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Sunday, May 30, 2010
Success in Guitar: The Three Pillars (Part III)
(Continued from Part II below or see Alternate link ..)
3. Musical Theory is the aspect of guitar learning which every student is already aware of. And this is the information that students go seeking when they contact a teacher. But a good teacher will take care to help them to build a complete foundation using all the three pillars.
Study of musical theory is done at various levels but mostly it consists of the actual concepts of music broken down to fit on the neck of the guitar. 
To sum up you need to understand that if you are struggling with your guitar lessons then you may need to step back and check if any of the three pillars may be underdeveloped. Often this helps to diagnose the problem in the shortest possible time. Once this is done, the guitar program needs to be adapted to help the student work around that problem.
Irrespective of the level of playing, every guitarist runs into a wall every now and then while learning something. I am happy to help you with a diagnosis if you should need one at any stage.
© Soumitra Ranjan
About the Author
Soumitra is a Singer, Guitarist / Keyboardist, Songwriter, Producer. He is also a private vocals/guitar instructor. Write to him at soumitra@live.com or visit www.soumitra.com
Posted at 5:03:02 am by Soumitra
Guitar, Music
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Success in Guitar: The Three Pillars (Part II)
(continued from Part I below or see Alternate Link...)
PART II
1. Mental Orientation is perhaps the easiest to develop but is fairly difficult to sustain. I stress on the latter because you need to manage it 24 by 7. Hence it is not an attitude that you develop just when you sit down to practice but its your overall mental preparation for the long journey ahead. In short, some key mental traits that you need to develop here are:
Focus: What are your short term and long term goals with respect to developing your skills. Mix up these goals and you will start having problems in growing further.
Resilience: As with any regime, your resilience and ability to face setbacks positively will decide how far you go in your journey.
Discipline: If you are really serious about getting results then you have to understand the importance of following a disciplined approach. If your approach to learning is random then so will be the results.
2. Physical Conditioning is best understood by explaining two concepts:
The first is muscle memory. A good guitar instruction progam is always built to generate muscle memory in the student's hands and fingers.
Basically our human mind is conditioned to become good at something that we do repeatedly. Hence any finger movement while playing guitar, if done enough number of times will lead to it getting embedded in your muscle memory such that you can do it faster and with more accurately with passage of time. The trick here is to know how to focus on the right finger movements and knowing how long to practice them.
The thing to watch out here is that even an 'incorrect' movement will get embedded in memory if you do it long enough. Hence care needs to be exercised not to develop any bad habits which are extremely difficult to 'unlearn' at a later stage.
A good example of some things that a guitarist learns to commit to muscle memory are actual chord shapes, alternate picking, string skipping, sweep picking, string bending, finger picking, hybrid picking, fast legato runs and so on.
The second aspect of physical conditioning is developing strength in your fingers and hand. And easy as it sounds, it doesn't happen overnight. There are really no exercises that you can do in the gym to develop this strength. The only way to work these body parts is to work out on the guitar itself.
A good guitar program will help you build calluses on your finger tips, generate strength in each of your finger and thumb for dancing around on the strings, and also develop strength in support muscles which include you palm, wrist, forearm and so on.
A lot of rigorous guitar playing that we see by our guitar idols is made possible only because they have developed an insane amount of muscle memory and muscle strength through disciplined practice (which is the first pillar) over a period of several years.
(Concluded in Part II above or see Alternate Link...)
© Soumitra Ranjan
About the Author
Soumitra is a Singer, Guitarist / Keyboardist, Songwriter, Producer. He is also a private vocals/guitar instructor. Write to him at soumitra@live.com or visit www.soumitra.com
Posted at 4:46:56 am by Soumitra
Guitar, Music
Friday, May 28, 2010
Success in Guitar: The Three Pillars (Part I)Part
Let me share with you a secret which is often not articulated clearly enough by a guitar instruction progam or guitar instructor.  Whether you are already playing guitar or planning to start, there is a problem that you are bound to face from day one and perhaps every day after that. "What is the exact journey that you need to undertake in order to become an accomplished guitarist ?"
This gets broken down into more doubts such as:
- How do you really know if you are on the right path ?
- How do you assess your progress realistically ?
- Do you really have it in you to make it like one of you guitar idols or should you give up ?
- What is the time frame that you need to look at before you become a player of serious standing ?The answer to these questions lies in understanding the three pillars which go in creating the foundation (and eventual success) of a good guitarist. It is the respective strength of each pillar which will finally decide how proficient you become on the instrument. Explaining these in detail is actually beyond the scope of the article but let me make an attempt to point you in the right direction.
The road to successful guitar playing is built around three factors which are:
1. Mental Orientation
2. Physical Conditioning
3. Musical Theory
Usually our understanding is that we need to build only the third pillar in order to play guitar. But a good teacher will soon show you that such an approach is seriously flawed. And that should explain why self-help lessons which primarily are a source of "musical theory" often don't work for students.
Each of these pillar feeds into the other, so even if one of them is left underdeveloped then your overall progress will get hampered.
Often you will be too focused on developing just one particular pillar and feel that even though you are trying very hard progress seems to be at a stand still. It is a typical pull-your-hair-out-in-frustration situation. At this juncture it may help you to understand that you may be lacking something in another area which in turn could be the key to seeing progress here.
"The most important thing that I wish to point out here is that the first two aspects are sometimes developed through methods which may not be musical to hear". And hence they often don't get enough attention during a "musical' practise session. But a well rounded guitar program will incorporate lessons and exercises to develop your skills on all fronts".
(Continued in Part II above or see Alternate Link…)
© Soumitra Ranjan
About the Author
Soumitra is a Singer, Guitarist / Keyboardist, Songwriter, Producer. He is also a private vocals/guitar instructor. Write to him at soumitra@live.com or visit www.soumitra.com
Posted at 4:06:27 am by Soumitra
Guitar, Music
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