I was playing around with my guitar today and noticed that I make mistakes sometimes on songs which I have been playing for quite awhile. And not only that, but sometimes in sllightly faster tunes I am not exactly fingering properly (some placements will be much too far from the fret than they need to be) or my hand may be slightly interefering with a string's vibration or perhaps I'll hit a note which I should not be hitting.
I was thinking, is working on this in serious capacity that important? Do you think that perhaps it's betetr to concentrate on learning more songs and more styles and write more than simply spending time working out the little things like this, and let them work themselves out?
You make mistakes????
I never do..I'm perfect...
Only kidding here of course. I realy think that no matter how long you play, you're going to make mistakes.
Go ahead, learn new songs, but don't stop playing the ones you know already..You'd be amazed at how many songs you can have in your head at any time, ready to play at a moment's notice.
Haha, fine yet surpringly reassuring response. Although my thinking was that I am making some types of mistakes that perhaps I should not be making on a song with the set amount of practice on it, and wether you guys thought it's better to work out the little parts of one piece or jsut play more and assume it's a fundemental technique thing that will work out it more playing and learning.
I'm one of those "polish until it's perfect" kind of people. But just because I"m working to clean up one song doesn't mean that I stop learning new things. If you've already pin-pointed a problem area in a song, why not spend 15 mins of your practice time polishing it up? In the long run, by working on and polishing timing/fingering/technique on songs that you already know, you're making it easier to learn new songs.
"My ex-boyfriend can't tell me I've sold out, because he's in a cult, and he's not allowed to talk to me." --Dar Williams
If you do decide to move on to another song, don't make the mistake of forgetting the song you were playing and forget how to play it all together. Trust me, been there, done that! It happens.
People are creatures of habit….you get bored with something…..some people think the answer is to move on, which is fine but, try to keep a journal of songs that you know and don't be afraid to make comments on what you need to improve a pone.
Haha, fine yet surpringly reassuring response. Although my thinking was that I am making some types of mistakes that perhaps I should not be making on a song with the set amount of practice on it, and wether you guys thought it's better to work out the little parts of one piece or jsut play more and assume it's a fundemental technique thing that will work out it more playing and learning.
I'm going to quote Jamey Andreas on this point - practice doesn't make perfect, "practice makes permanent" and if you're making mistakes when you practice then your practice is simply going to reinforce those mistakes and make them happen every time.
The best thing to do would be to slow down how you play that song, and keep slowing it down until you can play it without making the mistakes which are needling away at you. Then practice at that slower tempo until you can play it regularly without mistakes, and then start building up the tempo again. Playing the difficult bits on their own is always a good idea; ask my girlfriend about those two tricky bits in Classical Gas - she hears them a lot more than the rest of the piece.
What I do is to practice everything a few bpm slower than performance tempo, making sure I get to the notes I need to play. Then, when I've got a performance coming up, I grab a metronome and start to ramp it up to performance tempo. The muscle memory is then already in place and playing at full speed is a lot easier.
Best,
A :-)
"Be good at what you can do" - Fingerbanger"
I have always felt that it is better to do what is beautiful than what is 'right'" - Eliot Fisk
Wedding music and guitar lessons in Essex. Listen at: http://www.rollmopmusic.co.uk
