Music Lessons- Understanding Your Talent

Posted on March 8, 2012 by
David Randle, Music Lesson Expert

David Randle, Music Lesson Expert

Music lessons are a powerful thing. From time to time we will be blogging about a knowledge base of tips, tricks, and useful information to help you better understand your gift, whether that be singing, playing an instrument, songwriting, or some combination of them all.

The strength that you will gain from taking lessons in the area of performance that most interests you will take you far beyond any place that you could imagine. It’s one thing to dream about it; looking out on an adoring crowd, giving the performance of your life in the recording studio, and feeling the music coming through every pore of your being. It’s another thing to take concrete steps to actually deliver yourself to the place where that dream is a reality.

Music lessons can be an amazing pathway to bring your talent to the surface. Being coached by very talented teachers who have been where you want to be, and who know how to show you the way to get there yourself, is like having a special map that shows you all the shortcuts. But by shortcuts, I don’t mean that there’s no work involved. Just that a master teacher can show you the exact places to focus your attention so that you get the most out of your talents and the time you have to spend.

Come to this blog often and see what we have to say about what you want to learn. It will definitely be worth it. Both Rebeca and I will be sharing our thoughts about many areas of music from creativity to covers, from technical mastery to emotional expression. We hope that you join us as a regular blog reader, and even as a private student or workshop attendee. We want for you what you want for yourself, and we know how to get you there.

 

Please, if you choose to comment on any of our posts, make your comments relevent to what we’re talking about.

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Guitar Lessons- Training the Mind, Muscles, Fingers, and Nervous System II

Posted on September 21, 2012 by
David Randle, Music Lesson Expert

David Randle, Music Lesson Expert

No matter what current song or technique you’re working on in your guitar lessons, behind the scenes you are training your mind, muscles, fingers, and nervous system to be a great guitar player. The happy work is learning a new tune, showing off for your friends, or jamming with other players, but the real growth as a guitar player comes from having the discipline to consistently and rigorously train your body to do the things that make a guitar player great, and do them on auto-pilot. The key here is to develop a strategy, a practicing plan, and repetitively execute that plan until your fingers know the way on their own; you choose to play something and the mind, muscles, fingers, and nervous system fire in synchronicity, almost like magic. Once that happens, your playing becomes more about the emotional content of what you’re playing than it does about the physical or mechanical part, and your guitar lessons start to pay dividends.

Guitar Lessons and Tips

In the last post, we concentrated on developing finger control using pairs of fingers. You should have gotten a good amount of control by now pairing fingers 1 and 2, 1 and 3, 1 and 4, 2 and 3, 2 and 4, and 3 and 4. In this exercise we are going to use or fingers in groups of three. Use the same approach of placing your fretting hand on a table, palm down, and while keeping the unused fingers still, execute the following patterns:

1,2, and 3
1,2, and 4
1,3, and 4
2,3, and 4

Concentrate on the hinge mechanism at the knuckle where the finger joins the hand and raise and lower each finger independently in exercise order. Musically imagine you are playing triplets instead of pairs of notes to develop a “feel” for the exercise as you perform it. Continue reading →

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Guitar Lessons- Training the Mind, Muscles, Fingers, and Nervous System

Posted on March 10, 2012 by
David Randle, Music Lesson Expert

David Randle, Music Lesson Expert

Guitar lessons can show you what to do, and even how to do it, but ultimately you’ve got to train your mind and body to actually do it. Unfortunately, there’s not much that we do with our hands in a normal day that provides the same dexterity training that’s required to play a stringed instrument. So we are forced to spend time practicing the finger gymnastics needed to freely express ourselves on the guitar. Time spent in guitar lessons and especially the time spent practicing everything learned in guitar lessons can go a long way to helping achieve that dream of playing whatever music in whatever style that you are hungry to express. What I want to do in this post is look at some holistic approaches to using your body that can help accelerate your develop on your instrument and get you where you want to go a lot quicker, kind of like a musical fast lane.

Guitar Lessons and Tips

One of the most important things to accomplish in the process of playing is to develop a lack of separation between your own physiology and the physical aspect of the guitar. It must feel as though the guitar and specifically the strings are extensions of your fingers. The mindset is feeling as though you and the guitar are one entity and what you think and Guitar Lessonsfeel somehow comes out the soundhole or through the amplifier. But most of the day the guitar sits in its case while you’re in school or at work, or out with friends, etc. So is there anything you can do while the guitar is out of your hands to further the training discipline the fingers will need to be a great player?

It is absolutely mandatory to develop complete finger independence in order to effectively play the guitar with any speed. The muscles that individually lift the fingers up and down are critical to accomplish this with any control. Continue reading →

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Songwriting Lessons- Start With Your Strength

Posted on March 9, 2012 by
David Randle, Music Lesson Expert

David Randle, Music Lesson Expert

Songwriting Lessons show that when you set out to write a song, there are only three elements that you really need to master. Those elements are lyric writing, melody writing, and harmonic progression development or chord progressions. While there are other minor elements like song structure, rhythm, and tempo, the big three that I first mentioned are the elements that are used by the Library of Congress to determine Intellectual property rights and the basis for a claim of Copyright.

So ultimately, it would be a good idea to become really comfortable with all three of these elements, to the point of mastering them, if you really want to be a great songwriter. And not only mastering them independently of each other, but learning how to fully integrate them together so that they sound like its really only one element. This is something you’ll be able to do if you follow along with our blog, practice the tips, and put the ideas we give you into action, or especially consider some formal songwriting lessons. Continue reading →

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