If you are thinking about picking up an instrument, this might be encouraging even if you aren’t going to be playing a guitar. Over the years I have played I have met dozens of people that have said they “just play by ear”.  What does that involve? Well, certainly it will take a fair amount of time. Most things like this do. I have been wanting to write a sort of guide booklet for this scenario and maybe this is the place to do it. In my own experiences with guitar, playing “by ear” was certainly at the top of the list. Reading music was last!

So, what will you do to get started? Take time to listen to other people that play the instrument you are interested in. Who knows, maybe they learned it the same way that you will. We all have heard stories about our own musical heroes swearing that they never took a formal lesson, ever. Hmm… maybe that is true or maybe it is a way to promote the fact that they might have special, unique talent.  I am no expert but i would put money on the person with no special claim to extraordinary talent that works consistently any day!

That said, you know you must practice. Take the time to play your instrument. It does not matter so much “what” you play, as it does that you spend the right amount of time doing it. I saw a statement recently on a friend’s FB wall that said something along the lines of, “Practice what you want to Perform”. I certainly agree with that. Yes, there are some things to work on that are more technique oriented than others. With the right mix you will see progress in a positive direction.

Ok, the next word is “accountability”. you gotta be willing to hold yourself accountable. if you are 9 years old then Mom and Dad ought to have that responsibility. Too often I talk with parents that don’t do that. In my opinion they are making a big mistake. Write out a schedule for your practice and stick to it.  Do the same thing for marking improvements in your playing. An easy way to see measurable progress is to use a Metronome. I did not say I liked them. I said they are useful!

Using the right materials is also a big part of your success. You can buy every book out there and let them collect dust just as easy as you can pick one up and stick to it through the end. I have used Mel Bay books for a hundred years, well maybe it was 20. Since that time i decided to publish my own version of a lesson program. Talk to teachers and see what they recommend.

The main thing here is to finish what you start. and by the way, once you discover your  “inner musician” you will never really finish.

Here is a list of some things i would try to look at if i were starting over.  I discovered a few of these things pretty late in the game but the internet has made them readily available.

1. Learn how the guitar is constructed. If you understand something about the instrument you want to play you will know how to treat it and how to react to it. Not to mention how to respect it!

2. Learn about the different ways to write the “musical language”. For guitar this includes things like Tablature, Standard Notation, Chord Symbols, Chord Grids, Strumming and Fingerpicking patterns, using special tunings, using a capo, and probably a lot more that i can’t think of right this second.

3. Pick maybe a handful of styles to begin to familiarize yourself with. I never listened to the Beatles when I was younger. Now I can say that i am much more familiar with their music and that it has become an integral part of my own lessons program. Most folks that know me also know that I spent hundreds of hours studying the music of James Taylor and folks like him. That was long before i found a way to get into formal lessons. By the time I did i had decent “chops”.

4. Start with simple exercises. Don’t worry, you will be able to play something on your favorites list soon enough. Setting realistic goals is what a teacher can help you do. Most of us have enough time behind the wheel to know how to judge that sort of thing.

5. Repetition is the key to muscle memory! You can bet that most performers are not thinking so much about what they are playing at any moment. They probably have every single move memorized. Reading a chart during a performance is not very high on my personal list of favorites. Some things you will learn require movement that is so slow and exact that you may think you’ll never achieve it. Not true! Practice makes Permanent. so, go slowly and do it right so it stays right.

6. Try to learn a new thing about the instrument, its heritage, the types of things others are doing with it, and especially something about the language you are learning every chance you get. This makes it easier to be confident when you tell your friends you are becoming a musician. Welcome to the Family! You are! It is something that you can share or keep to yourself.

7. That brings us to another point that i want to make. Once you can play a little bit it would be helpful to take your music to a place where you can share it. In most of the workshops or jam sessions i have either led or been a part of i have seen people “warm up” and get really comfortable with what they know. Don’t be unwilling to ask the question that everyone else really wants to ask. You are doing this to improve yourself, right?

Maybe i will think on all this and add something to it later. If you want to make a comment or ask a question go right ahead!

