NOTE: Even though the following essay was written with the special intention of instructing teachers, those students practicing without the benefit of a teacher should study it as well, since they are, in effect, their own teacher.

Correct Practice, as all Principled Players know, must fulfill two conditions: knowing the right thing to do, and then making sure you do it. The first part, providing the correct knowledge, is my (and every teachers) responsibility. The second part, making sure the correct things are actually being done, time after time, repetition after repetition, speed after speed when using The Basic Practice Approach, this is the job of the student when practicing alone.

However, it is very important for teachers to realize that they cannot take for granted that a student will be capable of having the intense kind of focus necessary to insure that the correct thing is actually being done time after time. This is especially true if a new and unfamiliar skill is being learned, and even more especially true if a new way of doing something is replacing an old way. As I have stated in the "Summa Principia", "physical tension induces mental confusion". The clouds of confusion will be part of the usual climate conditions surrounding the student's head, as they are constantly challenged to adapt to higher levels of physical demand in the process of developing guitar technique, and the teacher must be there to dispel those clouds, and bring the light of awareness and understanding to the student. In "The Principles", I have called this "inserting awareness points into stress points".

This means that it is critical that the teacher actually sit there with the student, metronome in hand, and conduct the Basic Practice Approach, from the beginning, up to the students' present limit. Along the way, the teacher must carefully observe the student, and catch every detail of incorrect action that may arise, and make sure it is corrected before the next speed is attempted. In this way, we make sure we "bring up the ease", and not the "disease" as we make each new attempt at a higher speed (and so, make a greater demand on the body/mind playing mechanism). The teacher must also make sure that the student understands what went wrong, why it went wrong, when it went wrong, and how it went wrong. Both teacher and student must be satisfied that the ability to be aware of, and to fix, wrong actions has been achieved. Then, and only then, can teacher or student expect that correct practice can take place during the week.

This is what I mean by "Quality Control" during practice. Our ability to conduct our practice with a high degree of Quality Control is essential. It is the teacher's job, at each lesson, to discover what is most likely to go wrong during the process of skill building in which the student will be engaged all week.

I mention this because I believe that all too often the teacher is assuming that by merely carefully explaining the correct action, and by going over it a few times, the student will be equipped to conduct correct and powerful practice over the week. This is manifestly not true, and there are a few reasons why.

First, the student, almost by definition, is still developing the ability for powerful focus and awareness of the state of the body's relative states of tension and relaxation, as well as its actual actions during playing. This means it is extremely easy for there to be things going on of which the student has no awareness.

Secondly, we cannot assume that just because a student can perform an action correctly at a slow tempo, they will be able to maintain correct action as the tempo increases. There have been times in teaching when I was tempted to make that assumption, and found, to my horror, that when I asked the student to do a BPA work-up in front of me, everything went wrong! And that, I realized, is what would be happening if I had trusted the student to do the right thing at home! There is a good reason for this, and it is a critical understanding: there are conditions that present themselves at higher speeds that are not present at lower speeds.

Like a car that is out of alignment and starts to shake to 60 mph, but is fine at 30 mph, the imperfection will not show itself until sufficient stress is placed on the system. The imperfection is there no matter what the speed, but it does not create effects. One of the primary benefits of the Basic Practice Approach is that it allows us to observe the gradual emergence of the effects of imperfections in our technique and approach.

So, every error which is going to occur (and they can vary widely with different students building the same skill), must be discovered in the lesson, before the student is sent home. They must all be written down in the student's lesson notebook, and the teacher must, at the next lesson, check each one of those things to make sure they were tended to during the week of practice. If they were not tended to, the student's attention must be drawn to them, and the student's intention to do the right thing during the upcoming week must be established. (In this, and in all things, the student must clearly understand what the teacher expects at the next lesson, the teacher must verify that this understanding has been established, and it must be in writing in the students' notebook, to be checked the next week).

