* Questioners are identified by initials (or nom de plume if you prefer) and city. "Sleepless in Seattle" has already been taken elsewhere. Try "Hacked off in Hackensack," "Peeved in Pittsburg," "Frustrated in Fredicksburg," or "Desperate in Denver."
Hi, everyone! I'd like to invite you to submit questions, problems, and challenges that have come up in your playing. The best question every month wins its author a prize, usually a Crary CD or Thundershots instructional video. Questions are judged on:
- Value to other guitarists
- Depth of despair
- Poignancy of dilemma, and my favorite...
- A sense of humor in the phrasing of the question
Decision of judge (me) is final. And of course, I will try to give a helpful and encouraging answer to your question if I can. — Dan Crary
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Q: When I'm really concentrating, and the smoke is clearly pouring out my ears, my picking wrist starts hurting and I catch myself really gripping my neck in a kung-foo type grip. Specially at fast tempos.
How can I stop this and continue building speed without snapping my neck in half and feeling such tension in my wrist? — HELP ME OBI-DAN KENOBI ... YOU'RE MY ONLY HOPE!
A: I hear this from a lot of learning guitarists, and it's an important issue. I'm not an expert on this, but I have some observations that may help.
First, in general, may be that we're "concentrating" too much, believe it or not. On the one hand, there is focus ... you need to be right there with challenging pieces. But there also needs to be some sort of abandon, some freedom to move across the neck with grace and authority. I think that this kind of concentration that omits this freedom is where the physical tension lies. How to get away from this problem? For me the answer lies in less improvisation and more memorization. Improvisation can be over-rated, especially when it leads to that tied-in-a-knot struggle with the instrument. So a couple of specific suggestions:
- Get your repertoire worked out into several memorized, polished pieces that you can play exactly the same way every time. When you perform, emphasize the memorized version, not some ad hoc contrivance that makes you tense up.
- Make it an issue of practice: Practice these pieces while paying attention to the tension in your hands and arms; make yourself relax as you play. Find the spot where the minimum of force produces a clean sound. Get in practice lightening up.
- Teach yourself the trick of, when the tension hits during a performance, just play a measure where you loosen the pick, and brazenly vamp on open strings for a few beats while you make yourself go limp and relax. It's tricky, but most times a vamped measure where you go limp in the hands can be sneaked into a tune without the audience noticing. Practice this by planning a place in the tune and doing it on purpose even if you're not tensed up, so you learn how to sneak it in when needed. Going limp for a few seconds will break the tension ... it's like a power nap for the hands. It might even work so well you'll keep it as part of the arrangement!
For the long haul, I don't know how anyone gets through their life as a guitar player without a good, low-impact Chiropractor. Playing not only warps your hands but your whole system as well; my old pal Dr Terry Gimillaro in Whittier, California, saved my you-know-what on the road once when he told me over the phone what to do to ease a sprained finger before a gig.
Q: I write on behalf of all the vocally challenged guitarists who find themselves thrust into the spotlight for an impromptu solo concert.
You know the drill. Maybe we're visiting the inlaws, in church, or during intermission at the middle school's production of "Oliver." All that really matters is that we have a guitar and we've been asked simply to "play something." So there we sit, scared, emotionally naked, with no accompanist or singing ability to save the day. Oh, sure, we could deedle-deedle single note fiddle tunes for hours, but there would likely be some adverse effects if the general populace were to be exposed to this concentration of deedleage for any prolonged length of time.
Are there strategies we can implement to help us save face and win some friends during these moments of fiery baptism? Or are those of us not blessed with a golden throat or ever-present bandmates arguably doomed to a lonely existence of guitaristic self-abuse, noodling away behind closed doors in relative solitude, doing things that interest no one, save for the occasional kindred soul who is, perhaps, also a closet deedler? — THE PHILOSOPHICAL FLATPICKER
A: Oh man, how I love this question. You put your finger on one of the main issues in learning an instrument, and you describe the situation in brutal clarity. Yes, it is exactly like that, it's scary and frustrating, and it's a loop we really have to escape.
The myth of learning is that we have to be working on many different things at once, a lick here, a tune there, chords somewhere else, and all these bits-and-pieces, but when we're asked to actually play something, it comes out, as you so perfectly observed, as deedle-leedle diddling around. Pathetic. Frustrating. Oh yes, and unworthy of our noble instrument.