Once you have decided to take the time to learn an instrument and actually sit down with it for little while you might realize that it is easy to get some sounds to happen. Though I must admit, my first experience with a tuba when i was in 5th grade was not all that satisfying. The guitar is really a “social instrument” in that you can find one at just about any party or in most houses. It has even been the focus of after school programs. I would be willing to bet that many of the people playing it have gathered just enough info to make some cool sounds. Go into any music store on a Saturday afternoon and you will hear the first few measures of a long list of songs played by the varying age ranges. This has been the same since the first time I set foot in a local music store. Rarely, do I hear play a song from beginning to end. Who knows why? Not that it really matters, but to someone who takes the craft very seriously it is noticeable.

So, where do these people get the information that helps them get to the point that they can play just enough to entertain themselves?  No doubt, social activities are a resource. Conversations, short encounters with other players, reading the first few chapters of a method book. How many people remember the song sung by Julie Andrews in the movie “The Sound of Music”? Learning the Solfege (Do Re Mi Fa…) is a great way to get started listening to music and understanding something about the relationships of the musical tones.

If you want to play by ear you will need to learn something about Scales and Chords. The Major scale is a great place to start. It is what you hear when you hear the song “The Sound of Music”. I bet most of you can do that. What makes this scale is also important; the relationships of the pitches to one another create a family of notes. Within this family you can construct chords, and melodies. Tones are separated by distances we call Half Steps and Whole Steps. The pattern that a Major Scale is based upon is  WWHWWWH.  I remember learning a sentence that uses words for the W for whole steps, and an H for the half steps. It goes like this: WE WERE HAPPY WHEN WE WENT HOME. Sometimes a device like this can really help. If you learn it and then get a book or some other resource that has diagrams of the Major scales on a fretboard you can then begin to find your way around. This requires absolutely no music notation reading knowledge. I still think that using this method would be more profitable if you use a Metronome. The discipline of a Metronome can really help when you are not going along the traditional path of a music education. I think another thing any student must do is to sing along with notes they are playing, whether in a random order or in ascending or descending order when practicing scales. This is a part of developing muscle memory. The students that i have worked with that did it progressed much more rapidly that those who ignored me. If you want to do this on your own you are smart to look for the most direct pathways. Ask a teacher! You don’t have to sign up for a long term commitment. I would advise taking at least one or two lessons to offer the teacher some sort of compensation for their knowledge and time, and most of all experience.

When i was much younger I had access to a great instructors, including my own mother. I learned a lot about music from her just by being around her “after school” lessons with other children. After a while though, i wanted something a little more mobile and also personal. The guitar offered me a private, close-up experience and that was a much more appealing pathway. There was no such thing as a desktop computer or the internet or anywhere near the free resources we have today. I had a record player and as many hours a day as i could devote to listening. It takes many hours to develop a keen sense of what you hear.  Sing along with everything you can. You don’t have to be good at it. You just have to be determined. You are going to get advice to do things you won’t want to do! If you ask a teacher what to do you are probably going to hear some advice along the lines of being devoted, keeping a schedule, being accountable, and lots of things like that.

Try singing two notes. It doesn’t matter what they are. Once you can tell what is happening and distinguish between them you are doing something “by ear”. It really isn’t that hard.  Now go to your instrument and try to find those same two notes!  If you do this every day for a week you will be surprised by how fast you begin to develop an “awareness” of pitch.

I would like to mention four characteristics of our musical tones. They are pitch, volume, duration and timbre. these things help to govern the quality of the music we listen to and appreciate. You don’t have to read music to gain a basic understanding of them.

The next time i sit down to write, i will make some observations about these tone characteristics… have a great week everyone!

The sound we hear when it comes to musical tones can be characterized in at least four ways that are easy to identify. They are Pitch, Volume, Duration, and Timbre. For the beginning guitarist, trying to discover these four characteristics is a good way to get familiar with the instrument without really knowing a lot about how to play.

