Another book excerpt (Goal Setting)

 

       Rock climbing is often about goal setting.  Eavesdrop on a conversation between a couple of rock climbers and you’ll likely hear about their latest “project.”   Rock climbing projects are objectives that climbers set for themselves as a new challenge.  These are often individual climbing “routes” that a climber must ascend without falling.  Success on these “projects” often takes months or years of training, preparation, rehearsal, and lots of failure. 

         Success, when it comes, is short lived.  Once you’re on the mountaintop there’s nowhere to go but down do so to speak.  Time to move on to the next project.  This process of “projecting” is all part of the normal lifestyle of the “serious” rock climber.  It’s a lifestyle that I’ve spent a large portion of my life following and still do to a certain degree.  I love the lifestyle despite it’s flaws.

         One of those flaws is that climbing often focuses (or climbers indulge in) an emphasis on success over process.  Ego over spirit.  The summit over the journey.  In the beginning my climbing was focused almost solely on success.  I had a strong desire to succeed.  I had always been an athlete in middle school and high school.  Not surprisingly I had always been unsuccessful.  Perhaps it’s our culture’s focus on winning, or perhaps it was just my desire to win and always losing that fueled my desire to be a good at climbing. 

         For most of my twenties I pursued rock climbing with little interest in anything else.  My first several years were rife with failure and desire to improve.  By the time I was 26 I started to achieve some long sought after climbing goals.  When I turned 27 I started to get good.  I had finally become the climber I had hoped to be.  I was pushing myself hard.  By the time I was 28 I developed injuries that put me out of hard climbing for 2 years.  My emphasis on success ultimately led me to failure.  When I returned to hard climbing 2 years later I had developed a new found respect for process and a resolve to not injure myself if possible.

         I guess it’s not surprising that my musical path mirrored my path in climbing in much the same way.  When I started practicing and performing I was always pushing to play at levels of musicianship that I wasn’t quite ready for.  Just like my climbing.  The only difference is that this approach to practice does not make good music or a good musician.  It might have been good for me to push myself but I was going about things the wrong way.  As evidenced by my early hand injuries.  My ego was in the way.

         My early practice goals were always lofty.  I was always jumping in way over my head.  I’ve kept few of the musical ideas I thought were important at the time.  I realized that goal setting for the practicing musician is much different than for that of the rock climber.  That realization of process over success improved my playing by leaps and bounds.

         Rock climbing did have a few positive influences on my music.  Rock climbing taught me to see goals through to completion.  It taught me to deal with failure and keep working until I could find a solution that would solve a critical piece of the puzzle and plant the seed that success could be possible.  Ultimately it helped teach me about process.

         When I injured myself and was forced to take a 2 year break from climbing I returned with a new found respect and love of process.  The building up of skills and steady improvement that could lead to harder and harder objectives.  As a result the climbing successes I achieved in my thirties were more difficult than what I did in my twenties despite being past my athletic prime.  I had learned to maximize my skills.

         I think that learning to improve at anything is about learning to love the process of improving.  It’s about looking carefully at where you are compared with where you want to be.  The distance between those two points is often a long way apart.  You can’t cross that distance without taking many small steps.  Each step gets you closer to your goal.  The difficult part is deciding what steps to take.  To improve you need to decide what to improve.  And when.

         Goal setting for the musician is crucial if they hope to make constant improvement in their playing.  As we’ll see, it’s not the big goals that matter.   It’s all the little ones.

Technique checklist

Here's a technique checklist from my upcoming book on how to practice.
  

Technique Checklist

1.    SLOW DOWN! 

         If you’re having trouble chances are you’re playing to fast.  Play at a speed that feels totally comfortable. 

2.    Check your posture.

         Are you slouching?  Are you relaxed?  Experiment with different positions.  Find the one that is best for you.

3.    Do you have unnecessary muscle tension?

         Chances are good that you do.  Always monitor your muscle tension and work to eliminate it EVERY time you practice or play guitar.

4.    Use a mirror. 

         Checking your posture with a mirror is a great practice device.  Watch for tensions and places you could improve your fluidity.

5.    Pay closer attention on difficult passages.

         During a difficult section (which are all of the sections for beginners) your chances of tensing up increase big time.   Focus your attention even more during those passages and stay as loose as possible.

6.    Play all the time

         You can’t improve if you don’t play.  Strive to play 5 days a week even if its only for ten minutes.  That’s ten minutes you can work to improve your playing.  It all adds up!

7.    Check your ego

A musical instrument is HARD to play.  Don’t sabotage your efforts by rushing through things.  All the best players have played for many years, play all the time, and they pay the closest attention to these details.  Do you?

