Golden Practice Advice + Happy Birthday Guitar Fingerstyle Arrangement

So i’m right in the middle of this lesson series about how to master chords and harmony on the guitar and today i was going to give you a really powerful exercise for practicing seventh chords all over the fretboard and seeing the theory of it really clearly but i’m actually going to talk about something different today because right now while i’m filming this, this week marks exactly one year that i’ve been teaching lessons on youtube. next week i’ll definitely pick right back up where we left off and you don’t want to miss those exercises but they will be even more valuable after we discuss what i want to talk about today. thinking about this last year of doing youtube and how intimidating it was to get started and it’s still intimidating i want to share with you kind of how i approached this and how it’s very similar to how i approach practicing and how i highly encourage all my students and how i encourage you to practice as well i’m going to share with you my simple philosophy on how i think you should be approaching your guitar playing and your practicing to give it a serious kick in the butt to really increase your progress and therefore enhance our level of enjoyment and fulfillment that we’re getting from music and i’m gonna offer a couple specific practice challenges at the end of the video and i highly recommend that you try one of them out and see how it affects your guitar playing and because sound guitar lessons turns one this week i thought it’d be fun to make a little happy birthday guitar fingerstyle arrangement and you can get a free copy of that with the link in the description with sheet music and tabs so for me getting on camera is not really natural i do like to perform but i’m i’m very introverted i’m relatively shy and i don’t you know like to put myself out there that much i’m not all over social media don’t with personal accounts or anything like that but i really wanted to teach and and reach more people because my teaching schedule was totally full in person and i had all this stuff i’ve been teaching for almost two decades and i really wanted to share it but like i said it was very intimidating and uh i went several years wanting to do this and not doing it and eventually i kind of toughened up and decided okay i gotta do this and i’m gonna approach it the same way that i uh approach guitar in the same way that i recommend that my students approach guitar and that is with this idea to prioritize consistency before worrying about quality so just only worrying about consistency before quality now that might seem a little dangerous to deprioritize quality and and have that be secondary as if we’re settling for mediocrity or something like that but it’s actually quite strategic and effective and so i want to share a little more about it and how it can help us become more of the musicians that we strive to be now don’t get me wrong high quality serious focused practicing is extremely important for being able to improve at anything the official term for it is deliberate practice this term was coined by the psychologist kay anders ericsson who was the world’s leading authority on the science of human performance and practice and expertise this is the person who did the actual research behind the 10 000 hour rule which malcolm gladwell misconstrued in his book outliers deliberate practice is definitely the secret sauce to improvement and actually talent is not even a part of the equation in fact k anders erickson in his book titled peak secrets from the new science of expertise he explains that he found no evidence of what could be described as talent or natural ability being a factor when studying thousands of world-class experts in multiple fields including music but here’s the thing about deliberate practice it’s hard it’s not fun it’s rewarding it’s stimulating but it is extremely taxing think of like a super super hard workout so it’s proven from this research that the best way to get better at something is through this method called deliberate practice but it is so hard to actually execute that i think it’s a little dicey to commit to that improvement without first committing to consistency doing something really consistently if we just dive in and work super hard this is when we easily can feel that feeling of not having what it takes and we just learned that not having what it takes is not an actual thing perfectionism is so pervasive for us that if we don’t show signs of being good at something early on we tend to give up but now we know that talent isn’t a factor so if we really do want to be able to do something well no matter what it is or no matter how good or bad we think we are at it it just is going to take that consistent deliberate practice i mean it is amazing the improvements that someone can make in a relatively short amount of time from just applying consistent actual deliberate practice that’s pretty encouraging right what do you want to be able to do on the guitar this is a way to get there it’s not supposed to be easy but it’s very very possible for you for anybody so we do need to learn about deliberate practice and how to do it but at least now we know that it’s out there we have this recipe but like with some recipes it’s not just about putting the ingredients together it’s also sometimes about the order that you put them together if you don’t play guitar or practice guitar i’m making a distinction now between those two things they’re different and playing guitar is great but it’s different than practicing especially deliberate practice so we don’t want to stop playing but these are two separate things if you don’t do either of these things very consistently to the point where if someone asked you how often do you play guitar that you just knew the answer right then you didn’t have to think about it at all if you’re not doing that yet and of course if you want to you know if you want these results if you want to you know create a strategy that really works to move forward and you want to have this in your life if you’re not practicing that kind of consistently yet or playing that consistently yet i would 100 just make that