Hi. I'm Jim Deeming instructor for JamPlay.com.
I want to talk to you a little bit today about goal setting.
This is especially important when you are a new student.
I firmly believe you will make better use of your practice time and you will for farther if you have a clear understanding of what success is.
That might be a particular guitar player you want to emulate. That might be a particular genre or style you just want to master.
In any case even if you are at the very beginning level. The very beginning of your guitar instruction.
I want to encourage you to spend a lot of time listening to other guitar players and try to dial in on a main area of emphasis to begin with.
Of course to do that you might also want to keep in mind where you want to end up playing someday.
If you're just going to end up playing for yourself for self enjoyment and your own relaxation that's one thing.
If you intend to play in a band someday or at church in a sing along kind of environment or maybe you want to play solo finger style guitar.
The better your vision is of where you want to go. The better use you will make of your practice time and study time.
It's amazing the resources that are available to us right now with the advent of YouTube and subscription music download like Rhapsody
where you can find an endless amount of music to listen to and just immerse yourself in.
I want to encourage you to not only do that but as you listen to it try to get your mind and your minds eye around what you think
that guitar playing is doing to achieve a particular sound.
One of the upcoming lessons I am going to be doing is I'm going to be focusing on ear training
and we will talks about some tricks you can use to decode what you hear another guitar player doing.
Even now without those tools in your pocket focus on what the guitar's doing,
maybe what the right hand might be doing to get a certain rhythm or groove.
Can you tell if they are playing or fretting down low on the neck of the guitar or is it stuff way up high.
Your mind and your ear can learn to decipher stuff like that and it will enhance the speed that you make progress
and then it will help you find your own style down the road.
I want to just encourage you to try to have fun with your lessons but also there are some basics that we all have to do.
It is worth taking the time to learn to play well.
It's good.
It's absolutely important every once and a while to just sit down and play with your guitar and just have fun and entertain yourself
or entertain someone watching you but do set aside some structured and focused time to just work on the basics.
There is a really well known guitar teacher and performer and I've watched a lot of his material.
His name is Buster B. Jones.
He is probably one of the top finger style guitar players and specifically in the area of emulating Jerry Reed style playing.
Buster has a philosophy that you should never practice that you should just always play the guitar and that it should always be fun.
I'm almost there with that idea but I think that's a fine philosophy for an intermediate to advanced player
but when you are starting out you need the bottom bricks in the pyramid to be in the right place.
The more that you do well now the less problems that you'll be solving later on down the road.
So when I'm talking about basics.
I am talking about things like learning your chord shapes, working on changing between those chord shapes and getting that down.
Invest in a metronome.
A metronome is almost like a swear word amongst most beginning guitar students.
Really beginning students of any music style.
We all know that all metronomes slow down.
The reason people say that is because when you start playing with a metronome you start finding out that you have a tendency to change your
own tempo and a metronome is like a loud speaker that sheds a light on that problem.
Maybe that's annoying for a while.
Again, you are arranging bottom bricks in the pyramid to be in the right place by teaching your ear to get used to
a rhythm and learn it and predict it and be able to stay with it.
Obviously you won't always play with a metronome but I encourage students to set aside a portion of their time to work on basics like that.
Absent a metronome. Make it a lifelong habit to tap your foot.
If you are ever privileged to go to a guitar workshop by the likes of Tommy Emmanuel
and he is an avid student of the master Chet Atkins who also said the same thing.
The single most important thing a guitar player can do is tap their foot.
What that does it does not only audibly conditions your ear to rhythm but it actually makes it a physical experience.
You feel it when you tap your foot.
Playing on rhythm and playing on time makes magnitudes of difference in how enjoyable you are to listen to and it'll be more enjoyable for yourself.
We don't all have that tendency naturally.
Some of us think we're on rhythm and think we're on time but then when you play with somebody else a lot of times problems get exposed
that you didn't know you had.
Work on those early, take the time, make the effort, work on rhythm, get a metronome, tap your foot.
A side note to that maybe it's too soon now if you are just learning about where the parts of the guitar are
and how to make it make noise, it's too soon for this.
Just as soon as you have some basic chords down, have a basic idea of how to strum this thing
take every opportunity you can to play with someone else.
Play with someone who can sing a song while you play.
Play with somebody else who can play chords while you play melody.
By design when you are required to be with someone else it will force you to think about your rhythm and think musically.
That's a healthy thing.
That's another lesson set that I plan on doing is where I will actually trade off with you.
I'll be playing a single melody and you can play the chords.
We'll do it together.
Now you'll be chording and I'll be playing the melody.
What that will do whether you are playing melody or playing the chords it's going to reinforce that idea of being on time
so that you can be with somebody else without running them into the ground.
I want to encourage you while you are working on techniques to also focus on working on an actual song.
That helps keep it interesting.
As I said technique is important but also sounds are important.
Some of this should be music and you're going to find out that a few of the mechanics we have to work on may not be terribly musical
as necessary as they are.
So strive as you are practicing to keep a balance between working on basics and on keeping it fun.
One final comment about practicing.
You know when you're in this environment with JamPlay you've got video.
The nice thing is you can watch a stretch, you can stop it, and back up and go over something again and that's great.
I want to encourage you to learn to play well and get the details down.
Look over your own shoulder and question whether or not you are being too much of a perfectionist.
There is a time and a place for that but you can carry it too far especially early.
I will try in my videos to make a point in the video if this stretch we did just now is very critical and you need to stop the tape and go over it.
Other times we'll cover quite a bit of material and then you can work on it on your own.
It's probably not helpful to over focus on a detail to the point to where you get frustrated.
Again, there has got to be a balance between trying really hard and being really frustrated.
They are not the same and you can get a balance.
I want to thank you again for watching the videos.
I hope these thoughts have been constructive and helpful for you and most of all my biggest goal is that the guitar becomes your best friend
and that it's a lifelong enjoyment for you to play.
Thank you.