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About the Author
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Jamie Andreas is a virtuoso classical guitarist from New York.
Free! 10 Things You Can Do Right Now to Become a Better Guitarist! "The Principles of Correct Practice for Guitar," the Perfect Start for Beginners, the Answer to the Problems of Players. Start to play the guitar without getting bad habits, or get rid of the bad habits you already have, by knowing how to do "perfect practice" with "The Principles of Correct Practice for Guitar".
Visit www.guitarprinciples.com.
© Jamie Andreas
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As the years go by in the life of a player, there are
two kinds of
growth we can experience. Both are necessary for our
development as musicians and
guitarists. I call them Vertical Growth, and
Horizontal Growth.
Here is a common scenario. A person comes in for
lessons after already
playing for awhile. Maybe they have played for a year,
maybe a few
years, maybe many years. I say, "Play something for
me, something you are
comfortable with". Now a few different things may
happen. They may play
nicely, strumming and singing, maybe even throw in a
few runs. So I see
that for the level they are at, they play well. I then
try to find out what
they are here for. "What do you want to do, that you
find you can't do?"
They may say "Well, I play lots of things, but I play
them all the same
way. I want to learn how to do chord melody solos,
more interesting chords
and strums, and also improve my fingerpicking so I can
try some
classical." In other words, they want to move to a
higher level as a player. They want
to make Vertical Growth.
They don't want to continue to learn new songs and
play them the same way. That would be Horizontal Growth. Everyone can
always make Horizontal Growth, even on their own. You just learn more
material, but you don't actually play any differently, musically or technically.
Vertical progress as a player is the tough one. It
requires what is usually considered "work", although I have always
found it enjoyable, albeit challenging.
Here is another even more common scenario. Someone
comes in for lessons after playing for awhile, and when I ask them to play,
they make a couple of excuses, and then they play really badly! Then I ask
them to play something else, and they play that really badly! This is the person unable to
create Vertical Growth. The reason they cannot raise their level as a player, is because they don't know how to practice to solve problems and achieve results! Also, because of this, there is no solid foundation of technique for Vertical Growth to be built upon. So there is only Horizontal Growth, more things played the same way, in this case, badly.
Do you know how many young players I've seen who play only the
beginning of a hundred songs, and play them badly? Lots.
Or how many people playing classical who go from piece to piece, struggling with and mutilating pieces as they go? Lots. It is sad, and unnecessary.
If you love the guitar, and are dedicated to your own
development as a
player, if you are dying to play the way the
guitarists you admire
play, you must know how to create Vertical Growth.
This is done through an
understanding of how to practice. I am of course
talking about real practice, not repetitive "run throughs" that only
re-enforce the muscle tensions causing the problems you already have.
From my experience as a player and as a teacher, it is
extremely difficult to create Vertical Growth, once bad, or
insufficient practice has locked in tension and bad habits. The good news is, it is not
impossible. In fact, the word difficult is not the best word. I use
it only because we have such a tendency to under-estimate the intensity of
concentration it takes to undo past damage. A better word is challenging. And if
you want to keep getting better and better as a guitarist, you'd better
learn to love challenges! As Mark Twain said "Life is one damn thing
after another", and that is what playing and practicing are. One damn problem to
deal with after another. But as we learn to actually deal with and
solve those problems, what a sweet reward we earn.
In fact, it is not the problems we face in our playing
that are really
the obstacle to our growth. It is the growing feeling
of frustration and
helplessness we experience as time continues to go by,
and we see no
fundamental improvement. We start to feel helpless. We
may not admit
this feeling to ourselves, we only notice that, for
some reason, we are
beginning to lose our motivation to practice.
When we learn how to really practice, we start to feel
powerful.
Problems and challenges don't frighten us, they excite
us. Because we know that we
can look forward to those problems getting smaller and
smaller, weaker and
weaker, as we continue to apply the Principles of
Correct Practice.
It is important to realize that the quality of our
Vertical Growth
determines the quality of our Horizontal Growth. Any
ability we have gained as
players has been our Vertical Growth. If our Vertical
Growth has been shaky,
with weaknesses built in, (which was true of myself,
and I think, most
players), that shakiness will be in everything we
play, so our Horizontal Growth
doesn't do us much good, it just keeps us busy,
feeling like we are
making progress because we are learning a new song or
piece. This is why so
many teachers turn the page and assign new material to
a student, even
though the student can't play the material from this
week. The teacher doesn't
really know how to create Vertical Growth, and so is
trying to keep a feeling
of movement going. Most students, if they are paying
attention, will catch
on to this.
If Vertical Growth is strong, than all new material
learned will be
strong, and will help you grow as a musician, as you
absorb new music, and are
able to play it well. This is the kind of Horizontal
Growth we want.
If you want to learn how to have this Vertical Growth
as a regular experience for you, I invite you to visit www.guitarprinciples.com, and learn more about "The
Principles of Correct Practice for Guitar". It is the approach I
have found to work for myself, for my students, and anyone else who actually
understands it, and uses it.
copyright 2000 by Jamie Andreas (www.guitarprinciples.com)
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