{"id":6793,"date":"2015-12-17T22:19:14","date_gmt":"2015-12-18T06:19:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/?p=6793"},"modified":"2015-12-17T13:31:36","modified_gmt":"2015-12-17T21:31:36","slug":"why-practice-slow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/why-practice-slow\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Practice Slow?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think one of the most common myths surrounding guitar practice and playing is that playing slowly, over and over, will eventually get you to where you can play at full speed.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, in my experience nothing could be further from the truth.<\/p>\n

If you constantly play a piece of music slowly, you’ll get really good at playing it slowly… but if your aim is to someday play it faster, playing it slowly is only part of the puzzle.<\/p>\n

Now, it would be very simple for me to just say something like, “… so make sure you play everything fast too or you’ll never get there.” But unfortunately, that also sends a distorted message.<\/p>\n

The reality is that slow practice is extremely important for the reason that it lets you have brain power to pay attention to all those details you should be focusing on:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Am I placing my fingers well (close to the frets?)<\/li>\n
  2. Am I perfectly in time?<\/li>\n
  3. Am I using as little pressure as I can while still getting the notes to ring clearly?<\/li>\n
  4. Am I playing all the right notes (and not a couple that maybe aren’t so right?)<\/li>\n
  5. Am I bending to the right pitch?<\/li>\n
  6. Am I getting clean chords (no clunkers!)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    And probably a dozen other details that come to mind (pick hand muting, for instance.)<\/p>\n

    But, like I said, your fingers will become complacent… and if you don’t show them (by playing full speed) what you expect of them, they won’t get faster on their own.<\/p>\n

    This is why Blues Guitar Unleashed<\/a>, (well.. and really every course I have<\/a>,) has both a slow speed and a full speed version of the examples.<\/p>\n

    Play the slow one a couple of times and focus on the details, then play the fast one a couple of times and focus on the speed.<\/p>\n

    Now here’s the key – go back and repeat that process a couple of times.<\/p>\n

    Notice a spot where you keep messing up when you play full speed? Make a mental note of that when you return to the slow speed version and FOCUS ON IT as you play it through. Listen for what might be tripping you up when you go full speed (hint: it’s likely the beat and not the notes.)<\/p>\n

    Find a spot where you keep making the same mistake over and over? Turn off the track and play\u00a0that small section\u00a0even slower (like… really slow) over and over while counting out loud<\/em> – take a few seconds to fix the spot<\/strong><\/em> and it will save you days and maybe weeks of practice later on.<\/p>\n

    My Challenge To You<\/strong><\/em> – pick one example from whatever course you’re on that you really don’t play that well yet. Practice it like this\u00a0today and see if you don’t notice it get better in just one day.<\/p>\n

    And if it works, come back and let us all know in the comments below. It’s one thing for me to tell you, it’s another thing entirely to see other people chime in with their experience too so your feedback really is valuable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I think one of the most common myths surrounding guitar practice and playing is that playing slowly, over and over, will eventually get you to where you can play at full speed. Unfortunately, in my experience nothing could be further from the truth. If you constantly play a piece of music slowly, you’ll get really […]<\/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\/6793"}],"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=6793"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6794,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6793\/revisions\/6794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}