3 Areas Of Awareness

The students ability to observe the imperfections they must correct will be fostered in three areas, visual (seeing what is wrong), aural (hearing what is wrong), and kinesthetic (feeling what is wrong). The teacher must train the student to see what is wrong, hear the effects of the wrong action in the sound itself (missing or damaged notes), and, most importantly, to feel the uncomfortable physical tension that precedes and accompanies the wrong action. (The student must be trained, over time, to distinguish between the appropriate and necessary effort that accompanies normal and natural development of the playing mechanism from the pathological conditions that accompany all the effects of incorrect practice).

Special attention must be given to precision of rhythm. Distortion of rhythm is the first effect, in the sound, of physical tension. Constant recording and playback during lessons will be found to be an extremely powerful training tool.

As with everything else concerning our development as guitarists, our ability to conduct powerful Quality Control is an ever evolving ability; it increases in proportion to the microscopic awareness that correct practice continually engenders. This is the primary reason we practice Beginners Mind, and visit the bottom of our practice with a given piece of music, no matter how many years we have played it. In every practice session, our ability to see something new should be greater than it has ever been. In reality, we are never practicing the same music twice.

I have posted a new lesson at TrueFire on the subject of achieving speed in fingerpicking. I suggest anyone working on fingerstyle or classical check it out.

Getting to "first base" with guitar. Many students never reach the point where they can strum & sing, sometimes after years of trying. Find out why, and how to remove the 2 biggest obstacles.

Review Is Required! Robert Louis Stevenson said "A man who holds the same views at forty that he did at twenty, is a man who has been stupefied for twenty years!" I say, a person who plays a piece of music at the same level now as he did a year ago, does not know how to practice and does not know how to create vertical growth in their playing ability. Find out why you MUST make review a regular part of your practice.

Jamie Plays! Hear samples from Jamie's CD of Guitar Classics! "Classical Gas", "Yesterday", and more!

While I am extremely proud of the amazing progress and seemingly boundless enthusiasm that so many players and students (and around here, what's the difference?!) have been making, I think most of them would agree that there is one student whose ferocity of Intention is leaving all of our heads spinning!

In fact, even though I have often recommended to students (out of a sincere regard for their progress) "look, just try to be as much like me as you can be!), I think I have to (out of the same sincere regard) start changing that to "look, try to be as much like Karla as possible"!

I mean really, I am starting to get an inferiority complex, I am starting to feel like an underachiever when I read all of Karla's posts on the forum, and then I visit Karla's website, where she codifies and makes available all of her intense, creative, and effective strategies for using The Principles, (and everything else she comes into contact with), and then I read about her concert performances, and then I read about the movies she has made of those performances, and how she is sending them to everybody, and on and on and on……The scary thing is that this is probably only half of it, she doesn't have time to tell us about the rest of it, being so busy actually doing all this stuff!

Well, I'll tell you, I will gladly move over and yield my place as most inspirational role model. It will probably be a lot easier for most students to identify with, and also to access their own power and confidence in themselves, by studying the efforts of this 11 month old guitar student who I believe, is new to music as well as the guitar. It is no surprise to discover that Karla is a very powerful, and a very successful person in life in general, having made her mark in the computer field. She is a perfect example of something I believe I said in the "Summa Principia"; what you are as a person is what you will be as a guitarist.

Characteristic of what I call "highly developed people" Karla takes an intense interest in other people, and spends an enormous amount of time and energy helping other people on the forum, providing direction and inspiration to all who ask (and many who don't!). One of her recent innovations/inspirations was founding the BPA club in the forum, where a number of people pick specific technical and musical challenges to solve using the Principles and the Basic Practice Approach, reporting the details of their progress (I believe they have just rightfully elected her President!)

So, I am sure I speak for many people when I say a big thank you to Karla for all she has done, and will do. If you would like to meet Karla, just drop by the Forum. Spending time with "winners" is one of the best ways to become a winner yourself, and we are all very fortunate to have a winner like Karla on our team!

Some Karla Highlights:

Karla's "Practical Approach of learning the Principles"...This study approach facilitates putting the Principles to use in every day guitar practice. It is intended to give guidance for how much time to spend in studying technique versus theory, repertoire and review. Furthermore it breaks down the foundation exercises in easy-to-follow daily workouts that provide a variety for the student yet still stresses good daily workout habits.

