Andreas Varady
In my post last week, I talked about what sets children apart from adults which allows the former to pick up new skills quicker than the latter. In our case we are interested in playing the guitar. I argued that time plays a big — if not the biggest — role. Most children have an abundance of free time to spend on their own personal development, whereas most adults are happy if they can find half an hour for themselves during the day.
Apart from time, there are a couple of specific things children (and especially young children) do when learning new skills. These things are usually forgotten as we get older. Today I’d like to bring two of these back to your attention. Then next week, I’ll talk about a couple more.
The aim of this post is to revisit the way we approach practising our guitars using the additional knowledge we gain from observing how a child learns.
First, a little background
I have two daughters. The eldest is of school going age and the youngest is 14 months by the time of writing. The eldest learnt how to talk several years ago, and the youngest is only just learning some words. The way both girls go about learning their first language is remarkably similar; I observe the same kind of behaviour in the youngest now as I did in the eldest some years back.
Learning to talk is something that requires fine motor skills. You have to learn fine control over your vocal tract. And later on you learn how to express yourself. So then, learning to talk is very much like learning to play the guitar. What can we learn from children that we could apply to how we approach practising the guitar?
Here’s what I observed.
Skill rule #1: Forget about the masterplan
Children don’t have a grand plan in their heads, no roadmap with subgoals and an ultimate goal — not consciously anyway. Adults have a tendency to plan things, map things out over time, consciously allocate time each day to practice, etc. Children don’t do this. They are a lot more pragmatic and as-it-happens with learning new things.
Children live in the moment, they don’t worry about the future. They take things in one step at a time.
This is a very important thing as it basically prevents you from becoming overwhelmed.
Go back to your guitar playing. There must have been a point in your career where you’ve felt completely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff there is to learn. Scales, modes, chords, notes, it’s all too much. You see the big picture and then feel the motivation drain away faster than you can say `ii-V-I’.
It’s the same with planning things. Procrastination is right around the corner when you know what it takes to get somewhere.
If you ignore the bigger picture and ignore what you’ll be doing a week, a month or a year from now you can focus on what is important to you today.
Skill rule #2: Very focused, short learning bursts
In the absence of a masterplan it comes down to being able to spot a missing piece in your existing knowledge and then focus your entire concentration on getting it right. The key here is that the missing piece is generally very, very small, perhaps a single word or even syllable.
When a child is presented with something new, say a single word, they will focus their entire energy on it: first by listening to it, then either trying to pronounce it, or remembering the word and what it is associated with. Children will focus their whole attention on this one word, but only for several seconds, and then move on when they feel they have absorbed the new piece of information or it has simply become boring.
The same happens when a child realises they have trouble with something they’ve already encountered. They stop, focus on correcting the mistake, repeat it to themselves several times, and then they move on.
As a guitar player you can adopt this approach into your own routine. When you learn something new, and you have trouble with a small part of it — maybe a bar or two in length, maximum — devote all your energy on improving this part. Try to get it exactly perfect, repeatedly. Do this until you feel satisfied that you have improved, or bored, and then move on. Spend perhaps 2 minutes tops on it. The same goes for things you can already do but can improve upon.
The trick here is that you’re spending focused energy on a very small part of something.
Next time…
This post is getting too long now so I am going to stop here. Next time I will talk about more observations. But for now, try and incorporate what I have discussed here next time you pick up the guitar. Both points — when applied together — will enable you to improve on the guitar, no end. So, to summarise:
- Don’t worry too much about the big picture. Take your playing day by day. Just do it — stop worrying.
- Devote all your energy on practising very small pieces that are new, or that you otherwise have trouble with. Try to get these perfect. Repeat it for as long as you can and then move on.
Other instalments in this series:
Part 1
Part 3
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Posted on September 27th, 2010 by Willem
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