{"id":7231,"date":"2018-01-01T20:32:56","date_gmt":"2018-01-02T04:32:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/?p=7231"},"modified":"2018-01-01T20:32:56","modified_gmt":"2018-01-02T04:32:56","slug":"1-way-to-play-better-in-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/1-way-to-play-better-in-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"1 Way To Play Better In 2018…"},"content":{"rendered":"

You’ll see about 37 different “5 ways to play better in 2018” articles this week (I even did one in 2015 if you want to read it<\/a> it’s not like anything has changed)…<\/p>\n

But here’s the thing… I really believe there is only 1 way that you’ll get better in 2018 (or any year, for that matter.)<\/p>\n

Or at least, there’s only 1 way that really matters…<\/p>\n

You see, when it comes to playing music, we constantly are faced with musical problems…<\/p>\n

And the answer to that musical problem is going to be a “how” or a “what.”<\/p>\n

Simply put, hows<\/em> are mechanics (like how<\/em> to play something) and whats<\/em> are concepts or approaches (what<\/em> do I play when I want to solo over a blues in C?)<\/p>\n

Problem: I want to play [insert song name here.]<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

So how might you address that problem? Let’s look at it…<\/p>\n

First, do you know what the notes are that you need to play? Do you know what the chords are? Do you know what the rhythm figure is? <\/p>\n

Are you planning on playing it similar to a specific recording? Or do you intend to play it with a band where it might drift a bit (or maybe a lot?)<\/p>\n

Will you be expected to solo over it? If so, are you copying someone else’s solo or making up your own?<\/p>\n

If you don’t yet know the chords, then you path is clear – find out what the chords are supposed to be. When you know what<\/em> the chords are supposed to be, then focus on how<\/em> to play them along with the recording until you can.<\/p>\n

If you don’t know what<\/em> to play for a rhythm figure, then you need to look into that and get that down. Then you can focus on how<\/em> to play it.<\/p>\n

Notice that if you’re learning a solo by heart – it’s nothing but a how<\/em> unless you dig deep and figure out what<\/em> is behind it (what scales, what patterns, what approach.)<\/p>\n

And as you can see, that seemingly simple problem of learning a song has opened up a beautiful can of worms that will lead you down a path of learning and development… and that’s a GREAT THING!<\/p>\n

Problem: I want to walk into a music store, sit down and just play something cool while I try out guitars.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Ok… what<\/em> do you want to play?<\/p>\n

Most folks will answer me with, “I don’t know I just want to make something up.” Which makes a lot of sense until you compare it to something like talking…<\/p>\n

If you were 4 years old learning to talk, and you walked into a debate, would you be able to articulate anything that made sense and organize your thoughts? Probably not.<\/p>\n

Or if you are an adult who is learning a new language – like Chinese we’ll say, and you sit down with a native Chinese speaker to have a conversation after you’ve only been studying Chinese for a few months or maybe a year… how long do you think that’s going to work out?<\/p>\n

I know that for me, I wouldn’t last very long. My vocabulary would run out almost instantly because I would want to hear myself say something that I would not know how to say – and guitar is no different.<\/em><\/p>\n

So instead of approaching that problem as making something up, try first learning something short, and fairly simple that you like the sound of… something that would sound good (assuming you played it well) when played by yourself.<\/p>\n

If you could walk into a guitar store and play that piece of music comfortably, that would give you something that would solve the problem. But more importantly it would give you a template that you could build on.<\/p>\n

You could take a small section of the piece you learned, and change it. That is how you sow the seeds of “making it up as you go along.” It almost never happens all at once.<\/p>\n

Remember, your Blues Guitar Unleashed course material is how you gain experience… and that experience is what prepares you to solve those musical problems later. But you’ll have a hard time putting your lessons to use if you aren’t thinking of them as tools to solve a puzzle.<\/p>\n

One of the main reasons for the Member Forum is to help you identify and solve those types of puzzles – so if you are finding yourself stuck and wondering where to go from here, and you’ve purchased any BGU courses over the years, then you have that forum as a tool to help you down the path.<\/p>\n

And one final thought… don’t be afraid to write down your musical problem (or as I like to think of it, adventure.) As you can see, one “problem” begets another, and so on. Sometimes you go pretty far down the rabbit hole and learn a lot of things, and you forget the purpose of why you started.<\/p>\n

That’s the funnest part \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You’ll see about 37 different “5 ways to play better in 2018” articles this week (I even did one in 2015 if you want to read it it’s not like anything has changed)… But here’s the thing… I really believe there is only 1 way that you’ll get better in 2018 (or any year, for that […]<\/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\/7231"}],"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=7231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7232,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7231\/revisions\/7232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}