8.    Study with a good music teacher

I’ve had several music lessons ranging from guitar, banjo, piano, trumpet, and voice lessons.  Some of those lessons were incredible and have helped me tremendously.  Others not so much.  Do some research on teachers in your area.  Find one that looks like a good fit.  If they’re not,  keep looking for one that is and don’t feel bad about moving on. 

9.    Remember Muscle Memory. 

This is dealt with in detail in chapter 4.  Constantly remind yourself that you are “programming” muscle memory into your playing.  If you are practicing with lots of muscle tension and sloppy practice you will “remember” it that way.  Strive for good muscle memory.

 

Another book excerpt

Here's a section on knowing where the fingers go.  Mucho importante.

 

 

Fingerings require vast amounts of memorization.

         The amount of memorization involved in learning fingerings is tremendous.  Do not underestimate it.  In fact I believe that you need to develop a profound respect for the amount of information needed to be stored and recalled to play music.  Even at the beginner level.   Perhaps especially at the beginner level when everything is so completely new.  

         Here is a version of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy (Figure 3.1).  Arranged for a beginning piano student.  Let’s take a look at the details of what it means to memorize all the details of where your fingers go so we could get to where we could play this little piece of music.

         Let’s start by analyzing the song’s structure.  The song has a phrase that repeats three times over the course of this arrangement’s 12 measures.  With two of those phrases repeating in exactly the same way.  This cuts down on the amount of memorizing we need to do.  But there’s still the challenge of memorizing everything in order and remembering when each phrase is played. 

         Even taking into account the repeating phrases that’s still quite a bit of information to recall.  For measures 1-3, 5-8 and 13-16 (which are the same) that’s a total number of 22 movements including both hands.  Measures 9-12 also happen to have 22 movements total.  Add in measure 4 with its 4 moves and we’ve got a total number of 48 movements.  They all need to be memorized in sequence and coordinated perfectly between both hands or the music won’t sound right.  

         48 movements in sequence might not seems so bad with so much repetition going on in Ode to Joy.  But, you also need to account for which finger is playing which note.  We’re not playing each note with only one finger.  We’ve got (presumably) 5 choices on each hand.  This helps to add to the confusion.  Let’s assume that the thumb plays only and all the C notes in this song.   Ok, one less thing to remember.  This helps to cut down on the confusion but this isn’t always the case.  

         Let’s look at a song with a few more notes in it to help illustrate this point.  Old Joe Clark (figure 3.2) is an old folk tune that’s been around longer than anyone can remember.  It’s often taught as a beginner song to beginning fiddle, banjo, guitar, and mandolin students.  This arrangement for guitar consists of an A part which is played twice and a B part which is played twice.  Each part contains approximately 46 individual movements.  That makes 184 movements total since each part is played twice.  Both the A and B parts have several measures that if not identical are closely related.  This will make the song a bit easier to remember.

         However even taking into account the repetition in the song we need to memorize everything in sequence and pay attention to the subtle differences between the phrases.  They may be similar but each phrase contains important differences that bring out the song. 

         Look at it this way.  What if I asked you to repeat a series of numbers that followed the sequence 345676543345676555534?  It makes my head hurt just to look at it.  Even worse, what if you had to recall each number (in sequence of course) with a specific combination of movements that required both hands (as required of guitarists) to work in unison to recall the number?  That sequence of numbers I wrote happens to be the first four measures of Old Joe Clark written numerically. Only the first 4 measures.  21 moves out of 184 we need to recall.  And this is a beginners tune.

         That might seem kind of difficult to remember all that especially when both hands (or feet, or mouth) is needed to remember each number.  That basically doubles the amount we need to memorize.  So really instead of 184 the number of moves is more like 368.  See what I’m getting at?  BOTH hands together.  Mess up a combination of hand movements even slightly and the music is botched.  I like to belabor this point because I feel that it’s an often overlooked aspect of music education.

         Of course memorization does not take into account the physical side of playing a music instrument.  Getting an instrument like a violin, guitar, or saxophone to sound good can take years of effort. Tone production is an entirely different but equally important aspect of practicing.  And what about emotion and feeling in your playing?  That’s a whole other aspect of practice.  And sight reading, and tab, and music theory. 

         Whew!  Feeling a bit overwhelmed?  It’s easy to feel that way.  Try not to.  Practice can encompass so many things so let’s focus on one thing at a time.  (As you always should with music practice.)

Happy New Year

I'm working away at this book about practicing.  Here's another sample.  This is about the importance of learning where the fingers go.

 

Fingerings:

How well do you know where they go?

