When you've been slogging away at something for so long without any progress it could be a sign that you may need to make a change.
The oft used / abused Einstein quote goes something like:
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"Whether he truly said that or not it does have truth to it. How can one expect things to change if we constantly do the same things ?
But we need to perform consistent activities in order to improve at anything so this quote could be misleading as it doesn't take into consideration the subject of learning and mastering an activity. Let's say you want to learn a new lick. You're going to practise the lick daily aren't you ? You're not going to practise that lick one day and practise something completely different the next day and changing to something else again the next day after that. To improve at anything requires us to repeat, with effort and focus, in order to get better at it.
So it helps to have a bit of context when reading such statements. But to help apply context, it would be fair to say that to improve at anything we do slightly increase the difficulty, or hone certain aspects in order to make sure that we're making forward progress.
If we literally did exactly the same thing on the guitar, same speed, same number of reps or whatever, for months or years on end... then that's not conducive to stretching our abilities. In that case, that Einstein quote could be appropriate
So, now that we can agree that some level of repetition and consistency is essential to practise we can look at the idea of making changes to our approach or technique.
Small changes. I once was introduced to an analogy of playing golf. If you made a slight correction that could be measured in milimetres it doesn't sound so much does it ? But if you bear in mind that a club that hits a golf ball in slightly the wrong place can lead that golf ball to be yards off target, it makes sense. This is also encouraging. Often we think that we're so far away from our goal. We think we need massive adjustments. But sometimes we're literally only millimetres out. If we make that millimetre change then it can make all the difference.
Big changes. For this I think of changing your picking technique or your fretting hand position. Things which seem central to your playing style. If you've been playing a certain way for a number of years then these aspects will feel very personal to you. But sometimes we may discover that a change in an area of technique (or gear / tone) is what we need. It can be intimidating when trying out something new. It's like hesitating on the edge of a diving board. Do we jump ? What if we jump and we can't swim ? What if we get carried in a direction we don't like ?
We won't know until we jump ! (Yeah I just thought of Van Halen too - you're welcome)
Has anybody made any big changes in their playing and what were the results - positive or negative ? What about minor changes that made a big difference ? Has anybody been thinking about making a change to some aspect of their guitar playing but is on the fence about it ?
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Ben Higgins Should You Change Technique ? Dec 3 2014, 04:17 PM