Listen (pluck each string with the right hand fingers individually) to the difference in the sounds of each string without actually using the left hand to fret (pressing the a string down on the fret board). This is called playing open strings. The normal tuning for a guitar is E, A, D, G, B, E from sixth to first string (largest to smallest). The most logical reason for this choice probably has something to do facilitating the available fingers for fretting with the left hand.  One frequency that is commonly used to tune is the “A” pitch found by pressing the first string down at the fifth fret. If tuned correctly this will produce A-440. Once you have a starting point you can tune the rest of the strings simply by comparing them to each other at certain points on the fret board. I use this method and several others to make sure my guitar is correctly tuned. By the way, weather plays an important role in whether or not an instrument will stay in tune. The “natural pitches” we use in our music are named according to the first seven letters of our alphabet. An octave is a collection of these pitch names beginning with any letter, proceeding in alphabetical order and ending with the same letter as at the beginning: A B C D E F G A. This does not necessarily make a scale though. Single pitches are used to create melodies. Combining pitches creates harmony. We can talk about this again later..

Volume is another characteristic that we can use to influence our music. Terms like Crescendo and Decrescendo are commonly heard in orchestral music but certainly found in most of the music we listen to. Sometimes a song will be so quiet and all of a sudden something loud like a crash of a cymbal will be used to excite the audience. It works too! These

dynamics give our music life. With an acoustic guitar the hands are in control of volume. There are no external controls, so a fair amount of training is necessary to understand how to get the most from an instrument. One other thing about certain frequencies; it seems that higher frequencies are easier to hear than lower ones in some cases.

Duration has to do with the time a note will continue to resonate at an audible level. Most folks have heard of a Whole note or some other value. Even if you never have had a music lesson you can probably tell when a sound is long or short. Using different note values helps tell the musical story. Quite often the note values match the way we would speak a set of lyrics. In an instrumental piece the use of different note values helps keep the listener interested. We usually learn four note values at the beginning of music lessons. They are the Whole note, Half note, Quarter note and Eighth note. The relationship of these note symbols is very important. In order of value from Whole to Eighth we usually assign a value of four counts, then two counts, then one count, then one half count. there are many other symbols and even corresponding symbols for periods of musical silence which are called rests. Sometimes this musical silence adds a great dynamic to a piece.

Timbre (actually pronounced Tam- ber) is probably best explained by using the example of the difference between a brass instrument and a stringed instrument playing the same pitch. The color or texture of the sound is noticeably different. The guitar offers a wide variety of tone colors and textures, again depending on the placement of the hands. Try playing a string close to the bridge of the guitar which is usually a dark piece of wood at one end of the string. Strings are attached here so they can cause the top of the guitar to vibrate when they are plucked. Next, try plucking the string directly over the sound hole, and then try it directly over the twelfth fret. All of these are simple examples of tone color differences. The change in timbre from time to time in a performance can really add interest to a piece of music.

I would say that most if not all these musical tone characteristics help us identify and interpret our music.

What does modulation mean? Well, in the musical sense it means that the music changes in some aspect during a particular section, or between sections. The word actually can refer to several things, such as key, tempo, time signature, or maybe the overall texture of the piece. I recently watched a Youtube video in which the instructor launched into a detailed explanantion of all sorts of things (more than half a dozen) that a player should be familiar with before attempting to understand what it means to modulate. To be honest it was overwhelming to me. Maybe my learning style isn’t compatible with this young fellow or maybe I need to delve into the subject matter a little deeper sometime.

What I am thinking right now is that the majority of us out here play guitar recreationally. How about if we learn something that is simple and easily understood, without getting bogged down in the world of music theory too much. On the subject of key modulation let’s say that we are playing a song in the key of C major. More than likely we’ll be using the C chord, the F chord and the G7 chord. There may be more, but let’s keep it simple for now. Maybe you are playing and also humming along or even singing along. If you feel comfortable with everything that is going on then you could say that this is being done “in your key” for this song.

