A little fingerpicking tip....

thereshopeyet
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Fri Aug 30, 2013 5:43 pm

Thanks.


kanefsky
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Fri Aug 30, 2013 7:19 pm

willem wrote:
Thanks Tom,,I did discover that on some moments but did not use it very much,,,now I go slow sloow slooow sloooooooow,,this is such a good tip..
There's a really great book called The Little Book of Talent that's very concise and is full of tips on how to learn most effectively. One of their case studies is the Meadowmount School of Music, and in the book it says they "often practice according to an informal rule: If a passerby can recognize a song, it's being played too fast." :)

Here's a link to the book on Amazon
An audio version is also available on Audible: http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?as ... 318&sr=1-1

I've also had the experience of playing better when I'm not looking (or not concentrating) on my fretting hand. My theory is that you're dealing with two potentially conflicting sets of sensory information. There's what the chord looks like and what it feels like. The advantage of feeling is that you can feel the entire shape of the chord at once and move straight to it. You can't really look at all of your fingers simultaneously so when you use visual feedback you tend to place your fingers one or two at a time which is much slower and interferes with using your muscle memory to just feel where your fingers should go. I think the best approach might be to only focus your visual attention on positioning your hand over the right fret but to use muscle memory for making the chord shape. I suppose eventually you get good enough that you can move to any arbitrary fret without having to look but that must take much longer.

Another thing I've found is that sometimes my fingers can feel their way to making a chord with good tone but visual feedback might tell me that my fingers aren't positioned quite right, or my fingers might look OK but the tone isn't very good or some strings are muted. That's another reason to try and learn not to rely on visual feedback.

--
Steve


thereshopeyet
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Fri Aug 30, 2013 8:37 pm

Steve Quoted:
If a passerby can recognize a song, it's being played too fast."
That's interesting Steve.

It's taken me a long time to learn what I have to date.
Many will be expert by now in comparison.

Recently I've been finding that when learning a new song I go so slow and initially
think about where my fingers have to go and where they have to go to.
It's not in any way recognisable or musical.

I find that although I'm familiar with some basic chords in one song in another I have to go through the same process probably because I don't have the muscle memory experience.

I think learning a musical instrument is an evolving process no matter what level
an individual might be at if they are still trying to learn something new to their experience.

Steve Wrote:
That's another reason to try and learn not to rely on visual feedback.
It's difficult ignoring negative thought noise too...." measure 25, here's the hard part coming up"

That's probably because I haven't been practicing it Slow Slow Slow for long enough !

:ohmy:

Dermot

Note:
You can read that book or subscribe and download it here:
The Little Book of Talent Tips

:)


kanefsky
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Fri Aug 30, 2013 9:10 pm

thereshopeyet wrote:
I find that although I'm familiar with some basic chords in one song in another I have to go through the same process probably because I don't have the muscle memory experience.
To some degree I think you have to learn to play all the transitions between chords and not just the individual chords. I think it would be impossible to learn to play any song at a recognizable speed without muscle memory, but the muscle memory might be tailored to that song.


It's difficult ignoring negative thought noise too...." measure 25, here's the hard part coming up"
I manage to have those thoughts whether I'm looking or not :)


That's probably because I haven't been practicing it Slow Slow Slow for long enough !
It's really hard to convince yourself that playing slow is the best way to learn to play fast. The temptation is incredibly strong to play as fast as you can and try to eliminate mistakes through repetition. The book calls that the "hey look at me syndrome" :) The problem is that you can end up reinforcing the mistakes that way.

One of the central theories in the book is that as we're learning our brains produce myelin which is an insulator that speeds up the signals along pathways in our brain. This can literally increase the speed that signals travel along those pathways by a factor of 100, making impossible tasks become almost automatic once the corresponding pathways have been fully myelinated (it also explains why young people are better at learning, because they are able to produce more myelin). Thinking about that helps motivate me to practice slowly with the knowledge that I'll be able to perform much faster once my neural pathways are myelinated :)

--
Steve


unclewalt
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Fri Aug 30, 2013 9:34 pm

kanefsky wrote:
willem wrote:
Thanks Tom,,I did discover that on some moments but did not use it very much,,,now I go slow sloow slooow sloooooooow,,this is such a good tip..
There's a really great book called The Little Book of Talent that's very concise and is full of tips on how to learn most effectively. One of their case studies is the Meadowmount School of Music, and in the book it says they "often practice according to an informal rule: If a passerby can recognize a song, it's being played too fast." :)

Here's a link to the book on Amazon
An audio version is also available on Audible: http://www.audible.com/pd/ref=sr_1_1?as ... 318&sr=1-1

I've also had the experience of playing better when I'm not looking (or not concentrating) on my fretting hand. My theory is that you're dealing with two potentially conflicting sets of sensory information. There's what the chord looks like and what it feels like. The advantage of feeling is that you can feel the entire shape of the chord at once and move straight to it. You can't really look at all of your fingers simultaneously so when you use visual feedback you tend to place your fingers one or two at a time which is much slower and interferes with using your muscle memory to just feel where your fingers should go. I think the best approach might be to only focus your visual attention on positioning your hand over the right fret but to use muscle memory for making the chord shape. I suppose eventually you get good enough that you can move to any arbitrary fret without having to look but that must take much longer.

