Over the years of my playing and teaching guitar, I have noticed that self taught guitarists, including myself, who've been playing for quite sometime somehow have a ‘grey area’ when it comes to the actual mechanism and art of ‘guitar practice. With this blog entry, I'll be introducing to you the fundamental secrets that one must observe during practice sessions in order to save time and energy.
These tips are not called BIG and SECRETS for nothing, for the simple reason that they can cover the beginner, intermediate, and even the advanced level. These concepts will help you in the polishing of your actual ‘practice times’ until you can craft your own methods. Here they are:
1. RELAX, RELAX, RELAX
You may be wondering what's relaxation got to do with your guitar practice - and more, why is it such a BIG secret? Being a self-taught guitarist, I went for years without being aware of this secret and did wonder myself the first time I encountered this guitar-practice-relaxation concept. Am I glad that its never too late to learn something new when it comes to playing guitar because my skill was refined over a tenfold because of this technique
My personal discovery of this secret started when I saw a cousin of mine reading this Japanese guitar book and I asked him what's it about. He told me that has was having some problem with the speed of his 'picking' hand, accuracy of his 'fretting' hand and the coordination of both and popularity of the book as a best seller in helping out other guitarists with the same problem led it to him.
I was having the same problem so I asked him what the book says (since I can't read 'Japanese'), and as you may have guessed, relaxation as a secret was there. I found out, later on, that the author of that book was a professional guitarist from Berklee School of Music. My cuz’ wasn't able to give me the full detail of the article because of our language barrier at that time so I went into research.
Here’s what I arrived at:
It is commonly perceived that the experience of unnecessary strain and tension when learning new skills such as playing the guitar is normal. Though this may be true, sticking to this thought can actually be ‘evil’ in a way since there is a better way to go about your growth as a guitarist instead having to suffer the disadvantages given by these needless strain and tension, like:
a) Early depletion of your energy that can make you tired earlier - tensed muscles just use a lot more energy
b) Lesser fluid, accurate and coordinated response of your hands – tensed muscles tend to act like a rope tied in a knot that restricts movement
c) Lesser mental focus
WHAT’S THE BETTER WAY THEN?
– ACTIVE RELAXATION
I called this technique active relaxation because it will be upon you to actively ‘call on relaxation’ during practice sessions. You do this because in reality, many of us may be bombarded by everyday things in life that ask for us to keep ourselves up on our toes that tends to add up to more tension in our body and mind, making relaxation a bit of a challenge.
But worry not because a simple solution lies within a single word – AWARENESS. Now that you know that a concept of relaxation exists in the world of guitar, all you have to do is be aware of tensions in your body by using your senses (rotate where you focus your senses from time to time):
a) Watch your fingers and body parts in front of a mirror
b) Hear the sound your producing and evaluate if it could sound better for your ear
c) Feel your muscles for relaxed spots, and if you find tension spots, make that spot relax (its better for the mind to think of relaxation rather than tension itself)
d) If you could find use for your sense of smell, taste, and probably sixth sense, tell me ^_^
5 TIPS TO HELP YOU RELAX WHEN PRACTICING GUITAR
a) Do some deep abdominal breathing exercises before practicing and during breaks. Basic idea is to inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth in a pursed lip manner (somewhat like whistling but more loose and without the whistling). Exhaling should take longer than inhaling.
b) Warm up and stretch first before practice session. FACT: 15 minutes of finger/strum exercises can prevent you a lot of injury on top of helping your muscles get fired up before actual practice.
c) Keep your body upright when playing the guitar – No slouching!
d) Play with the movement of your picking hand coming from the WRIST instead of the arm.
e) Smile with your soul.
The bottom line is to be aware -relax- up as much until the time you get used to being in that state that it becomes a part of your nature when your practicing – meaning you don't even have to think about it. Believe that you can keep this up and sooner than you know, you'll be the master of your muscles that'll be whipping out great sounds from your guitar from a tune to another! Good Luck!
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