Now, suppose a friend joins in and you let them take over the singing, but it isn’t working quite as well. Maybe your friend needs the song to be in a higher/lower pitched key. How do you make a smooth transition from one key to another? There are several ways to get to a new key without sounding like that wasn’t part of the plan. The first one that i usually show my students involves using a very important chord from the new key that the song is moving to. This chord is called the five chord. Even better, we take this five chord and add one more note to it and then it is called a five/seven chord (think of the difference between a regular G chord and a G7 chord). Maybe it would be best to write out an actual chord progression so that this concept is easier to understand. If you don’t know these chords then that would be among the first things you’ll need to spend some time learning.

Let’s assume that you are strumming 4 times on each chord and keeping a steady rhythm going, again just to keep things very simple. Play the chord on the letter name and then one strum for each forward slash. The only exception will be right before we make the transition to the new key. In this case we will strum the C chord twice and then switch to E7 which is our transitional chord (the five /seven chord of the new key, which incidentally will be the key of A).

Here we go:

C / / / F / / / G7 / / / C / / / C / / / F / / / G7 / / / C / E7 / A / / / D / / / E7 / / / A / / / A / / / D / / / E7 / / / A / / /.

This is just one example of using modulation. Another easy example to understand is simply changing the feel of a song via dynamics. Consider using different levels of volume when changing from one musical phrase to another. If a phrase is repeated, don’t necessarily use the exact same dynamics each time you play it.

There are some more things to talk about on this subject so I will revisit it later,

jw

Recently someone asked me whether or not it was best to start lessons on an acoustic guitar or an electric. Well, of course this is not the first time I have been asked that question. In fact, I might have been the one asking that question 40+ years ago, when I first was discovering the world of guitars.

To the best of my knowledge my own first guitar was an acoustic instrument sold by Sears and Roebuck, Inc. Quality wise it was something akin to the Radio Flyer red wagon and the Daisy BB gun that were part of my boyhood collection of essentials. Most of us have heard guitar players talk about the “action” of this guitar or that one. Well, the one I had was a challenge to play and fortunately I accepted it. That is one of the compelling reasons salesmen (notice, I did not say “teachers”) use to move the hordes of electric guitars that have flooded the market. Being able to play “with ease” is very attractive on the surface. Electric guitars seem to have inherently lower (or easier) action. Nylon string classical, acoustic steel string, electric, and electric/acoustic are what I consider the primary categories for todays guitar. Any of these that are well made by a reputable manufacturer will have what could be considered reasonable action and will do just fine. Mostly, these days I play on a nylon stringed classical guitar. I didn’t even know very much at all about nylon stringed instruments when I was between the ages of six and ten. Interestingly, this version of guitar has its roots in the “gut string” which was, as I understand it, the first to arrive on the scene. Strings aside, the body shape of an instrument is also a strong factor in its performance. There are as many styles and shapes, colors, and features on the modern guitar as we can possibly imagine.

What makes the real difference then? In my opinion, a student that learns to control the fingers will get more out of his instrument than any number of gadgets or widgets or whatever you want to call them. The natural beauty of an acoustic instrument in the hands of a diligent student is a real pleasure to listen to. In fairness, those that spend an equal amount of time on the electric will also likely be proficient as well. I think another favorable point for the acoustic is its mobility. No electronics required! Dragging an amp or sound system up a flight of stairs or through a crowd of people has very little appeal to me ..

I dont want this to sound like I am against any of the cool special effects that can be utilized via electronics, but the truth is, I think time is well spent with an instrument that brings out the best sense of touch and connection with unaided tones. Think of the sound of a violinist playing a note with vibrato. That technique is hardly reproducible (is that a word?) any other way than with the left hand fingers. It seems logical to approach the instrument with the minimum of attachments at first. I think it would be like getting to be friends with a wild horse before trying to throw a saddle on its back and hope to successfully ride off into the sunset.

So, the answer from my corner of the world is if your goal is to get in touch with your own skills and to develop them into something useful, then by all means start with an acoustic guitar. Work on that for a while before you try anything else. You might be surprised by the magic in your own fingers!

Recently, I have had the opportunity to ask some students about their reasons for working so hard at music lessons, sports, and several other activities. I have compiled a list of what seem to be the most common answers. These are not all verbatim answers but in most cases they make the point clearly enough.