       Knowing where the fingers go seems like a simple concept.  Of course you have to know where your fingers go.  You’re stating the obvious again, let’s move on to something more useful.

         But wait.  Hold on a second.  I have a question.  How slow can you play that instrument of yours?  I’m not interested how fast you can play.  Show me how well you know where your fingers go.  Take your time.  I’ll wait patiently for you to get ready.

         Ready.  Go ahead.  Oops you made a mistake there.  Sure you can start over.  Whoops.  Another botched note.  I know it’s never wracking to play in front of somebody.  No big deal.  Play something easier.  Play the easiest thing you know, and play it slowly.

         Yes I know it’s hard. Can’t do it huh?  You know why?  Because you don’t really know where your fingers go.  When I say know where your fingers go I mean every little itsy bitsy tiny nit-picky detail.  If you hope to play any piece of music you’ve got to know what you’re going to play before hand.  I mean know it stone cold solid.

         Perhaps you’re thinking, “Oh yeah.  Well what about people who improvise?  They don’t know what they’re going to play.  They make it up as they go along.”  Ok, fair question.  I’ll answer that question with a question.  Do people who can type, type the same sentences over and over exactly the same way?  Every single time?  No.  Instead, they know their way around the keyboard well enough that they can just type their thoughts as soon as they come to them. 

         A computer keyboard is quite a bit smaller than say a grand piano but the mechanisms are the same.  A jazz pianist has spent years getting to know their instrument well enough that they can communicate with the piano in the same way a typist can.  They have a thought, and their fingers react.  Instead of using words, our pianist is thinking sounds. 

         Don’t take my word for it.  Here’s what banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck has to say about improvisation.  “Just because they’re improvising doesn’t mean they’re making it all up out of nowhere.  It’s based on everything they know how to play, and the sounds that they like…interspersed with coming up with good guesses of things that might sound good because of how well they knew the (banjo) neck and learning how to recover from a new idea with style.”  (Masters of the 5 String Banjo.  Trischka, Wernick)

         Jazz Guitar master Joe Pass described improvisation as “like a language.  You have a whole collection of musical ideas that you’ve accumulated through your musical history.”  (The Genius of Joe Pass.  Video)  Music is not unlike words you know in your vocabulary.  How well you know those “words” is based on how well you’ve practiced.

 

Book snippet

So I'm working on a book about practicing. It's going pretty well. I'm hoping the book will help explain all the information I couldn't find when I started practicing and didn't really know what I was doing. Here's a little snippet that expands on a blog post I made a while back.





The Ego always gets in the way.

      Nestled on the southeast corner of St. Thomas was a small seaside bar and restaurant called Latitude 18. A boat landing dock was right up next to the tables and the lights of St. John could be seen shining across the channel. A warm breeze always blowing through the palm frond decorations and the waves splashing into shore helped to secure the tropical ambiance.

     I use the past tense because Latitude 18 is not there anymore. Bought and sold and developed I’m sure it’s a hotel resort now. Luckily it lives clearly in my memory. I had many memorable times at Latitude. It was where I played my first gig. I learned to jam and play music with other people at the weekly acoustic music jams held every Monday night. I heard some amazing musicians play everything from bluegrass to Led Zeppelin, all in this faraway corner of the world.

     The most memorable performance I saw there was a Dutch flamenco guitarist. Perhaps a strange combination but this guy was the real deal. He had went and lived among the gypsies to study the music of the Flamenco. His beautiful partner danced the flamenco and was locked perfectly in rhythm with the guitar’s vibrations. They were an incredible team. They gave the music everything they had.

A musician on holiday in the Caribbean might expect to end up playing a few songs if word got around they were good. Instead this couple had slipped into some kind of trance and they performed with an intensity that revealed a commitment to their art that was something very deep and respectful. I imagined myself wanting that same commitment.

     Their performance was stunning. I was only a few feet away from one the most amazing guitarists I had ever seen. His fingers flew across the strings with a speed and precision I still can’t imagine for myself. He was completely connected with his instrument. This was a master.

     I happened to catch this performance while I was suffering the injury I had inflicted on my left hand from my overly ambitious and ill conceived practice regimen. It had been several weeks since I had played and witnessing this performance only heightened my anxiety and worry about getting back on track and getting good at music. I could feel myself drawn to this guitarist. I needed to connect with him and hopefully glean some advice from him.

     After the show I wasted no time. Before the man even had a chance to put his guitar away, relax, and get a drink I swooped in, ready with questions. I can’t remember exactly what I said but I’m sure it was something along the lines of, “Hey there, I’m a guitarist too (ahem). I’ve been having trouble with my left hand. Do you have any advice?”

