{"id":6543,"date":"2015-03-13T00:53:31","date_gmt":"2015-03-13T07:53:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/?p=6543"},"modified":"2015-03-13T00:53:31","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T07:53:31","slug":"stupid-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/stupid-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"Stupid Rules…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rules get a bad rap… rules are great and provide much more freedom than they take away (usually.)<\/p>\n

Let’s say I’m sitting down to practice and I want to just jam over a backing track<\/a>, but I want to try to come up with something new.<\/p>\n

If I go to my usual box 1\/box2 stuff that I always play… I’m not all that likely to come up with something new.<\/p>\n

But if I make a rule<\/em> that says – I can only play box 3 on the top 3 strings – well now I’m putting myself out of my comfort zone and I’m WAY more likely to come up with something new.<\/p>\n

Or maybe I’ll make a rule<\/em> that I can only stay on the 2nd and 3rd strings, but I can use any box.<\/p>\n

And if soloing isn’t your thing yet, how about a rule<\/em> that you are going to play a song using only barre chords instead of open position chords?<\/p>\n

Or a rule<\/em> that say you are going to play without looking at your hands every other time today?<\/p>\n

All of these rules you can make for yourself, just for a little while, and they’ll push you to play better… which is a good thing.<\/p>\n

Rules can also give you a starting point when there is a sea of options in front of you… and that removes the old paralysis by analysis<\/em> condition where you think long and hard about what to play, only to play nothing because you cannot decide.<\/p>\n

So today, think about what you struggle with… then make a rule just for today that’s going to require you to push through that weakness just a little bit.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow might be different and the day after different again, but these little rules you make will always work to your benefit when they make you push a little or see the fretboard in a new and different way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rules get a bad rap… rules are great and provide much more freedom than they take away (usually.) Let’s say I’m sitting down to practice and I want to just jam over a backing track, but I want to try to come up with something new. If I go to my usual box 1\/box2 stuff […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6543"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6543"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6544,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6543\/revisions\/6544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}