1 Fear of Reprisal

2 Desire of Acceptance and Recognition

3 Passion for the instrument/activity

4 Challenge presented by a difficult task

5 Promise of a reward

6 Self improvement

7 Desire to share the talent with others/please others

8 The opportunity to lead/motivate others

9 Making a contribution to a cause

10 Worship

So, having looked over these responses and considering them for a little while I would like to address a few of them with some of my own thoughts. These were not necessarily in order of most common to least common, I just wrote them down on the list as they were gathered. With that said, what do you do to help a child move from an unhealthy motivation toward a healthy one? Of course, which ones of these are really unhealthy? I suppose that is a matter of perspective. If I were the student I think that the number one reason I would spend more time practicing might be number eight from the list. That is probably the most obvious reason I became interested in teaching, aside from the fact that I wanted to learn as much as I could about playing music.

What about number one on the list? Is it not part of everyday life to go about our work knowing that if we don’t get it done on time and well, that there will be consequences? Should this be done away with? I certainly don’t think so, but honestly, our society seems to be willing to let that happen in some ways. Perhaps that is part of the {im} balance in human nature. When a student doesn’t respond to working things out on his own and being accountable for his time I think that having a fear of some sort of “parental” punishment isn’t necessarily the most likely to give us the result we want. Consider this scenario; A child refuses to practice, and exhibits passive/aggressive “mis”-behavior in many aspects of his life with regard to adult interaction. He is unable to answer direct questions and won’t look at you when you talk to him. Why? What are you able to to do about it? What is wrong in the situation? This is where number two on the list might be at work. In fact I have dealt with a number of situations where one of the parents (usually it is us dads) is traveling or disengaged from the home situation and guess what! In most cases there are problems that surface with the students. By the way, these problems are not always with attitude! Sometimes they problems are revealed in other aspects of the child’s daily life. Wouldn’t it be great to watch a change take place in that one! One solution seems to be that the (absentee) parent starts taking the lessons with the child. It works. I have seen it work. Period.

When this can’t happen, or it simply isn’t the situation that the student is having trouble with it could be that what motivates him is something else, like number seven or number nine on the list. Perhaps it is a good idea to make a move to another sort of accountability. I have seen remarkable improvement in a child’s attitude and willingness to work simply by putting them in a group of their peers. Sometimes a quiet, reserved child opens up and exhibits leadership qualities when offered a new learning environment. It might be a good idea to strike a balance in terms of the way we try to motivate our children to become all they are capable of.

If I were asked to put these reasons in some sort of “best” or healthiest order it might be 10, 6, 3, 9, 7, 4, 8, 2, 5, 1. I am not absolutely certain that this is the “end all, be all” order. It just seems like it makes sense.

I am still thinking about all this and might come back in a few days and write more, or change some of these statements to some degree. At the end of the day this is an exercise for me as a teacher to improve my ability to relate to, offer guidance, and encouragement to all of my students.

The most important advice I could offer when it comes to improvisation would be to listen to good improvisers and try to pick up things like their use of subtlety and phrasing. For my own playing I have found that “less is more”. It is much easier to come up with a short phrase that sounds alright and to fine tune it as you continue to work on it. Good material takes time to develop. You might say that this is the opposite of improvising, but consider that there is a very good possibility that most improvisers have something of a library to pull from. They might make changes to a phrase, but good sounding things are also worth keeping.

Work in the key you are playing in. You will have lots of opportunity to add notes that are “borrowed” from other keys as you develop a bigger musical vocabulary. Think about the notes that are in the chord accompaniment (if there is one). Consider using notes that are part of the chords at the end and beginning of each measure to help guide you through a melodic line.

It is perfectly fine to borrow from an existing solo that someone else has done.Try putting it into your own “words” and move slowly away from playing it they way they might have. It doesn’t take too long to make little changes, not just in the notes but in the rhythm too. In fact, a great rhythmic pattern can turn a simple melody into something special.

