I've learned alot from the Song-of-the-week personal challenge. Researching, preparing, recording and posting a new song every week helps you grow both knowledge and skill sets rapidly. I hope you can find a lesson or two from my journey that will help you on your musical path:
1. Recording works wonders - the process of voice recording combined with systematic problem-solving is an amazing way to realize rapid growth in guitar skills and musicianship.
I’ve really learned through this challenge that recording is indispensible practice tool. I’m sure that I’ve learned more skills and grown in my musical and performance abilities more in the past 52 weeks than I have in the previous 4 years all put together. It is SO easy when we’re sitting on a comfy sofa in the cozy family room strumming away, to fool ourselves into thinking that this sounds ‘pretty darn good’. It is shocking to hear the results when you set up a recording device – the video/webcam/recorder doesn’t lie. That’s a bit painful at first, but when you take that recording and methodically set about to ‘fix’ the sharp and ragged edges – that’s when you see amazing results.
Honest self-analysis is painful and harsh, but when it is combined with systematic, objective problem-solving – practice sessions begin to pay off with huge dividends.
2. Learning songs gets easier - the process of researching, preparing, and practicing a new song for performance becomes easier, more efficient, and less time consuming the more frequently you do it.
I guess another way to say this is that the process of working up new songs is a skillset in itself. The first few weeks were time intensive, but the work-up process became easier as the weeks went by.
3. Research pays off - performing a new song from memory alone is never a good idea.
It’s amazing how often I remember the wrong melody or the wrong timing – and it usually sounds bad. This usually happened with the songs that we play around the campfire – we think we know them, but we don’t often remember them accurately. The voice recorder doesn’t lie! I found that the more I researched a song – checking a variety of artist renditions, studying sheet music – the better the end result. This is a classic case of a little short-term ‘pain’ for some long-term ‘gain’.
4. Listening is golden. – it’s not about strumming patterns, it’s about listening to how you want the music to sound.
I’ve been finding that the more I listen to the soundtracks of the songs I’m learning, the better I’m able to emulate the desired sounds. It used to be all about finding the right ‘strumming pattern’. Now I just close my eyes and listen to the music and try to imitate it – it really works.
5. Tone is in the left-hand technique – sloppy fretting hand is a recipe for poor tone.
It is essential to keep a constant and watchful eye on the left-hand. It’s so easy to get sloppy with technique, and it’s important to have the fretting fingers up close to the frets, with all strings sounding cleanly. I used to think I had pretty good fretting technique until I started playing fingerstyle. Again, the recorder doesn’t lie. You don’t get ‘good tone’ with sloppy fretting-hand technique – period. There were many times I had to slow down the tempo in practice and use the ‘perfect practice makes perfect’ principle. It’s a bit tedious to have to be so careful and precise, but good tone demands it for sure.
6. Variety is the spice of life – pre-plan it.
I used to just strum away loudly and keep going at it until the song was done. A guitar teacher taught me years ago that I need to vary the right-hand techniques and the volume/intensity between verses in order to make the music interesting and appealing. The only problem was that the recorder quickly showed me that I was introducing far less variety than I thought I was. Now when I’m working up a song, I carefully pre-plan how I’m going to use variety, I practice it thoroughly, then I use the recorder to double-check the result. The result – more spice!
7. Breathing, don’t just ‘do it’ – good breathing needs to be pre-planned too.
Some songs are more forgiving of sloppy breathing than others, but songs like ‘Hallelujah’ and ‘Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’ made me realize that I needed to pre-plan the best spots to take a breath when I was working up the song. This has improved my musical phrasing, and made things more fluid.
8. Pitches are not just for baseball – accurate vocal pitches need to be practiced.
I am not a trained vocalist. It’s important for me to practice the pitch intervals in the songs that I’m learning, so that I am spot-on pitch. When I don’t practice, the pitch can be a little off. This is increasingly important for unfamiliar songs, and for songs where the tempo is fast and the interval notes have to be hit quickly and forcefully.
9. Vocal independence – sing and let the guitar ‘fill in’.
I find it especially hard to have a smooth vocal flow when I’m playing fingerstyle. Perhaps it’s because I’m relatively new to fingerstyle, and strumming is more my comfort zone. My tendancy is for the vocals to sound stiff and child-like, almost like I’m trying to vocalize based on what the guitar is doing (which is exactly what I’m doing). I found it helpful to practice the vocals separately – a capella - and then later begin filling in the guitar very softly. The more I’d practice a song, I could gradually increase the volume of the guitar.
10. Tone is in the Right-hand – ‘less is more’.
In the past, I’ve been a fairly heavy-handed strummer. That can work Ok when you’re accompanying a group of singers, but it doesn’t always bring out the best tone. I’ve come to learn that often less-is-more. I’ll still do some strong strumming for variety, but I’m finding that the more minimalist and gentle approach often coaxes out better tone from my guitars.
My only disappointment is that I was hoping to get a better handle on musicality in my performances. I think the problem is that the weekly challenge format is not really conducive to achieving the ultimate musical product. A comment I received on this was “maybe somebody should cover the SAME song for 52 weeks”
At least I think I have a roadmap to success in musical excellence:
- master the technical aspects so you can let go and feel it;
- memorize the song so you don’t have to think about it;
- create a visualization or character so you can ‘tell the story’ better.
I’ve got a long road ahead, but I’ve got lots of hope.
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