Speed Learning Guitar

Practising the guitar is all about getting better at it. Repetition is necessary but repeat too much and progress can stop, as I found out. 

Learning how to learn is probably the most useful thing I have ever learned. Speed learning guitar doesn't take hours per day, it takes only minutes per day

I remember noticing the difference between types of practice I was doing. One day learning something brand new and another day refining and improving something that I had learned before.

Since the key to speed learning is constantly challenging yourself, learning something new is easy because it's usually difficult at the beginning and that really concentrates the brain. But when it comes to 'refining' something - and by refining I mean making it sound better, faster, improving it - I had to work out how to practice the same thing over and over without getting bored or relying on muscle memory. That's what really transformed my sessions.

Design and Redesign your practise sessions

I literally wasted years believing that simple repetition would lead to improvement. It didn't! I remember almost falling asleep during one practice session while I went over and over the same scale again and again. I guess I used to think that just by practicing for longer, I would automatically improve. 

So it wasn't until I began to work out how to identify when muscle memory takes over and dynamically changed my routines accordingly, that I began to speed learn again.  I knew it was important to repeat to learn, but I just couldn't keep my focus while doing the exact same thing over and over.

What I learned in those years is that the amount of time you spend practicing, won't necessarily reflect the in the results you get.

I knew that my practice sessions had to become dynamic and adaptive. As I improved I had to change things, not just lazily repeat.

It isn't how long you spend doing it, it's how you do it. 

So how did I do it?

I wanted to find new ways to practice the same thing over and over while maintaining the same level of concentration I had when I learned something brand new.

I started by using my metronome to increase the difficulty level. For example, I would play a phrase in quarter notes, then switch to eighth note triplets, then switch to 16th notes, all within a minute of practicing.

Now I had to focus on the timing changes and that meant concentration.

Then I started to notice that when I practiced a scale or lead phrase, that I always played it the same way. For example, I would always start on a down pick stroke and use alternate picking.

When I tried to switch to starting on an upstroke instead, it became much more difficult – especially as  would speed up the metronome. So I incorporated this as a technique to re-focus myself, just like I’d done when changing the timing against a metronome click.

When I started doing this for all the phrases and scales I thought were easy, they became difficult again. So I went back over all of them using this pick stroke modification to make them difficult.

 It didn’t take long before I could play everything faster with a lot more accuracy. My timing was improving and so was my left-right hand coordination.

I hadn’t been specifically practicing to play faster, but that was the result I was getting.

Nowadays I use a lot of similar techniques to keep my improvement constant. One of my favorites and most effective is taking the musical phrase out of context and completely changing the timing of it. I will keep doing that until I run out of ways to change it. It’s bit like learning to draw portraits by drawing them upside down so the image becomes completely unfamiliar and you can’t rely on your facial pattern memory to help.

By the time I get back to playing the phrase the original way, I find it easy because I have learned to play it upside down, back to front and sideways - so to speak.

I also use a lot of legato phrasing as a technique to re-introduce difficulty. Anything works really, I just have to make sure I don't get bored.

Any questions?

Dear Lloyds Bank

Dear Sir, I'll keep this short and succinct as I know you're very busy.

When I borrow money from you , you charge me quite a lot. I don't charge you anything at all for borrowing my savings to make yourselves more money. 

I have been testing a reputable internet bank for some time now who don't charge me anything for their services. I suppose this is because they appreciate being able to use my savings to make themselves enough money. 

They also pay me much more interest on my savings than you do. 

I don't know about you, but I think it's time to move all my savings to this new bank. 

P.s. the old people like me who still think you are a good place to keep their money , won't be around for much longer. Perhaps it's time to consider a change in your game plan. But it's probably too late for you anyway. 

Why I quit my morning coffee

16 years ago, I decided to become a fully fledged classical guitarist. This tall order would need a daily practice committment of at least 2 hours per day . 

The only thing standing in my way was a  full-time 9 to 5 job, so the only way forward was get up ridiculously early and practise guitar before I began work at 9am.

I really struggled to wake up quickly and get the most out of this two hours, so decided coffee was the answer. Actually a 

very, very strong tripless espresso, that woke me up and put me straight into study focus.