Using dynamics can also make a musical line or phrase more interesting.Try building the volume slowly, this way you have someplace to go with it. Remember that in a sense you are writing the melody for a song. With that in mind, make it say something clearly and concisely. Anyone can train the fingers to play blisteringly fast solos, but what is that? Maybe not something you would “whistle” a week later.

Once you find a clever sounding phrase, take the time to write it down. It might come in handy, and by writing it down you have helped yourself commit it to memory.

Learn the form of a song so you can anticipate what to do, or when it is time to hand over the job of playing the next solo to someone else. A musical phrase is often going to be about eight measures, If you can think of two similar four bar “mini” phrases that complement each other you will end up with something that works nicely as a model for additional phrases.

In a group setting it might be fun to try and harmonize or duplicate rhythmically a solo that was played before yours. In the workshops I host we often take a simple chord progression and pass the solos around the room. In this setting you can do something like a “call and response”, or similar rhythm in your own solo or many other things by feeding off what other people are doing right then. It is a fun way to get familiar with how soloing works and not having to be under a lot of pressure to produce an award winner. Remember that the goal is create nice sounding music that means something to you and to the listener.

Recently, I had added an adult student to the studio family that had very little musical background. We talked about what the right approach might be for his lessons and I decided to write an outline based on my teaching approach and self-published materials that I thought would work in his case. It was a great exercise for me too. Sometimes it is very easy to grab a method book and make the assumption that it is the “end all, be all” for everyone. I would like to have written that book myself and claim the head Guru spot.. well, maybe not so much. I just enjoy having a chance to help folks, watch them at work, and offer some insight now and then.

The learning pathways are pretty easy to follow, even if you don’t really have an idea where you are going. That is exactly where a good instructor can be very helpful. A lot of people in “self study” settings make the mistake of getting halfway to their goal and giving up. Just because things can take time doesn’t mean that time is being stolen from you! It is a choice about where you want to make investments. Think about them in a long term sense, not just in the short term. I will say this about taking lessons from someone; Take what they offer, but be clear on exactly what that is! I went to a classical guitar instructor for just that. Not asking him to teach me songs, or some genre that he probably was not as much an expert in. His experience was with classical music. The interesting thing to me was not so much the musical content of our lessons as it was the technical aspect. I knew that I could apply the things I was learning at the time to music I would be playing later. A true teacher welcomes the responsibility to pass on knowledge that he has, not necessarily what you want him to have.

Another thing that I found with my own teachers is that they always asked questions. It was nice to hear that. As a student I sort of thought it was up to me to be asking the questions but my experiences taught me differently. Dialogue involves passing the chance to offer opinions and ideas back and forth. Guitar lessons hardly work in the lecture format!

Not only is it a teachers responsibility to share knowledge, there is also the setting of good examples, helping the student to find where their strengths and weaknesses are, setting realistic goals, coaching, correcting, holding you accountable for your work, encouraging, inspiring.. the list is long. One last thing to consider, remember that “a Jack of all trades is a Master of none”.

jw

When we are first learning how to strum or fingerpick the guitar it seems like the fastest way to get a good sound is to play a few chords. Maybe it involves playing along with a CD. I remember thinking that my favorite bands could make the transitions between chords a lot faster and smoother than I could.

I had a book that showed what I began to think of as the traditional chord shapes. It was very helpful as a tool in getting me started, but I found out later that the rules for chord shapes are really based on a couple of very important guidelines. They are; where are you coming from and where are you going. There are lots of ways to make chord shapes because the notes are in many places on the fret board. The thing to remember is that you want to use voicings that are suited to the job you want to do. A chord built on the top (highest pitched) strings may not be as well suited for strong rhythm accompaniment as one that uses all six strings. On the other hand, in an ensemble the guitar may have a different role from time to time and these smaller more focused shapes may be just right.

Using common left hand fingers between chords is very helpful to beginners. I have seen more students get comfortable much sooner by learning about notes and fingerings that chords have in common. These common fingerings are called “anchor fingers”. Those of you that know the first position shape of a C chord may also know that you can move to an A minor chord by shifting the left hand third finger from the C on the fifth string to the A on the third string. The other two fingers are left in the same position they were in to begin with. This is a great example of the use of anchor fingers. There are many more.

