"It's going great!"
Posted by John P on Jan-27-01
I’ve had Jamie’s book for almost a year now, and can honestly say it has revolutionized my approach to practice, my attitude and my actual playing.
I think I got Jamie’s book at just the right time for me. My left hand development was static, I didn’t know how to do anything about it, and I didn’t know how to stop making the same mistakes over and over. How this has all changed! I’ve now got a framework which explains why things go wrong and enough of an understanding to put things right. For me one of the key benefits of Jamie’s book has been that I can now apply my new knowledge and I’ve learned how to help myself in all the situations I encounter when practicing.
As far as using the book and learning new exercises my approach is described below. I think an excellent parallel is sports or athletic coaching. Athletes know they won't get far without a carefully planned development program, and I now realize that neither will I on the guitar unless I do something similar.
Rigorous, disciplined practice gets results, faster than random practice. I’ve proved it to myself and I’m not going back to my old ways! One of the great benefits of Jamie’s book is that I’ve learned that’s it’s ok to be no good when you first tackle a new piece. I’m relaxed mentally about it, I know the basic approach will work, and sure enough the piece eventually emerges from the sequence of posing, no tempo practice and so on, almost without undue effort and at it’s own speed. Zen and the art of guitar playing!
Jamie's book struck a chord (no pun intended!) with me in terms of:
a) know what you should be practicing and b) only spend time practicing things correctly. As far as possible I ONLY do those things and the moment I'm not, I stop, figure out why not and continue. A lot of the time I found it's just down to lack of concentration so I made myself a sign with "PAY EXTREME ATTENTION" in giant letters. It’s in my line of sight over the music stand and it seems to work. At all costs I avoid mindless repetition. If I can't concentrate I recognize and accept the fact and stop trying for vertical growth, maybe play a few tunes well within my capability for fun, and to remind myself that I can actually play something well.
When learning new pieces I use the basic approach and follow it to the letter. It works, period. I now keep a record of all the pieces in my repertoire, and for each piece note down level of tension, speed achieved, how I felt about it overall, and points to note for next time. That way when I next play the piece I know where to start from, I can measure my progress and feel good about any improvement. A metronome is essential for this and I love the feeling of knowing just where I am with a piece. Since using Jamie’s basic approach I have been able to get much of my repertoire up to speed - a feat which had previously evaded me - but then I before Jamie’s book I thought metronomes weren’t of any use to guitarists!
I have found I make most progress if I restrict the number of pieces I play a day, but play them over and over using the full range of Jamie's armory - rotating attention, following, no tempo practice and posing. Every time I make mistake I stop, play it slowly enough until I can figure out why and what to do to put it right. I try to measurably improve my competence on each piece each time I play.
Some days I do more of Jamie's exercises than others, but I repeatedly reread her book and probably consult it on a daily basis. Like it says on the cover "Every time you read this book you will become a better player", and I find each time I reread I get a bit more of Jamie's message. I use the same discipline of record keeping to know where I am with the exercises. One of the areas which I think the book needs to address is the difference between effort and tension. I’m sure Jamie has made some comments in the weekly wisdoms somewhere but I think this is an area misunderstood by a lot of people. Playing the guitar is a mechanical activity and it will take effort to play but this should not be confused with tension.
Of course Jamie isn't the only source of information on how to practice and I have recently read "The Inner Game of Music" by Barry Green and "The Art and Technique of Practice" by Richard Provost. The first is a fascinating insight into the mental aspects of playing (heavily borrowed from the world of sport), and the latter is more about organizing yourself to maximize practice benefit. If you haven’t read them they are worth a look and will supplement your Jamie diet!
-John |