Music Is Hard Work

I've heard it said that the guitar is one of the easiest instruments to learn to play, but it's the hardest to master.  Well, I can't confirm the saying completely because I've not tried every instrument, but I can surely attest to the fact that it is hard to 'master' the guitar.

I started playing guitar in December 2007, the same year that I turned 50!  Well, actually, I bought my first guitar in 1986 and tried to learn some children's songs for my kids.  After a 2 or 3 years with some practice and without a lot of progress, I hung up that old Anjo guitar and it gathered dust for nearly 3 decades.  Oh, I sorely wish now that I could have back all those years I could have been playing and progressing.

For the last 7 1/2 years, I've been very motivated to try and master the guitar and become a good and entertaining musician.  I've practiced 1 to 2 hours per day on average.  I've set goals for myself, and as a result, I perform very regularly in hospitals, nursing homes, and prisons - all unpaid gigs, but all very rewarding.  All of this personal practice and live performance has helped me to hone my guitar-playing skills to the point that I can watch a video of a performance and not puke.  But I feel like I have so far to grow, I feel so very far from being a 'musician'.  I suppose there are newbies that hear my playing and think I'm good, and I get lots of feedback from the audiences that they enjoy the songs; but when I hear a really accomplished musician perform with the guitar, I realize that I've got a long, long road ahead.

Over the past few months, I haven't been recording videos - I've been focused on trying to get a better 'mastery' of my finger style technique and things like Travis picking.  I've been working on mastering about 10 songs side-by-side, and feeling like I'm almost stuck.  I think I'm close to the top of the hill, and I expect to get recording some of these songs soon, but the last 5 months have sure been hard slogging.

I realize that there are very, very few child prodigies - and most people put in a vast number of hours in mastering the instrument, and even then only become masters of some of the possible musical styles within the realm of the guitar world.  I wish I could have those 30 years of un-played practice back - and failing that, I wish there was a magic wand for guitar excellence.  But then, I guess mastery would not be special, would it!

Over the past few years, I've become lighter with my strumming, I'm using finger style more often, and I'm practicing my songs better before I try and perform or record them.  My next step is to start memorizing songs, so that I don't have to rely on the song sheets so much.

It's not an easy road, but it is a highly rewarding one.  The personal therapy of losing yourself in the music is terrific.  The satisfaction of seeing eyes light up, toes start tapping, hands clapping - this makes it all worth while.

SOTW 'Lessons Learned'

I've learned alot from the Song-of-the-week personal challenge.  Researching, preparing, 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.

Song Of The Week - New Year's Resolution

I'm most probably going crazy, but I've been following a virtual friend of mine, Kyle Scobie, on the Acoustic Guitar Forum.  He faithfully posted a new song each and every week for a year.  It's been an interesting ride as I've followed Kyle's musical adventure.

So I'm thinking that I will make the same resolution.  Researching and developing a new song every week and recording it to YouTube will be a great way to grow my repertoire for busking quickly.  Working through the technical aspects of recording and working up something that is worthy of presentation to the public will help me 'step it up a notch' in my playing.  I'm hoping that my fellow musicians will be able to offer up suggestions, tips, and feedback that will help me grow as a musician.and increase the speed with which I am improving.

As I post each week, I will be aiming to provide a variety of different types of music from a variety of decades and genres - I'd like to have some folk, some country, some classic rock n roll, some modern pop, some old-tyme gospel, and some modern praise and worship selections.

My over-arching goal is to improve my presentation skills - you know - getting good vocal projection, achieving a good variety of techniques and dynamics, getting a good vocal/ guitar mix, making good eye contact and positive connection with the viewing 'crowd'.  My second goal is to make a better connection with my music and to be able to better communicate that feeling, or soul, to the viewer.  My friend Kyle talks about it as 'guitar face' - you probably know what I mean - but it's really about putting lots of feeling into the playing.  My third goal is to introduce new songs to folks, like others had done for me, and to provide them with some back story with each song.  Another thing I had found frustrating in some YT posts was the lack of lyrics/ chords, so I was hoping to add this material, as well.  And I hope I can have fun with this along the way.

So wish me well, and I'd like it if you came along for the ride with me - post  some feedback and let's walk a little bit of this road together.

Crazy ride, here we come!