TIP#7-ARE YOU AWARE OF WHAT’S HAPPENING?!

This is super important and I’d say it relates closely to the topics of “looping” I mentioned earlier (see Tip #3) and also playing slowly (see Tip # 1 and 2). AWARENESS when playing is critical to getting better, faster. 

What I mean by “awareness” is that we all need to get better at spotting problems as they happen and then stop to fix them (as opposed to just playing blindly through the song, hoping to get to the end “safely” without really listening to what’s happening along the way). Playing slowly really helps bring out the problem spots and make them more noticeable. Looping helps correct the problems once we have found them.

For example, I’ve been working on my right hand technique a lot lately, and I’m (unfortunately ?) finding a lot to work on!  I’m taking a few pieces and playing them very slowly and I’m finding that the places in the song where I’m having trouble (hitting a wrong note, or missing a string with my right hand) are in the same places every time. It’s like my right hand has memorized the WRONG movement and it plays it the same (wrong) way every time. It’s like I’ve programmed the computer (my right hand) to play incorrectly.  And now I have to do the hard work of “deleting” the improper right hand technique and replacing it with the proper right hand movements.  

But if I hadn’t become AWARE of the problem, I would have just kept playing this stuff wrong forever. Now I’m attacking the problem and it’s helping me play more precisely, smoother and with better groove.  

So playing slowly can really help you become AWARE of problems. When you were zipping by at a quick tempo, you didn’t notice these things, but slowing things down will make them more “visible,” and noticeable, and therefore fixable!

I’ll be honest with you-this new awareness can be very discouraging!  I’m working on songs I’ve played for many years.  But I haven’t been playing them as well as I’d like to, and now I’m doing things to work on that. And I’m seeing a lot of improvement!  So let’s all improve our AWARENESS when we play, and use that tool to become better musicians!

• This topic was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by Rob Ickes.