Three days ago I stopped drinking that early morning coffee. I'd heard a podcast explaining what microbiologists had discovered about the early morning caffeine kick start does to the body. It turns out that the severe caffeine crash I'd been having every afternoon could be avoided, simply by not drinking my coffee immediately after waking up. This would  allow the body time to kick start all the necessary metabolic processes that keep us going all day. I'd been sabotaging mine for 16 years and in the last year or two, I'd put my afternoon slump down to circumstantial factors beyond my control. I was wrong. It was indeed the coffee crash - deep and dark , just like my morning brew! 

What an incredible difference in the way I feel. My afternoons are transformed by recovery of the motivation and optimism that usually started my day. Almost immediately after stopping the caffeine kick start fix, I am energised for longer , many hours longer and feel good all afternoon.  I wish I'd quit years ago, I really do. 

I still drink coffee , but not in the morning, not any more. 

How Therapy has Helped Me

It takes time to change our own unconscious behaviours. But the first step is always recognising the need to change and accepting that it wont happen overnight.

I began looking for therapy in my mid 30s when I found myself struggling to cope in certain social situations while working as a professional musician.  Despite my initial scepticism the results that followed 6 weeks of hypnotherapy were life changing. But this was only the start of a journey of self discovery and liberation that would carry on for the next 20 years.

During that time I've learned to identify my negative behaviour triggers and change personal dogma, by revisiting the most significant life events that have influenced my subconscious beliefs and conscious mind choices.

For most of my adult life I've thought myself to be fiercely independent without fully understanding why that meant so much to me. My attitude toward being controlled, underestimated or coerced, often triggered a strong, disproportionate and sometimes aggressive reaction. I'd learned to live with my inability to trust or commit fully in significant other relationships, believing that it was a mistake to rely on my partner and that ultimately, I was far  better off alone. 

Through hypnotherapy I've discovered 4 life experiences that were traumatic or significant enough to spawn these self defeating adult mindsets. 

The following 4 life experiences were identified during my therapy sessions as being most likely responsible for these self defeating beliefs and behaviours. I'll briefly explain what happened and how I felt for each experience, having revisited them in detail under hypnosis. 

Of course, these are my personal recollections and my personal truths. It all happened long ago and all I have left are my memories and interpretations of what actually happened. 

1. Running for my life at 7

I was 7 years old when I was chased across a field by a boy I believed to be capable of murder. I felt terrified, like I was running for my life. I found refuge in the empty school corridoors and must have blacked out from sheer panic somewhere along them. I've never been so frightened before or since. 

I woke up in a strangers house wondering where my mum was. I found out later that the school informed my mum that I'd been sent home with sun stroke. No-one ever spoke to me about it or asked me what had happened that day.

 

2. Afraid to die at 8

The first time I realized that I suffered from asthma was when at age 20 my girlfriend's mum saw me struggling to breathe and handed me a ventolin inhaler, assuming I'd forgotten mine. I'd never seen one before and it felt miraculous using it for the first time. But as a younger child my undiagnosed asthma condition was more severe, particularly during summer nights. Some nights I couldn't breathe at all if I lay down and would wake up wheezing and coughing. One night was really bad and even though I sat up in bed , I was unable to draw any breath. I began to panic , I felt terrified that I was about to die. The harder I tried to breathe the the worse it got. A minute or two went by as I struggled for air. I was sweating and my heart was racing - I knew I  was dying. Then, all of a sudden, I wasn't frightened any more, I felt calm and at ease with my own death. My heart slowed down rapidly and my body slumped. I suddenly felt completely relaxed. Then I felt my airway open slightly and I carefully sucked in a breath of air. I survived. I'd become used to being awake all night struggling to breathe and then going to school tired the next day. I never thought to say anything to anyone.

3. The fights 

After the blackout at 7, I became angry with myself, it felt like I had to prove that I wasn't scared any more. And so I went looking for fights with anyone who wanted one. I didn't bully, I just asked if anyone wanted to fight me and took on anyone who agreed to the challenge. I became good at fighting because I was small and fast and by then, had a lot of anger inside me that I could call upon easily. By the time I arrived at secondary school age 11, I must have carried a reputation for being a good fighter. This is the only thing that could explain all the boys who came looking to fight me over the next 5 years. By then I was a quiet boy and I didn't want to fight anymore, and sometimes ran away. But I couldn't get away from the hoards that would gather at the main school entrance waiting to see the fight I knew nothing about. Home time became scary, who would be waiting for me at the gate? I spent most of those years feeling more and more frightened as boys grew bigger and punches became harder. 

