Tuesday 11 March 2014

Practice

Several weeks ago it became clear that I had taken a wrong turn with my guitar playing. My guitar teacher actually told me to stop playing and put the instrument down before I crippled myself with repetitive-strain-injury. On that same weekend I was lucky enough to talk to a virtuoso guitarist, a very fast drummer, and a kung-fu expert. They all said roughly the same thing, and that is that you can't be fast and dexterous unless your muscles are relaxed and your movements are fluid. You have to perfect your techniques slowly before you start speeding them up.

I now spend hours practicing songs at quarter speed, concentrating on fluidity, posture and muscle tension, and my playing is very slowly improving. Give me another year or two and I think I'll really be starting to get somewhere.

Richard "I wish this were a montage in a film" B

No comments: