By Chad Crawford, PMI Guitar Instructor<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Catchy title,\neh? Notice I said \u201cA secret\u201d, as opposed to \u201cTHE secret\u201d. The truth is, there\nare many elements that contribute to success in any endeavor. They are not\nreally secrets either, they just seem that way to people who have not perceived\nthem yet. We are going to discuss one \u201csecret\u201d in this article that will be of\ngreat value to you as you strive to improve your guitar skills. This will also\napply to about anything else you do in life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am going to guess that when you saw the title of the article you might have been expecting I was going to provide some kind of short cut that would make it easy to improve your guitar skills in a very short time. Well, sorry about that. No such luck. Unfortunately there are no easy ways to become a musician. There are only more effective and less effective methods. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you want a\nstraightforward bottom line about becoming a competent musician, the key\nconcept is WORK. If you are one of these who has believed that it is all about\n\u201cnatural talent\u201d I hope I can dissuade you of that view. I won\u2019t go deep into\nthat topic in this article, but if you want to check it out for yourself you\ncan do some research on some of your favorite musicians and how they got to be\ngreat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you have been a human being long enough you have probably figured something out: we don\u2019t like work much. Work is hard and boring. We would much rather play, right? As humans we all have an inherent aversion to work known as LAZINESS. If there is any one thing that is most likely to derail your musical aspirations it is laziness. Laziness manifests in many forms, some very obvious and some not so obvious. The obvious ones are such as this, \u201cI would rather watch TV than practice guitar exercises\u201d.\u00a0 The more insidious ones might be along these lines, \u201cI need to practice my harmonic minor scales, but it is more gratifying to just blast away on the Pentatonic Minor I already know, so I will do that for 30 minutes and practice Harmonic Minor for 2 minutes.\u201d Or maybe this, “I know I need to follow my practice schedule but I will ‘warm up’ with my favorite songs first and then work on my practice schedule.” 45 minutes later … you know the routine. Another one, “It seems to me that I can get this piece played easier using my ‘natural’ technique rather than following my evil teacher’s more challenging technique recommendation which requires me to concentrate.” Yet again, “I know I am supposed to repeat this slowly and methodically, but I am going to disregard that and play it as fast as possible and hope that this will work better today, even though I know it never has worked better.” The biggest killer of all, “I’m really busy today and one practice session won’t make a difference anyway.” Or how about this, \u201cI really need to practice, but I will instead waste two hours having supper and spending quality time with my family\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ok, maybe that\nlast one is a bit too extreme for you who are not REALLY committed just yet! Don\u2019t\nworry, you don\u2019t have to be that radical to get pretty good on the guitar. The\npoint is that laziness is a deadly enemy to progress. It comes out in many ways\nand is always on your shoulder, whispering to you – take it easy, go the easier\nroute, find a less challenging way to do this, take a short cut, if I had any\ntalent this would not be hard so I might as well give up, etc.. We must\novercome this if we are to succeed. So, you might be thinking the answer is\ndiscipline, right? Well, yes. However, laziness is a powerful and deceptive\ninternal adversary and the truth is that most of us do not have the wits or the\nkind of internal discipline we need to overcome it \u2013 by ourselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And there in\nthat last phrase is an age-old, very powerful secret of success, utilized by\nnations, armies, corporate leaders, athletic coaches, and other kinds of team\nleaders across times, places, and cultures. It is powerful enough to squash the\nroaring demon of laziness into a pile of goo. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Do you see it\nyet? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Imagine this.\nYou are on the football team and the coach passes out a sheet at the beginning\nof the week. On the sheet is the list of all the agonizing physical torture he\nwants you to inflict on yourself this week. Since he knows you have\nself-discipline he trusts you to see to this, meeting adjourned, see you next\nweek. You go home and look over the list while you are watching TV and eating\ndonuts. If you are especially self-disciplined you might even memorize the\ncontents of the list. You may even go out and run a half mile until you get\nwinded and it starts hurting your legs. Then you give up. After all it is 90\ndegrees outside and this is boring, and besides who will know or care if you\ncheat? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Do you think a\nfootball team would get very far with this approach to preparation? No, of course not. That is why you are going\nto stay at the field with all the rest of the team and torture yourself under\nthe observation of the coach and the peer pressure of the rest of the team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hopefully by\nnow you are seeing the principle that I am getting at, but if not, I will spell\nit out plainly here. The \u201csecret\u201d I am speaking of is COMMUNITY. You may hear\nit called teamwork or work group or network or some other name, but the basic\nconcept is the same \u2013 the most effective way to combat laziness is to be part\nof a social network where you are inherently held accountable for the results\nof your work. Inclusion in a social network will provide negative feedback in\nthe form of embarrassment if you fail to perform, and positive feedback in the\nform of praise and respect when you do perform. In addition, we all tend to\nhave a competitive instinct such that we will almost automatically try to out\ndo the people around us. Furthermore, we have an internal mechanism that feels\nobligation to meet the expectations of our friends. And again, it is built into\nus to derive great satisfaction from being part of a special group defined by\nour unique successes. So we have all these very powerful motivators sitting\ninside us, ready to do battle on our behalf against our arch-enemy laziness.\nThese are the same motivators that have brought victory to armies, athletic\nteams, companies, the list goes on and on. These motivators are inert until\nexposed to a group environment, then they rise up and start kicking down walls!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So you have\nsomething to do here. You have all this potential power inside but it is up to\nyou to get it activated. How do you do this? Well, you need to get involved\nwith other musicians. Taking lessons is a great step in the right direction.\nTell your family and friends that you are learning to play guitar and you are\nserious about it and you will not accept less of yourself than success. Try to\nget a friendly hobby band together if possible, or just hang out and jam as\nmuch as you can with other friends who are musicians. If you are in church you\ncan see if they will let you join as a future back-up musician while you are\nlearning, then you sit in on the weekly practice and try to play along. Get\ninvolved with a local musical fellowship through MeetUp.com. There are a\nhundred ways, but you need to do something to get yourself involved in some\nkind of group setting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For my actively\nenrolled students I offer group classes. Get involved! You have to get known in\nan environment where people are doing the same thing you are doing. You must engage\nin friendly competition with people at your same level (you do not have to\nstate this, it will happen automatically. I do not recommend telling people you\nwant to compete with them unless you know them really well!) You have to let\npeople know what your goals are and what you are doing to get there. You must\nshow interest in their goals and progress and thus build mutual respect and\ngoodwill. It will come back to you many times over. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This attachment\nto a group is CRITICAL, I can not over-emphasize this. It will keep you going\nthrough the many times when the path of progress takes you through spots that\nare tedious and frustrating. If you decline to get involved socially this way\nthen your chances of succeeding are greatly reduced. Contrarily, when you do\nconnect with a group of musical peers you will not only achieve more but will\nalso enjoy music much more. After all, music is a form of communication. It is\nrather pointless if you do not share it with others!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Using the power of community to assist with motivation in fulfilling long term endeavors<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[20,68,36,67,22,66],"class_list":["post-351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-chad-crawford","tag-community","tag-greenville-guitar-lessons","tag-learning-guitar","tag-palmetto-music-institue","tag-success"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":352,"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351\/revisions\/352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guitarlessonsgreenville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}