ONE-SONG-AT-A-TIME. The answer lies in how we spend our time and what our goals are. In my workshops we try to redefine so-called "practice" and turn it into a plan. Visualize where you want to be in a year, and make every day's "practice" advance you incrementally to that end. A good plan would be, "I want to be able to perform [note that word] six new songs and six new instrumentals by this time next year." Notice how that fits into the year, for example that means that by the middle of April I will have polished up "Red Haired Boy" and "Ginseng Sullivan."
But notice what that means: it means concentrating, focusing on those two pieces in your practice. The answer to your question is that people don't learn ten or twelve songs at a time, they learn ONE SONG AT A TIME. By "learn," I do not mean a gold star on the page or some half-assed stumble-through-the-thing version. "Learn" means you get a tune ready to actually perform in a simple, straight version; you memorize it, you polish it, you record and listen to yourself and criticize it, you cuss at it and you focus on getting it right. It doesn't mean that you play it like Tony or or Doc, but it means that work out a clean version that you memorize so you can PLAY IT THE EXACT SAME WAY EVERY TIME IN ORDER TO PERFECT IT. Here's a secret: work out a very straight, unembellished version, memorize it, play it the same way every time, and polish that, so it's perfect every time. Then once it's perfect, go back and add a run or two or some guitar thing, add it to the perfect version, and then memorize and polish THAT.
Take this to the bank: You only get good on memorized and polished pieces, ONE SONG AT A TIME. Period.
So, I say to you and the whole world of learning guitarists, if we're ever going to get off the plateau, quit all the noodling around, all this sorry, out of tune, half-hearted, humble-pie, why-can't-I-get-ahead, high-viscosity ooze that passes for trying to play the guitar, we have to learn ONE SONG AT A TIME. And we have to get that song ready to play for an audience, memorized, played the same way every time, polished and pretty. And then, we go to the next song and do the same thing all over again.
Of course, after all that attention to detail, you only know two songs. We gotta' forget the unrealistic fantasy of suddenly turning into a player or jamming like a pro; instead, go for this goal: get up a few songs you can play simple and pretty, memorized and polished. And learn them ONE SONG AT A TIME.
Slow and tedious? Depends on how you look at it; how has that aimless goofing around you've been doing working for you? How would it feel to actually move ahead? But, somebody says, what about jamming, improvising, having FUN? Well, for the moment, I'm sorry, but forget it; all that fun jamming, all that improvising, all that guitarist swagger is the luxury of people who actually learned some stuff ONE SONG AT A TIME. But we'll get back to fun, jam, and swagger eventually, because the good news is, that as you learn ONE SONG AT A TIME, you'll discover that: 1) about the third song, it picks up speed, goes twice as fast; 2) shockingly, if you take a memorized and polished song to a jam session, you can improvise on it much easier than songs you never really learned; and 3) to answer the original question, you'll actually be ready when somebody says "play something."
Q: I'm a newbie just trying to learn to flatpick (53 year
old newbie). We have a group of friends that gather to jam each month
and I have a very difficult time memorizing song lyrics. Do you have any
tips for a guy who's constantly losing brain cells? — KERFUFFLED IN KUNA
A: I love this question, because it lets me rant on a couple of my favorite topics, memorizing and performing. A couple of suggestions: first, if you're going to be a real player (and 53 isn't too late to start), then do what real players do. Namely, they walk around thinking about music all the time. Any good guitar player spends the hours of his or her life thinking about playing a guitar lick or going over a song, whatever one is currently working on. In my case, I have to go through (mentally sing) a song about 20 or 30 times before the lyrics sink in. Real players walk around with a deer-in-headlights look in their eyes and various musical tasks running through their heads.
Second, I don't think jamming is a good goal for your learning a song; of course, you want to do some jamming and you want to be ready, but a much more rigorous goal is to get ready to perform for an audience. Volunteer to play for elder care facilities, play in church, get up for an open mike, sponsor a house concert and open for the main act, something, anything that will put you in the spot of memorizing and polishing some material for an audience. Play a song for an audience a few times and you'll still remember it decades later. Oh, and pick a song with a great lyric that is so powerful it makes you want to put it out there. Not all jam session songs have to be the same old "roll around the shack" crap yet again. A great song you went to the trouble to put in front of a listening audience will be with you for life.
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