your goal first that don’t worry about what it is that you play if you’re doing it well what the goals are if it’s working if you’re getting the results none of that just that you’re doing it by doing this we are changing the actual goal of practicing so often we’re showing up and practicing and and striving and trying to get somewhere and thinking you know when am i going to be able to do this why can’t i do this thing how how can i ever get to that point or this point or or you know struggling in these ways well instead we shift the objective over when we have our goal be that we are just supposed to be playing consistently we’ll still judge ourselves and and be hard on ourselves but we’ll feel good that we have this plan and we are following through with the plan and that is that we showed up and did it so every time you actually just show up and do it that’s the accomplishment otherwise the accomplishment is like when am i gonna sound good when am i gonna like is this even working can i get better like how am i ever gonna sound as good as that person or you know all these toxic things and it really works i mean it’s just a matter of expectations right again we’ll still feel like oh i don’t sound like i want to sound but we’ll be like you know what awesome i did the thing that i said i was going to do which is play today now the beautiful thing about this is that there can be a good amount of progress that just happens just from this showing up just doing that depending on where we’re at how much we’re choosing to play what we’re playing around with it varies so much but that can be the case however at some point of course there’s gonna you’re gonna hit a wall a plateau and just by showing up and playing we cert we can’t improve anymore so with this consistency habit what we’re looking for and listening for and feeling for is this feeling of an identity shift once you have done that enough that you feel like this is just what i do this is my life i am someone who practices guitar every day or whatever it is i mean it can it can be anything every day is just a great example you know once if it just feels rock solid that that’s what you do that’s who you are no question someone asks you that question how much you practice you have that answer once we have that feeling then we’re very much ready to add that next ingredient of the challenging deliberate practice so now we can make our practicing like really hard and really annoying and really frustrating because that’s what deliberate practice is like and we can feel those things but not have it at all shake this commitment to the fact that we’re just someone that shows up and plays every day now of course you can do deliberate practice before this i’m just saying this is kind of the line where you can like really start to dig into it without it jeopardizing our actual playing and habits or throwing things off one of the huge comforts that comes from this kind of focusing on consistency first habit is that what used to feel like these questions of you know how how will i ever get good at that how am i ever going to play that wow that seems so hard wow they’re so good you know these things that are rel rather discouraging how am i ever going to sound like that those questions turn into this thing of oh whoa cool that’s down the road from where i am i can’t wait to get there because i know i will because i’m showing up every day like i must you know i’m putting one foot in front of the other it’s like looking at the map way over there and be like oh cool that’s over there like we’re walking every day instead of sprinting every once in a while and being like oh that’s so far away so like i said i really dragged my feet wanting to start this youtube channel i should have started it years earlier if if i only really committed to that consistency thing so when i finally did exactly one year ago from this week i had one goal in one goal only and that was to put out a video lesson every tuesday no matter what and that was it i still you know wanted to do the best job i could but that was the thing that mattered just that i got it done i mean at first for a while i wasn’t even promoting it or anything because i just was kind of testing myself like am i capable of this can i do this consistently can i get it out there and i definitely did not find this to be an easy challenge and it’s it’s still not easy i mean there’s tons of things i had to learn along the way that felt like these absolute inconvenient side tangents i just wanted to teach a lesson and help people and then i have to deal with like lighting settings and and white balance matching kelvin ratings and sd card corruption and you know all of these things and it reminds me very much of practicing is like i just want to play this music and then there’s this technique thing that’s like in the way that i can’t do and oh gosh now i’m sitting here doing this boring technique exercise when i just wanted to play that music but i’m really proud that i did it it’s my 53rd lesson video in a row a year after starting i feel like i’m just beginning to be able to put my focus and energy towards higher quality and effectiveness and feel not worrying about if i’m going to actually be able to do it or not because it’s still difficult but i’ve proven to myself that i will and i can and that identity has shifted i am someone who puts out a lesson video every tuesday so back to you and your guitar playing i have two practice challenge options for you and i want you to select one of them option one if you’re not already rock solid consistent with your playing and practicing i want you to do just a simple don’t break the chain method this is also called the seinfeld method it was popularized oh i don’t know some sometime over the last decade where there was a story that came out about seinfeld mentoring a comedian who asked him you know how did you get so good basically how did you get so good at writing jokes and seidenfeld told this story about how he realized one day to get good he just needs to practice writing jokes every single day so he decided i’m going to write jokes every single day and i’m going to put an x mark on my calendar every day that i write