the goal they said they would. These people, after wisely ignoring the judgment placed upon them by some "expert", then went out and became great in their field, usually achieving something no one else ever had.

While it may be true that we are all "given" something, to think that you can judge WHAT that something is, and then judge what that something can BECOME, is to presume a power that no one can truly have. Albert Einstein comes to mind first, being so "unusual" in his mental organization when he was a child, that the people around him could only conclude he was "retarded". If there was any lack of ability, it was on the part of others to recognize the talent and potential that was really there. They couldn't recognize it, because Einstein's peculiar mental nature didn't fit their pre-conceived notions of what "intelligence" SHOULD be. His peculiar mental nature led him to ponder questions no one else had ever thought of before, such as "what would happen if I sat on a beam of light and shined a flashlight ahead of me", which led him to discover the relative nature of space and time. Not too shabby!

To base your teaching approach upon the judgment you have already made about how far a person can go, is a supreme violation.

For myself, I am interested in the greatness that lies within every ordinary person. I look for it, I find it, I point you toward it, and together, we nurture it.

Next: More of what is wrong with this teachers attitude: the latest scientific discoveries in the field of "expert performance".

Okay, you figured it out. There is more to doing those walking exercises than just the left hand that I showed you. A number of people wrote to ask about that other hand we use in playing, the right one. Here's the deal.

I am using just index and middle, playing rest strokes on all six strings to play them. If you are training yourself for fingerstyle guitar, practice them that way. Pay special attention to using the Gradual Pressure Technique to minimize Sympathetic Tension throughout the right hand and arm while doing the rest strokes.

If you are developing pick technique, play them down-up across all six strings. Either way, the practice process will involve developing the 3rd Foundation Exercise, the "Right Hand String Shifting Exercise". Work the right hand alone, with the metronome, using the Basic Practice Approach.

I was in a lesson the other day with a new student, and he was doing such good "slow tempo" practice on this exercise, that I decided to put a clip of him on the site for you to see. He is doing it slow, at 60, 2 clicks per beat. We will be using the Basic Practice Approach over the next few weeks, to work it up to speed. I will show you the results of that practice later on.

Check it out here down at the bottom of the page.

Posture On Rock Guitar

Hi Jamie,

I have been making improvements, by reading and practicing the techniques in your book, however there is one thing that eludes me; Practicing with proper posture and all when sitting makes a HUGE difference, but how do you transfer that to the rock guitarist's posture?

I was practicing seated for a few weeks using the lessons in your book, but when I went to apply this in a band situation, I noticed that at higher neck positions, my left hand finger's muscles would tighten up to the point where it was painful. Is there a guideline for setting the strap length? I would appreciate it. I haven't seen this topic addressed before. Thanks, Brian S

Hi Brian,

The strap length may be the factor you would want to experiment with. Higher is always better. But more important than that is to understand a few things about practicing and playing, or we could say, going from the "training process" to the "performance process".

You see, Brian, if you are standing and playing, you can't expect to have your motor reflexes reproduce the results you got when you sat and practiced. They MAY be able to, depending on your level of development, but I wouldn't assume they would in a performance situation. Understand this: when we practice, we want to create the "optimum" learning conditions for the playing mechanism (motor system). This gives us a foundation for the many variations of conditions we will actually encounter in playing.

For instance, an opera singer needs to run around the stage and sing in all kinds of strange body postures, bending over, laying on the floor, etc. Strict attention to posture and the other variables that can be controlled to create optimum conditions for the vocal mechanism while practicing, give the singer more flexibility to DEPART from those strict conditions if needed.

However, we need to also simulate real life playing conditions, especially if we are going to be performing soon, and it is going to be in a different circumstance or setting than our practice provides. The singer needs to actually EXPERIENCE the running around and laying on the floor and singing and so forth, so the motor system learns how to make the necessary adjustments. The better the foundation that has been established, the easier it is to have a high level of performance even in conditions that are not optimum. (I can play things perfectly while standing on one leg that I couldn't even play at all at one time in my development.)

So, yes, experiment with the strap length, but also realize that you need to PRACTICE playing while standing up, and perhaps moving around too, if that is what you will be doing on stage. Practice playing in those high positions while standing if that is what is going to be happening when you perform. Use the various tools such as No Tempo Practice and the Basic Practice Approach while standing. You'll see a difference.

Begin With Acoustic or Electric?

I am an adult beginner never having taken a guitar lesson. In fact I don't even have a guitar. My Question is for a beginning student should I go with an electric or acoustic guitar or does it make a big difference? I have a little musical background on piano, and enjoy all styles of music especially rock and country. Again Thank you for your book and the time you take to help. God bless you.

Whether you start with electric of acoustic does make a difference, but not what people usually think. People usually think electric is somehow "harder" than acoustic, and perhaps they should do acoustic first because of that, and do electric later.

I believe you should first do the one you are most excited about. Technically speaking, they are each equally accessible for a beginner, (assuming competent instruction). However, the technique is different in some ways for electric than for acoustic. In general, let this be your
guideline:

If your "first goal" is to be able to strum and sing, do acoustic, and learn the basic chords, and build a repertoire. All of that will be used when you pick up the electric later on.

If your first goal is to "jam with your friends" in a band situation, do electric first, learn the blues, power chords, and the pentatonic scales and common licks. Some of that will be used when you pick up acoustic later on.

Cramping On Bar Chords

Hi Jamie,

I've played for 28 years and am basically self taught. While I work full time and have two small children, I don't have much time to practice. Most of my practice comes in the form of orchestra rehearsal for my church orchestra, and playing in the worship band every weekend (we have 2 services on Saturday and 3 services every Sunday morning).

I don't have any problems for this type of playing.

Here is my problem. At Christmas and Easter our Church has very elaborate programs which we perform 9 to 10 times. I am usually playing for a full hour during these times, and often day after day for 3-4 days straight. During the rehearsals and performances my left hand cramps so bad I often have to stop playing.

The cramping is from barre chords, and occurs just behind the web between my thumb and first finger. Am I out of shape or playing incorrectly? Usually the cramping goes away about the time we end the performances, but last Christmas, I continued to have the cramps. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks in advance for your time.

Doug

Hi Doug,

It could be a few things, and perhaps a combination of these things. Here is what I would look at. First, make sure you warm up gradually. Do about 15 minutes of slow scales, or other mild workouts for the left hand. I have often experienced having to play something that demanded a lot of strength, meaning lots of bar chords or a song in a nasty key like Bb, and not being warmed up. Let me tell you, it can be "my hand is falling off" time! Especially when I was playing a 12 string!

So, make sure you warm up.

If that doesn't improve the situation, then look to your technique. MOST people press way too hard on everything, especially bars. Make sure you read my essay on bars, on Making Bar Chords Easy.

The last thing to look at is the guitar. Make sure the action (lowness of strings, and also the tension, which determines how much force is needed to press them down) is not unreasonable. You could try lower tension strings, moving from perhaps light to extra light.

My guess, Doug, would be that it is mainly the second reason, pressing too hard. If so, your entire technique, from holding the instrument, to hand and arm position, to exact finger placement, would need to be examined. And remember: RELAX THOSE SHOULDERS!

All material copyright © 2003 by Jamie Andreas, GuitarPrinciples.com