Another thing I've found is that sometimes my fingers can feel their way to making a chord with good tone but visual feedback might tell me that my fingers aren't positioned quite right, or my fingers might look OK but the tone isn't very good or some strings are muted. That's another reason to try and learn not to rely on visual feedback.

--
Steve
Well put. I hadn't heard of that book, will check it out. Also, interesting stuff on myelin in your other post. I knew about it, but never thought of using it as a conceptual practice-reinforcement tool -- that kind of stuff works well for me, so I'll start visualizing myelin tunnels growing in my noggin.


thereshopeyet
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Fri Aug 30, 2013 9:35 pm

Steve Wrote:
To some degree I think you have to learn to play all the transitions between chords and not just the individual chords.
Yes, it's the transitions from chord to chord no matter how small, even lifting a finger can be a challenge!
:)

I noticed on page 7 of the book, he explains briefly that muscle memory doesn't exist.
It's the brain..... good memory helps though ? :ohmy: I can't remember! :S

The Talent Code website mentioned in the book looks interesting too.

I need to go and practice Tip 30 now

Cheers for the book tip.... :)

Dermot


kanefsky
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Fri Aug 30, 2013 11:01 pm

I doubt anyone thinks that muscles literally have memory. You can think of it as memory of how to move your muscles rather than memory that actually resides in the muscles.

The Talent Code came out a few years before The Little Book of Talent, and I read that one first. The new one is much better and much more concise. I wouldn't even bother to read the first one. There's almost nothing in there that isn't covered in a much clearer way in the newer one. I haven't really checked out thetalentcode.com website.

There's another book I'm reading now by a different author (actually three authors) called Practice Perfect: 42 Rules for Getting Better at Getting Better. That one is very good so far as well.

--
Steve


willem
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Sat Aug 31, 2013 5:26 am

kanefsky wrote:
I doubt anyone thinks that muscles literally have memory. You can think of it as memory of how to move your muscles rather than memory that actually resides in the muscles.

The Talent Code came out a few years before The Little Book of Talent, and I read that one first. The new one is much better and much more concise. I wouldn't even bother to read the first one. There's almost nothing in there that isn't covered in a much clearer way in the newer one. I haven't really checked out thetalentcode.com website.

There's another book I'm reading now by a different author (actually three authors) called Practice Perfect: 42 Rules for Getting Better at Getting Better. That one is very good so far as well.

--
Steve

Thanks Steve,,just great, that book should manage my discipline for practice,,,I noticed for myself while reading the first pages I do look to the artist him/her self and also I try to find people who covers the song very good(on you tube),,or find a video and think ''hey thats fine enough''

Thanks again,,great tip and maybe I can forward it too..

Willem


thereshopeyet
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Sat Aug 31, 2013 5:36 am

Steve Wrote:
I haven't really checked out thetalentcode.com website.
I've had a further look he's mostly plugging the Talent Code book.

There's a great clip from 'History of the Eagles' Documentary ........Glenn Frey Learns Songwriting From Jackson Browne.....



Dermot

:)


willem
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Sat Aug 31, 2013 6:02 am

TIP 3..




We are often told that talented people acquire their skill by following their “natural instincts.” This sounds nice, but in fact it is baloney. Allimprovement is about absorbing and applying new information, and the best source of information is top performers. So steal it.Stealing has a long tradition in art, sports, and design, where it often goes by the name of “influence.” The young Steve Jobs stole the idea for thecomputer mouse and drop-down menus from the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. The young Beatles stole the high “wooooo” sounds in “SheLoves You,” “From Me to You,” and “Twist and Shout” from their idol Little Richard. The young Babe Ruth based his swing on the mighty uppercut of his hero, Shoeless Joe Jackson. As Pablo Picasso (no slouch at theft himself) put it, “Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.”Linda Septien, founder of the Septien School of Contemporary Music, a hotbed near Dallas that has produced millions of dollars in pop-musictalent (including Demi Lovato, Ryan Cabrera, and Jessica Simpson), tells her students, “Sweetheart, you gotta steal like crazy. Look at every singleperformer better than you and see what they’ve got that you can use. Then make it your own.” Septien follows her own advice, having accumulatedfourteen three-ring notebooks’ worth of ideas stolen from top performers. In plastic sleeves inside the binders, in some cases scribbled on cocktailnapkins, reside tips on everything from how to hit a high note to how to deal with a rowdy crowd (a joke works best).Stealing helps shed light on some mysterious patterns of talent—for instance, why the younger members of musical families so often are also themost talented. (A partial list: The Bee Gees’s younger brother, Andy Gibb; Michael Jackson; the youngest Jonas Brother, Nick. Not to mentionMozart, J. S. Bach, and Yo-Yo Ma, all babies of their families.) The difference can be explained partly by the windshield phenomenon (seeTip #1)and partly by theft. As they grow up, the younger kids have more access to good information. They have far more opportunity to watch their older siblings perform, to mimic, to see what works and what doesn’t. In other words, to steal.When you steal, focus on specifics, not general impressions. Capture concrete facts: the angle of a golfer’s left elbow at the top of thebackswing; the curve of a surgeon’s wrist; the precise shape and tension of a singer’s lips as he hits that high note; the exact length of time acomedian pauses before delivering the punch line. Ask yourself: •What, exactly, are the critical moves here? •How do they perform those moves differently than I do?


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