Sergio's Guitar Blog

A blog About playing guitar, life, philosophy, spirituality & creative inspiration.

The Power of Reason

There is no secret to how to become a proficient player….practice. Everyone knows this, it’s not the knowing that makes the difference. It’s making the decision to go for it and create a goal.

How good do you want to become? How fast? More lyrical? Better staccato? improve phrasing?….You just need to decide to set a goal small or large, and have some sort of timeline. See yourself having achieved the goal and feel how good it feels.

Why is this important? Because it’s that emotional energy that will drive you to get there, it will push you over the humps and obstacles that will come up or the blocks your mind will create. The negative thinking that cripples you and keeps you stuck.

I have heard many musicians speak about this, including most recently Steve Vai at a clinic I attended.

GIve yourself a reason to practice and it can change everything.

The 80/20 of guitar playing

I’ve recently been reading about the 80/20 principle otherwise known as Pareto’s law. It states that only a small percentage of what you do (20% or less) will create 80% (or more) of your results. This law can be applied to any aspect of life that has an energy input to output ratio. I’ve been thinking about it in relation to guitar playing. What are the things that you do when you practice that yield the most results? You should ask this question often and especially in relation to technical work and musicianship, but also to who you are watching on youtube and whose advice you are taking.

Are you getting the best information of what’s out there, are you collaborating with the right people? Are you making the best use of practice time?

Mindful repetition

Repetition is the backbone of practice. It’s how you program your body. You learned how do many things with your body at a young age through repetition, and trial and error. It’s useful to remember this when it comes to practicing. What you do in practice will manifest during performance.

Do you make mistakes often? Is it in specific spots? The answer is probably yes. How do you decrease constant mistakes? Slow down and repeat, preferably with

 

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