Your Muscles Don’t Know Right From Wrong
Muscle memory is excellent, but it can work for or against you. For example, what happens if you do the right thing once, then the wrong thing, and then various combinations of right and wrong? You end up with some pretty confused fingers!
This is what most people do when they practice guitar.
If you make many mistakes when you play, you are one of these people. So instead, you must be very aware of what your fingers are really doing to practice effectively.
When you practice, do you make sure your fingers do the right thing? Are you allowing your fingers to make haphazard movements? For example, in ten repetitions of a passage, guitar students commonly play the passage ten different ways. As a result, you make mistakes, play wrong notes, and say, “oops.”
Even If It’s Wrong, Your Fingers Remember
Usually, the person practicing must be made aware that they did it ten different ways. It may be something relatively obvious, like using slightly different fingerings, or something more subtle, like tension in various muscle groups or stopping breathing.
The person practicing is unaware of the differences, but the poor fingers are! The player then tries to play that passage for someone... how will they ever know which of those ten ways the fingers might decide to do it?
Your fingers can be your faithful servants and friends or your worst enemy. It all depends on what they are doing when you practice. They have excellent memories, but they have no conscience! They will repeat what they have done before but don’t know the difference between right and wrong. That is up to you to know the right thing to make your fingers do to achieve your guitar practice goals.
How do we do this when we practice? By swinging the hammer slowly!
How to Practice Guitar Effectively: Swing The Hammer Slowly
You may have heard many times, “practice slowly.” And in fact, it is the best advice anyone can give you about effective guitar practice.
But there is one major problem – no one knows what that means. I can guarantee you that unless you are already a pro, you don’t understand what practicing slowly really means - (even seasoned pros sometimes forget!)
You do not know how to practice guitar effectively if you are always “trying to play the music” and have never sat down and made your finger movements incredibly slow... I mean so slow that you are aware of your whole body and your breathing. If you have never played that slowly, you don’t know what slow practice means.
And when you discover it, it will blow your mind!
You will understand why you see so many raving testimonials from people who have used “The Principles.” They learned what slow practice means, and they started doing it. It changed everything for their guitar playing and guitar future.
The Method For Slow and Effective Guitar Practice
Now I will give you the method, the actual thing you must do when you sit to practice. It has a name. It is called “no tempo practice.”
It takes time to understand and do it well, but you will immediately see excellent results when you start doing it.
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You’re good Charlotte.
Thank you, Jamie………Your tips and bits of wisdom are priceless.
Thanks George!
Sure I know all my tension comes from trying to play the song in my head instead of playing guitar from heart.
Playing from the heart wont get rid of tension. Training your fingers correctly will get rid of the tension. Then, the music in your heart will be able to come out of your fingers.