If you have read my previous posts, you’ll realize I’m very goal oriented. I do it this way because I believe you can’t achieve something if you haven’t established exactly what it is and the steps necessary to complete it.
Establishing your goals is a huge step towards success, but you can go even further. Writing down your goals will definitely help you achieve them quicker.
The way I do it is I have a white board on my bed room. On this white board I have three lists: Goals, Week Goals, and Today’s Goals.
- The Goals list contains the goals I want to achieve currently. They can be very big. Even things that will take months or years are there.
- The Week Goals list contain some smaller goals that contribute to my main Goals. So if I wanted to learn the notes on the fretboard, then a week goal could be to learn the notes on the first five frets for example.
- Finally, the Today’s Goals list is consequently a list of goals that can be achieved in that day and that will make me accomplish my week goals when the week ends. Elaborating on the previous example, a goal for today could be to learn the first fret’s notes. At the end of the week I would have learned all notes in the first five frets.
This way of working will make you always have your goals present and you will always be advancing in the quest to their achievement. If every day you make a new list of goals that will contribute to your weekly goals then you will accomplish all those weekly goals. Therefore, eventually all these weekly goals will add up and you will achieve your main goals.
I encourage you to try out this method for a couple of months and keep track of all the things you have accomplished. When looking at the log, you’ll realize you will have progressed a lot more than if you just had goals in your mind and a heck of a lot more than if you didn’t have any goals at all.
Technorati Tags: mastery, Mind, progress
Posted in Mind, Organization.
Tagged with mastery, Mind, progress.
Photo by: martinhoward - flickr
Music theory knowledge is very helpful when playing guitar and improvising. However, it is only useful if you can recall its concepts immediately. For example, say you’re playing on the key of Bm, what chords are in that key? Are you going to think about the formula for chords of the minor scale? Can you do this before the song ends? You also need to know which notes compose that scale. Do you know without thinking twice? Continued…
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Posted in Mind, Music Theory.
Tagged with memorization, Music Theory.
Photo by: Metal Chris - Flickr
Lately I’ve been analyzing and really just thinking a lot more about the way I do things in regards to practicing my instrument. I like shred. I like the pure speed and aggressiveness of its sound. But it seems like my brain or body decided I was to get stuck on a certain speed, or at least I thought so. Continued…
Technorati Tags: Guitar, Mind, practice, progress, speed
Posted in Mind, Practicing.
Tagged with Guitar, Mind, practice, progress, speed.
Photo by: Alvin Carpio - Flickr
As musicians almost all of us have a favorite genre which consequently is what we play most of the time. That’s not a bad thing, it actually is good to concentrate on one specific genre so we can become really good at it. Now, because we enjoy playing that music style, we tend to also listen to it most of the time, after all, it is what we like the most.
The problem with this approach
Maybe at some point of your life you have felt that everything you compose or play begins to sound very similar. That should be no surprise. You play and listen to that style most of the time. The musical ideas are repeated throughout what you listen to and what you experiment with, so why should it sound any different? That’s right, it won’t. Continued…
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Posted in Inspiration.
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An etude is a short composition for a solo instrument created as practice for a specific technical ability. So why on earth would I say this is the ultimate learning strategy?
- Music Theory. You’re not practicing a composition you don’t really understand musically. No, this time you absolutely have to understand the theory behind that composition. It is possible to just trust your ear and compose whatever sounds right but you’re still practicing theory that way. When you strum two chords together they are often part of several scales, if you then add yet another chord to that progression, you reduce the possible number of scales, but theory is always involved.
- Fretboard Knowledge. The more you experiment with scales, arpeggios, and chords the more you’ll get to know the fretboard. This gives you freedom to play anything anywhere in your instrument.
- You Ear. You will also be training your ear because before playing something in your instrument you at least have an idea of what you are looking for in your mind or better yet, in your inner ear. Just like everything else, the more you do this, the better you get at it.
- Technique. Yes, you will inevitably get better technique composing and playing your etudes because after all that is the primary goal. They are designed to improve or demonstrate technical ability in your instrument in a musical way.
- Composition. The tipping point of any guitar player is (or should be) total self-expression. Anything that you can hear in your mind, you can play. That must be awesome right? But then how do we get there? Composition is your answer. Composition joins all the elements that you need as a guitar player. Music Theory, technique, composition, you ear, fretboard knowledge, etc. This shouldn’t be a surprise. After all, an etude is exactly that. A composition.
Hope this opens up your mind to yet another practicing strategy and one that will be a lot more fun than exercises and gives your a lot more benefits as we just saw. Your etudes don’t have to be masterpieces, as long as they work for you and you like them, you’re all set.
Posted in Practicing.
Photo by: anthony_goto - Flickr
I find most beginner improvisers who have learned the first minor pentatonic box can’t “get out of it”, that is, they aren’t able to play on the rest of the fretboard. Most times they are suggested to learn the other boxes and practice combining them. This is a very good approach and something I do recommend, but if you would like to break out of that box in a couple of minutes then this is certainly going to help. Continued…
Technorati Tags: Guitar, Improvisation
Posted in Improvisation, Scales.
Tagged with Guitar, Improvisation.