The best example I can think of right now to explain what a guide finger is would be the opening phrase of “Fire and Rain” by James Taylor. The left hand chord shape he uses is like an F chord involving the three highest pitched strings. He plays a note on the third string that then moves to a higher fret position with what we would call in musical terms a “slur”. It is like singing a note then changing the pitch to another note without taking a breath between the two. Another term for the use of guide fingers is the “portamento”. In this case, the shift from one fret position to another is silent. I first learned this technique in a book for early intermediate guitarists written by Julio Sagreras.

The main thing to remember when learning a new technique is to approach it slowly. Good planning, patience, and persistence will always yield the best results.

jw

Each week as I work with students, I see some progress, sometimes more than others. It is the same for me with regard to music that I am either learning for a church service, a performance, or simply something I might be writing. Spending quality time with your musical instrument can improve the experience for you and for those that appreciate the opportunity to listen to you.

I have been asked a few times just how a person should practice, so here are some suggestions along with a little bit of my philosophy. Most anyone that has played a musical instrument has experienced a wide range of emotions when doing it. I remember trying to correct my form when learning the tuba. I also remember the beginnings of calluses on my left hand fingers when I started guitar lessons. These things are part of the process and any frustrations will soon be replaced by pleasant sounds and feelings of accomplishment.

How should we practice? I saw something recently that makes sense to me; “Practice the way that you plan to perform”. That is good advice. Even though you may not make music in public there is a chance that someone will listen to you at some point. Think about that! I believe that the gift of music is only really a gift if you share it. My own students know that at some point they will have the opportunity to share the music that they have studied in a recital setting or a group lesson. This seems to motivate most of them to do their work.

There is much more to practicing than just thinking about performing. Consider making a chart for yourself. It is hard to execute a plan if you don’t have one. Keeping track of your time can often make it seem like you have more time! How about that? Think about it. I have to live by a schedule to a large degree. The truth is, I think most of us do, but not all of us are necessarily good at it. Some of the categories on your practice chart should include tempo, keeping track of sections you have memorized, days that you practice, amount of time spent per session, comments, tracking progress, etc. Try to find a recording of someone else performing the piece you are learning. This provides you with a fresh perspective. When you listen to these performances, try to pick out things like dynamics, tempo, and phrasing.

One of the things we talk about in my studio is setting goals. I like the idea of setting short term goals, like what to do from one weekly lesson to the next, then perhaps a monthly and quarterly goal as well. The same thing applies to each piece of music. Tackling the whole thing all at once might not be the best approach. Take a section or phrase that is 4-8 bars and study it carefully. Once you learn it you will have a plan to implement for the next section.

Now let’s talk about where you practice. Look for a well-lit, quiet place free of distractions, such as the TV or phones. As far as when to practice, you should consistently choose a time when you feel that your mind is clearest. Personally, I feel that the best time for me to practice is first thing in the morning.

The next topic is how to develop your practice regimen. As a warm-up, I use scales in different positions on the neck and chord progressions using two styles (strumming and fingerpicking). Using a metronome is recommended. I use mine about 30-40% of the time. This way, I begin to develop an internal sense of time. I think that you should turn the metronome off from time to time, because, in a solo performance, you’re not likely to use one. This also gives you a chance to let the music breathe.

When practicing a piece of music, I start with the melody. This is the most important part of the music, yet its most basic. It is also one of the best places to start working out the dynamics of the piece. Once I can either hum or whistle the melody from memory, I then begin to add bass notes. Additional harmony comes last.

Muscle memory also plays a critical role in the development of your ability to perform well. Remember, the slower you go at first, the faster and more accurately you’ll be able to play later. When reading through a musical road map, I will often look for chord shapes from one measure to the next and make a mental note of those as well. This is another part of understanding the musical story. Sometimes I’ll just play the chord progression and sing the melody.

Always remember to be patient and persistent. At the end of the day, you’ll realize that practice makes permanent. Being able to play songs from memory enables you to really begin to enjoy your musical experience. I hope this helps you in your musical journey!

jw