The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #30937   Message #400619
Posted By: Justa Picker
18-Feb-01 - 12:31 AM
Thread Name: Losing Concentration
Subject: RE: Losing Concentration
Definitely some good suggestions here. Here are mine.

Parson, try removing the list from your guitar for a few days or even a week. Sit down and start playing what you feel like playing and forget about the list for a while. Let your mood dicatate what you want to play. Don't treat practise like a regemented aerobic exercise and going down through "a list". That makes it tedious, and that tediousness is partially why you're losing concentration. So what if there are certain tunes in that list that give your fingers a particular grueling workout?...or you make a few mistakes? Only you are going to notice them.

If you're not already doing it, record yourself, over a few takes, and keep going to the ends of the tunes even if you make what you think are mistakes. And then sit back and listen to your recordings from as dispassionate a viewpoint as you can muster. Chances are you'll discover you sound a whole lot better than you thought. Because when you just listen, you hear the music. When you record and practise you just hear the mistakes.

Everyone has a different level of saturation during practise and a different level of discipline. Mine is about an hour and a half at a time. I can sit and go over and over and over a specific lick, and play nothing else till it's worked in. It drives people in my household insane. Eventually I get the lick and can play it perfectly, and then, I start over-analyzing the lick or anticipating the lick, and I can't play it anymore, and that's when my concentration is blown. So I put the guitar down, and I go and do something entirely different (like a visit here to read the threads) or anything just to get away from it for a few hours. Then, I come back to it and try and just start playing without thinking, and the lick is there.

Sounds to me like you're pushing yourself too hard. Relax, and let it flow. The things you've been practising have been retained in your brain. Not to worry. And remember that for some mysterious reason the fingers work better on some days than others. On those days when they're not happening, there's nothing you can do and the more you try the more frustrated you'll become. The critical thing is to achieve a level of balance within your playing that is consistent without necessarily trying to add flash, so that when you are having a bad day, only you will know it. The others around you will tell you that you sound great, because they're listening to the music!