Karla's BPA Club Report:...Karla describes her process of working the Walking Exercises up to 60 in 16th notes using the Basic Practice Approach (with good form, of course!)

Reading through my 'Principles' I did not notice any command on when to increase the tempo. My understanding is that one uses no tempo to learn a motion, then the Basic Practice Approach.

However, if at a certain tempo one is no longer relaxed when executing a movement, or one feels tension in the wrist/ shoulders/ whatever, should you stop and practice that tempo, OR decrease the tempo (Beats Per Minute) to a slower speed where there was no tension and stick to that?

Thanks Alin

Hi Alin,

If you become aware of harmful tension when doing a work up with the BPA, the first thing you do is attempt to release that tension at the speed you are presently at. Many times, we can do that simply with more focus (more Attention & Intention). If we are unable to do that, the 2nd thing to do is to stop and do "Bottoms Up", meaning, turn off (or ignore) the metronome, and review the move "no tempo" with great focus on relaxation (including whole body awareness, and breath).

Then, re-try at the previous tempo. If that does not work, you must go back down in tempo to where complete control, and complete verification of that control through focused awareness is possible, and easy, and then proceed to work up through the speeds again, maintaining that awareness at each speed.

Now, sometimes we notice not only tension as a inner sensation, but also a very visible manifestation of that tension in the form of a mis-behaving finger, perhaps our third finger is sticking up in the air in response to an action of the 2nd. A "biggie" like this usually requires an "eradication campaign"; very thorough work ups, with lots of no tempo, over a long period of time.

So, at one end of the spectrum, we may be able to do a "quick fix" on the spot (I call this "auto-correct"). On the other end, for major and intractable technical flaws, we must resort to an extended "eradication campaign". I do them all the time, and they last anywhere from months, to years (yes, there have been things I have changed in my technique that have literally taken me years to accomplish, it doesn't matter to me, as soon as I see the need for a change, I get on it right away, and I don't look back!)

Telling The Key Of A Song....

Dear Jamie,

Can you tell a key of a song by (a) The first chord? or (b) the fact that all the chord roots or most of them are in a particular scale?

For instance, Hey Joe is simply C, G, D, A, E, which are all in the key of A,I think. Does that make it in that key?

Or because it starts with C, the key of C? Thanks,

Bob

Hi Bob,

Boy, that is a tough question to answer, because unless you understand a lot about music theory, you are not really going to be in a position to comprehend the answer, and so, most musicians rely on experience, and various rules of thumb to get by (and this is one reason why I am always urging people to undertake a serious study of note-reading/theory, even if it is a long range goal).

You see, the question itself is wrong, and arises from a lack of understanding the whole story. Here is the deal: not all songs are in "major keys". You cannot fit all songs into the harmonic structures we call "major keys". Many songs are based on "modes", which are more "primitive" or less complex structures than major keys. They may be related, or have similarities to major keys, but they are not major keys.

So, this chord progression you mention, is like that, it is not in a major key. If I wanted to put it in the framework of a major key, I would look at it this way: C, G, D is IV, I, V in the key of G, while D, A, E is IV, I, V in the key of A. So, the D chord is serving as a "pivot" between 2 keys, being the V in G, and the IV in A.

This happens often in songs that are written from major scales, they change keys within the song, borrowing chords from other keys temporarily, as well as using chords common to two keys to act as "pivots" to switch in and out of them.

But this song is based viewed as being based on the good old A minor pentatonic, with the notes A C D E and G, which, yes, are the roots of the chords. Use that scale to jam, and you are good to go!

So, we would say it is in "A", but not the "key" of A major, but the "mode" of A Minor Pentatonic (in this case, perhaps, a distinction without a difference!).

But what will make a difference is studying the Mel Bay course on this site, and getting a grounding in basic music theory, learning traditional harmony, which will provide, over time, a framework withing which to understand the kind of things you are asking about.