Playing with Confidence

I feel my guitar lessons and my guitar playing is coming along. That's the magic of learning to play - you can tell that you are making progress. The process is not instant gratification but has enough pace where you can hear and feel the progress you are making. For example, I wanted to learn to play 'Let It Be' by the Beatles. I found a very good song book that would help me learn to play. It's Hal Leonard Fingerpicking Beatles - Revised and Expanded. The description and reviews on Amazon looked very good. Fingerpicking is the style that I focus on the most. This is getting off my point a bit...my point is that when I first got the book in my hands and looked at the music of 'Let It Be' - I was befuddled on how I was ever going to play that with confidence.

The book sat on my bookshelf for a little bit. Then my instructor, Ross gave me a sheet of music for Wildwood Flower in the fingerpicking style. I learned to play that and that gave me confidence to play fingpicking or fingerstyle guitar. I loved the way that song sounded and I worked at it and worked at it. I took me well over a month to learn to play that song with confidence.

Once I had Wildwood Flower going pretty good - I was feeling confident to try 'Let It Be' again. Playing the song was rough at first but now I had the general idea on how fingerstyle works and some of the tricks to play it. Yes, it's all about technique and efficiencies. And of course, practice, practice, practice. If doing things over and over again isn't your thing - then forget learning to play an instrument. You must have that dogmatic drive to do it over and over again and focus on the rough spots one measure at a time. It sounds arduous but if you love music and love playing then this is only a labor of love. The reward is to play that song fluidly, efficiently and beautifully.

I have 'Let It Be' going pretty good now. Not as well as my instructor can play it but good for an 11-month - 41 y.o. student can do it. This process has taught me many things about playing like when playing fingerstyle hold the chord shape - most of the notes in that measure match or are close to the notes of that chord shape. For example, Wildwood Flower (in the version I have) starts off with the chord shape of C. The first notes are E,F then G (played open) then strum the E (open) and C (first finger - first fret) You can see that E and F and C are the notes you hold in the basic C shape chord. Instead of bouncing your fingers all over the fret board trying to catch those notes - just hold the chord shape. After the C and E strum on the second beat on the second measure there is an A note. That is not part of the C shape chord - how do you get that? Easy, your second finger should be on the E note at second fret - third string and A is one string over on the second fret - just lift your middle finger and grab that A note without moving your other fingers. This is not only efficient but beautiful. Ross has been teaching me to hold my fingers down to let the notes ring for as long as I can until I need a finger for the next note - this is what is called polish.

If you are like me and learning to play - keep at it. Play even when you don't feel like it. Getting bored? Try something new or after a long session of playing scales or studies - breeze off with something fun. This is supposed to be fun - yes, there are times to do that nitty gritty grinding technique learning but then let it go and see how far you have come along and play an old favorite of yours. Incorporate what you learned into your playing.