Subject: The Importance of Practicing the Fundamentals
You are getting this e-mail because you subscribed to it on www.learn-to-play-rock-guitar.com. If you don't want to receive these e-mails any longer, go to the bottom of this message and click on "unsubscribe." Hey there Friend, As a guitar instructor, it's taken me a while to learn that my job isn't to show my students how to play their favorite songs. Much as I would love to work out all the details and show them every little guitar part,1) it isn't feasible, and 2) teaching them these guitar parts isn't going to help them become better guitar players. That's not to say I don't give in and help them with interpretations of tabs and songbooks they bring to their lessons. Frankly, the ability to play a simple rendition of a song can be immensely gratifying, and who am I to deny them that? Believe me, I understand the draw to wanting to play an amazing song - to reproduce it to sound like the original artist. In fact, I've always had the opinion that when I was covering a song it should sound like the recording. That's how other people want to hear it, right? But teaching students how to play songs seems to be a marketing trap many guitar instructors fall into - we promise to teach how to play their favorite artist's material as a method to obtain and retain students, when in fact we should be sticking to teaching (and monitoring the progress of) fundamentals. Boring Fundamentals
No, my job is to give them the fundamental information, tools and skills for them to be able to figure out those songs for themselves. Or better yet, for them to be able to compose their own music and make a name for themselves. Granted, you can learn a great deal about playing by duplicating songs. You can really hone your use of techniques, but that's the challenge, isn't it? It's like the age old question - what came first, the chicken or the egg? How are you going to play what you hear if you don't know how it's done? If you don't understand what's going on in a song, you have a hard time figuring out how to play the song. That's where the fundamentals come in. By continuously practicing the basic fundamental skills, you begin to "see" how the techniques have been developed. With that understanding you start to visualize how your fingers should move to apply these techniques. Your ears hear the nuances of vibrato and pick attack. You start to develop your own tone through the way your fingers interact with the strings and guitar neck. All of this comes about through applying those boring fundamentals. The better you learn and apply the fundamental skills to your playing of music, the greater the likelihood you will not only sound phenomenal when playing your favorite copy material, but you will be more creative and produce better original material. By mastering the fundamentals, you enhance the musicality of your playing, meaning your physical playing of music SOUNDS more musical. You can certainly hear this by listening to someone who is just starting to play versus someone who has been playing for a couple years. The fundamentals give you a certain level of familiarity and comfort that allow you to pick up on more advanced techniques much more quickly. This isn't a popularity contest for us guitar teachers. Yes, we want you to like us and enjoy coming to your lessons, but that shouldn't be our main focus. You've come to us to learn how to play guitar so it's our obligation to do just that. Music comes from the application and interpretation of learned fundamentals. We owe it to you to teach those fundamentals. And if you're wise, you'll learn to love the fundamentals. I recently read an interesting article by Dr. Noa Kageyama (The Bulletproof Musician) that talked exactly about this. In the article he talks specifically about practicing scales, but as you'll see, this concept applies to all the fundamental skills. As we learn, we're anxious to move as quickly as possible past those basic skills to get to the good stuff, playing all that great rock music we've dreamed of playing. But by short-changing our fundamental practice time in favor of using that time for learning songs, we actually hurt our ability to play those songs. Practicing the fundamentals with diligence and accuracy not only improves the primary fundamental, but also the ancillary skills needed to perform the primary. For example, if you are practicing the pentatonic scales slowly and deliberately, you're also able to focus efforts on specific picking skills, vibrato and aural training. You can use the time to memorize the notes you're playing and where they fall on the fingerboard. In short, you're becoming familiar with the landscape of your instrument and making it your own. This is how amateurs become pros. There's a time and place for learning and practicing cover songs. Individual practice time is not that time. Devote yourself to practicing your fundamentals for at least a half hour a day. Once you've done your woodshedding,then bust out the tabs and song sheets or videos and MP3s to play along. Instead of asking for the next song to learn on your list, surprise your guitar teacher and ask them to show you a different picking technique or scale pattern. You'll be the one that wins! Peace~ Dave Dave "Eddie" Vance is a rock guitar enthusiast and gear nut. He has been playing guitar for over 30 years and enjoys tormenting the neighbors every chance he gets. When he's not slaving for the man, you can find him rocking out with his B.C. Rich Bich guitar, a cold beer and some sweet tunes. He also runs Learn-To-Play-Rock-Guitar.com, but you knew that already! Follow Learn To Play Rock Guitar:I welcome your feedback! Did you like today's message? What other topics would you like to see covered in my e-mails? Please let me know at: dave@learn-to-play-rock-guitar.com As always, please feel free to forward this email to a friend! I review products before recommending them. If you buy a product based on my recommendation, I will receive a commission. However, my emails also contain links that don’t require any investment on your part and are jam-packed with "juicy, guitar learnin' tastiness". We don't rent or share your name with anybody. Feel free to forward this issue to any friends you think would enjoy its contents. They will thank you. So will I.
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