You can improve your playing with mental practice, which might sound a bit odd to the uninitiated.? Creative visualization has now been proven as a technique for improving skill in a wide variety of areas.? Some years ago a test was carried out between two teams of people.? Both teams were asked to throw darts at a dart board and the results were recorded.? Team one was instructed to practice dart throwing for half an hour every day for a month.? Team two was instructed not to practice throwing darts but to relax for half an hour each day and vividly imagine throwing darts and hitting the bulls eye.? After a month the two teams were tested again and the remarkable thing was that both teams had improved dramatically.?
In every walk of life, creative visualization or IMAGINING has become a recognized technique for improving performance.
Now it is not my intention to teach you creative visualization techniques, there are books written on this subject for anybody who wishes to investigate this idea further.? What we are going to do is suggest that you can use some of these techniques to improve you playing and speed up your learning.
The first and most important thing to do is relax.? A good time is just before going to sleep at night or when you first wake up in the morning.? Form in your mind a mental picture of the music you are learning.? If you have practiced sufficiently you will be able to see the music in front of you in your mind.? Get a mental picture of you holding your guitar and mentally go over the notes that you need to play.? This will not be difficult if you have first practiced physically.? Hear the piece being played, in you mind, the way you want to play it.? Get a vivid picture of yourself playing the piece the way you want it to be played.? You subconscious mind will listen to what you tell it.? If you constantly tell yourself that something can't be done you will not be surprised to find that you can not do it.? Tell yourself that you can do it, often enough, and your subconscious? will try to achieve it.? It is important to maintain a positive attitude towards your music.? Don't defeat yourself by saying it's too tricky.? Instead tell yourself that you can beat it.? With careful, constant repetition and the right mental attitude you can succeed.? It's funny how people can believe that somebody else can do something but? they can't believe that they can do it themselves.? It's all to do with our own belief in our abilities.? If you believe you can do something then you will do it most of the time.? If you have a false belief about your musical ability the time to change is now.? Believe you can do it because with constant and careful practice you will.? Actually, if you follow this course and hold a positive attitude, there is no way you can fail.??????????????????????????????????
To further aid your learning remember to break the whole down into manageable sections.? One or two bars at a time or however much you can manage.? When you have learnt a couple of sections, join them together,? then add the next section until you are satisfied you have got the whole thing together.? This way you will spend more time practicing any difficult bits than you do the easy bits until the whole piece comes together smoothly.
Remember that, while you are learning, it is OK to write in the name of the notes if you still have trouble recognizing them.? You can write them in pencil above the note, then, when you know the piece you can erase them.? This is a helpful exercise in itself because the act of looking up the note from previous lessons and writing it down on the music will help you to remember it in future.
When you are a little bit more experienced you will be able to play with a very professional sound by simply reading ONE single note for the melody and ONE single chord symbol.? This saves you reading all the extra notes found in printed music.? It makes playing much easier than people? imagine and really speeds up your progress. You are? going to learn this technique in a future lesson.
For the time being it is best for you to learn the music as it is presented.? Only in this way will you learn to recognize the notes and the basic construction of music.?