     Without a word he immediately snapped up my wrist and grabbed my fingers with his other hand. He shook my hand for a few seconds and then threw my arm back to me. He then coolly and directly stated, "It will be very difficult for you. The ego always gets in the way." This might have been one of the most terrifying things anyone had ever said to me.

     He might as well have said there was something wrong with my DNA. How was my ego in the way? I had been working so hard and wanted to play so bad. He then proceeded to show me how lightly he pressed down the strings and how you could slip a piece of paper under the strings and between the fretboard as he played because his touch was so light. He repeated it again. "It will be very difficult for you. The ego always gets in the way." I felt sort of crushed under the weight of the statement. Stunned I thanked him kindly and sat down feeling only more confused and maybe just a tiny bit insulted. This guy didn’t know me. How did he know if my ego was in the way? And in the way of what? It was all very mysterious.

     Staring blankly into my beer I had no idea how to make sense of what had just happened. I went home that night feeling a bit dazed by the whole experience. I felt like I was climbing an enormous mountain before but now it seemed like I was staring up at Mount Everest. Of course I guess I had hoped this guitarist would be nice, encouraging, and give me some kind of positive feedback that would allow me to catch a glimpse of what it takes to play really well.

     I see now that’s exactly what he did. As time has gone by I’ve realized those two sentences were the best music lesson I will ever have.

Blackberry Blossom (slow)

Blackberry Blossom parts A and B. Played Slow.

Cripple Creek (Basic version)

Here's is a basic version of Cripple Creek played slowly to help you figure it out.

Backup banjo roll patterns

Here are some roll patterns that you can apply to many different musical situations.

In order on the mp3.

1. Forward roll on strings 1-3 for closed chords.
   
2. Open position forward roll. Adds drive.
3. Pinch pattern/alternating patterns
4. C6 and C7 chord shapes rolls.

This track is long so you may need to scroll through to find the rolls your looking for. But you can always play it again to get the feel of the patterns.

Hope it helps.

Vamp patterns for Bluegrass Banjo

Here is a lesson focusing on Vamping patterns for Bluegrass Banjo. I cover several patterns starting with a basic vamp.

Foggy Mountain Breakdown lesson

Here's a slow version of Foggy Mountain Breakdown to help you learn it better.

7 things you didn't know about music

1. The 5 note pentatonic scale, (the scale that forms many of the classic patterns that guitarists use, see image) is a scale that has been around since ancient civilization. This scale is rooted in naturally occurring phenomenon and it helped societies develop a system to tune stringed instruments.
   

(pentatonic box patten used by guitarists the world over)

2. Perfect pitch is merely the ability to remember tones and isn't really useful to being a good musician. If you can think of a note in your mind and name that note with absolute certainty you have perfect pitch. The only use it might have to you as a musician would be the ability to tune your instrument without a tuning reference. Perfect pitch doesn't help with technique, music theory, composition skills, emotional quality of a performance, or the years of practice ALL great musicians endure to become good.

3. Vincent Galilei (Galileo's father) helped develop the system of Equal Temperament tuning that is used by most western musicians today. He didn't develop it first, that honor goes to Chinese scholar Chu Tsai-Yu. Galilei was behind him by a year but they both came to same solutions, independently.

4. Pythagoras (of triangular fame) tried to develop this same system about 2,000 years earlier. He failed. But, his ideas helped others develop the system we now use. Equal temperament tuning. If you don't know what this is read this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_temperament

This will likely make your head spin. All you need to know is that equal temperament is a way for us to play in twelve different keys. The system is a compromise. We have taken the tones that exist in nature and made them imperfect to fit our desire to compose in so many different keys. The mathematics involved are tricky to explain (not that I could anyway). If you play guitar you might want to study this topic more because it will help your ability to tune the thing.

5. Musical notes are repeating sounds waves. You get the strongest sound waves if they are created by an object that has a simple shape. One of the best shapes to produces vibrations is a column. Like a string. The strings that sound best are the ones with the most pure shape. This is why old strings don't sound as good as new ones. They won't hold their perfect shape.

6. The piano was invented in 1709 by Bartolomeo Cristofori.

7. In 1993 a test was done to see if avid vinyl/record enthusiasts could tell the difference between a CD and a record. Out of 160 people only 4 could identify the difference. Can you tell a difference or is it just nostalgia? Mp3's take music from CD's and eliminate 90% of unnecessary information (sounds that we can't hear with our ears, frequencies to high or to low). That's why we can stuff so much music on a little iPod. They've cut the fat so to speak. Some people swear that mp3's are a loss of sound quality. What do you think?


These little facts come from a book titled "How Music Works" by John Powell. A great read if you're a music nerd like me.