[Newsletter] How self-taught guitarists can pick up momentum and get out of their rut: The As and When Practice Framework
Rick Beato breaks convention; Practice being creative (because inspiration is fickle)
Something to think about
How self-taught guitarists can pick up momentum and get out of their rut: The As and When Practice Framework
There are two types of guitar players: those who enjoy practicing and those (like myself) who feel like it's a pain in the ass.
If you fall in the second camp and never feel like committing to a specific practice session, consider the As and When Practice Framework. It’s inspired by Tiago Forte, a modern productivity guy. Here are a few of his principles:
Make your work project based. You will get more done if there’s a defined end goal within a defined timeframe.
Have background knowledge and resources available at all times.
Move quickly, touch lightly.
When you're bogged down and uninspired, try learning songs and only practicing what emerges as challenging for 5-10 minute increments before moving on to the next part of the song.
Always have a project. I recommend learning a song (defined start and ending) once a week (defined time frame). It’s not important to master every aspect of the song in that time frame, but it's important to be able to play whatever matches your ability level from beginning to end. It could mean strumming the chords or doing the riff. Maybe the solo is too difficult for this week, that's fine.
Keep all your resources handy. Videos, books, tabs, or whatever else you're using should be accessible and easy to find every time you sit down to practice. Even just having to search for this stuff for a few minutes causes friction and can have a negative effect on your overall guitar playing experience. Friction is the enemy.
As you encounter challenges and stumbling blocks, stop and practice that section for 5 or 10 minutes. The goal isn’t to master that section right then and there. It’s to go slow, be accurate, be deliberate, and work up the section as best you can in that time limit.
Work your way through the song with this process. Once you reach the end, start over and you'll have improved the challenges from before while being faced with new challenges when it's time to go into more depth.
That’s the process.
Each repetition strengthens your learning (spacing the challenges, interleaving them with other challenges, and varying them by improving slightly each time). You benefit from accommodating your brain’s natural learning method, but also get in the habit of finishing full songs - a critical thing many intermediate guitarists have a hard time with.
Your momentum will soar and you'll avoid getting bogged down.
Something to watch
Even though this video is for beginners, it's instructive for everyone.
This video has a lot to do with an idea I wrote about from Robert Duke: teachers should move their students toward "the good stuff" as quickly as possible. For beginner guitarists, the good stuff is playing real music as soon as possible. There's so much to learn and so many new and difficult physical movements that folks just starting out get overwhelmed and demotivated.
As an expert musician and educator, Rick Beato breaks convention and takes an unusual approach to beginner guitar.
Using common topics and concepts taught to beginners, he offers solutions to the big problems that typically arise. Beginner students have a hell of a time switching chords and strumming fluently. Instead of brute forcing their way to success, Beato suggests beginners should take advantage of a few simple tricks. These tricks (which aren't really tricks at all, but rather default technique for many great players) help students get away from overthinking every single movement to strumming and changing chords smoothly and in time.
A lot of what he says contradicts traditional teaching.
Just lifting all your fingers off and strumming all the strings open? Cupping the neck instead of having your thumb centred on the back of it? These are common instructions in beginner technique, but not how anyone actually plays.
Beato hits on the Pareto principle here and finds the 20% of the concepts responsible for 80% of the success.
Something to practice
The best way to learn something is to create with it.
This goes for anything: theory, chord progressions, scales, songs, licks, or riffs. In order to actually create something, you need a certain amount of background information and a good understanding of the raw materials. Go beyond a small idea or motif and treat creating like a story. There's a point to it with a beginning, middle, and end.
It doesn't have to be long (or even good, for that matter), but it should be complete.
Coming up with a 1 measure long melody is a small motif. A 4 bar melody is a story.
A chord progression made up of 4 chords is a loop. Playing that loop 4 times (with the 3rd repeat being a little different) is a story.
Learning the whole-step and half-step pattern of the major scale is raw knowledge. Coming up with a melody using the pattern on one string instead of relying on shapes is a story.
Make this a habit. The next time you work on something new, put it into a new context and you will see the gaps in knowledge that are invisible to you now and have a chance to be creative all at once.
Beyond the musical benefit, the creative benefit is worthwhile. If you practice being creative (even when you're not inspired or have boring source material), you're building the skill of dropping into a creative space on demand. When inspiration does strike or some really new and interesting information comes to you, you'll have the tools to do something about it in the moment.