jokes those x’s create a chain of x’s on the calendar and my goal is to not break the chain and he did his little seinfeld thing don’t break the chain uh that’s my seinfeld impression i have tried every single type and way of structuring my practice under the sun everything from like over micro managing to super loose like practice when i feel like it you know timing every five minute mark certain amount of hours per week certain amount of hours per day whatever you name it um and this one i’m doing this now that i’m recommending to you is my favorite this is this is the most effective one the reason it works so well is because it’s totally fail proof the way i want you to do it is to have your daily commitment to consistency daily but have it be the absolute minimum like ridiculous placeholder amount of guitar playing this is what i do now this is what i recommend all my students do and this is just like basically that you touch the guitar every day and just like play one note or play one chord and that counts now of course most of the time you’re going to play way more than that right but this keeps us connected it keeps us having that relationship it keeps us having this identity where we walk around every day being someone who plays guitar every day it’s very powerful and i know it might seem silly but on the absolute worst day you can still play a single note on the guitar and keep that chain going and then when you have more time when you’re more rested when you feel more inspired and you’re still going to pick up the guitar anyway because you do every day you might have one of those amazing inspiring creative sessions or practice sessions or deliberate practice or whatever it is for you in the moment this is all about that identity and keeping the barrier to entry open unlocked this is about keeping the surface tension broken because when we have those bad days and we don’t practice and then another stacks on top of another on another and a whole week goes by and you don’t practice and then a good then you do have a good day and you might have had that amazing music time well very often you know we’re not out of sight out of mind we’re not thinking about it at that time we are you know we’re not inspired to it feels like oh i gotta get back into it i gotta crawl my way back up to where i was before because i got out of it and we all know this feeling so that’s the surface tension that kind of sealed up again so we’re gonna keep that broken that’s that barrier to entry we want to keep that unlocked one exception is minus if you don’t have access i don’t want you to don’t overthink this don’t stress that you’re on a road trip or straight up if you don’t have access you get a pass just don’t worry about it if you don’t have a guitar around and one more thing about this is that you have to track it so the wall calendar is awesome i have some students that do that and it does look awesome have a big calendar with x’s on the days is really fun but you know do it in a journal i use a habit tracker there’s a lot of apps i just use an app on my phone it’s a simple one called momentum but there’s a bunch of them out there and i just you know check it off every day and it works great now if that isn’t for you because you feel like what i already show up i’m already you know working so hard at this i practice if you practice super consistently and that doesn’t feel like the right thing for you then this is option number two practice challenge and that is to practice for a timed very intense 10 minute interval of super challenging deliberate practice even if we have to kind of learn more about deliberate practice because it’s a fascinating subject but i mean like challenging yourself practice super hard practicing something you do not already know how to do timing it focusing as hard as you can no distractions and then being done with that i’ll talk more about deliberate practice in the future so make sure you’re subscribed to this channel or get on my email list there’s a link in the description for that but again for this just make sure obviously that is challenging but also you want to know what the goal is and you want to have kind of a mental model of what you’re shooting for kind of what you know because you need something to be matching this is an important part of deliberate practice having a mental model that is what you’re aiming for so you know when you got there and you know when you’re missing it and if you want to study up more on deliberate practice on your own i do highly recommend that book called peak by kay anders erickson one more thing about this 10 minute deliberate practice challenge um this one is not everyday this is for you because you already are consistent with your practice and you’re solid with that this is every time you do play every time you practice you make sure that 10 minutes of it are this very intense deliberate practice and just choose a project you that you know exactly what you’re supposed to do to work on it and chip away at that it’s amazing the improvement that can be made by doing that last thing just leave a comment below and tell me which of these two practice challenges you are going to commit to are you going to do the don’t break the chain seinfeld method minimum placeholder everyday practice or are you going to do the timed 10-minute super focused deliberate practice every time you have a practice session let me know and let others know writing this stuff down really can help with solidifying the commitments too if you want something fun to practice and maybe someone in your life has a birthday coming up you can download my free happy birthday guitar fingerstyle arrangement in the link below and i’m gonna combine it with some other fun solo guitar arrangements that i have lying around some jazz standards and stuff like that make a little collection of things that’s it i really hope that this was helpful that is why i’m doing this i’m jared from soundguitarlessons.com you know you can count on me to be here next week and the week after that and the week after that so make sure you’re subscribed hit the notification bell and i cannot wait to see you in those future lessons thanks so much for watching .