4. First-Love Loss

Losing a first love is hard for everyone. I don't know why it hit me the way it did, but it felt like I couldn't function at all. Being awake felt like torture, there was no light, only black days and blacker nights spent curled up into a ball in physical pain sobbing until there were no tears left. I wanted to die. I contemplated suicide many times.I took sleeping pills and threw myself into a nights job. I remember feeling myself change , I can't explain how, I just knew that my brain was changing. I knew that if this happens again to me that I wouldn't recover. 

The first 3 events taught me that when it came down to it, no-one was coming to rescue me and I must fend for myself. And so, I would fiercely protect my independence for the next 40 years. 

The 4th event took me the closest I've ever been to taking my own life. Ever since that I've been unable to trust anyone completely and preferred to believe I wasn't cut out for cohabiting or marriage or any long term relationship. A self defense delusion that very nearly ruined everything. 

The first hypnotherapy sessions in my mid 30s revealed the 'sun stroke' incident at age 7 or 8. I recalled and relived the emotions and feelings of that day. It took me 20 minutes to fully calm down as I sat up on the therapists bench trying to process what had just happened to me. I had completely forgotten about this experience and this was the first time in overv 40 years that I'd remembered and thought about it. Over the next year or so all my social anxiety symptoms and panic attacks faded away. 

I returned to hypnotherapy 15 years later feeling that there was more to uncover. I became aware that I was behaving aggressively in certain situations. I still had a lot of anger inside and I knew there had to be a root cause somewhere in childhood. I had another 10 therapy sessions under regressive hypnosis that helped me to recount, relive and process many of the fight traumas I had at secondary school, some I'd completely forgotten and others that were familiar. 

Today I am one year past the last therapy sessions and feeling a lot calmer and a lot more in control of who I want to be. I still have to fight with my fears and deamons every day, just like everyone does, but now I am strong enough to be in charge of myself, and I've learned to scrutinize all my concious desires and choices to make sure that they are not defensive and self defeating. 

Making the decision to find mental health therapy was a great decision for me.  For years I'd convinced myself that the way I felt and behaved was just something I'd have to learn to live with. 

Looking back at how far I've come makes me wish I'd started therapy many years sooner.

2021 - Starting again at 53

Like so many other even more unfortunate people, I find myself starting off 2021 without things I took too much for granted. My life is purged, but not of things that were necessarily bad. But right now It does feel a bit like the hill I'm climbing is a bit too steep.

I lost my jobs toward the end of 2020 and that was followed in January by the collapse of the other 2 pillars of my modern life  - my significant other and my home. I'm not homeless because my 80 something parents have a spare bedroom. For that I am very grateful given the risk I pose to them as the most vulnerable covid group.

So I'm living with my parents again for the first time in over 30 years, hoping that one day soon I make a new path for myself, with some of the blind confidence I had the first time around. The first time I was 19 years old with a head full of dreams and innocent optimism. I didn't care where I was going , only the journey was important. 

It does feel awful no longer being able to support myself and finding myself single again, but this time I have to accept more than half the blame, if not all of it. 

I could easily point at covid for taking my job and blame my ex for giving up on our relationship. But that's just too convenient and much too far from the real truth. 

Everything that has happened to me , I have made happen and I'm responsible.

I had a good job, I was bored of it. I had a beautiful and caring partner who loved me and would have forever, but I failed to cherish her the way I should have. I miss my ex, I loved her too but failed to express it fully. I wish I'd tried harder.

I've been trying to use my talents to make a living teaching music but that business wasn't compatible with covid. More recently I've been making wooden furniture to sell , too early to say how that will work out, so for now I'm selling off possessions to get by. My parents don't charge me rent but I do insist on buying my own food, the last vestige of the independent man I've always considered myself to be. 

Woodworking might work out but I need a backup plan. For that I'll have to wait until I'm out of the dark or at least until social liberties are restored after the world is finally vaccinated. Hopefully not too much longer. 

I think the toughest thing right now is battling the depression that suffocates many of my thoughts and stifles my motivation. The feelings I have of being trapped and out of control are probably more due to the covid restrictions that impact everyone. 

I don't need money , I don't seek it , I don't want things and I don't want more of anything. But I do need enough money to pay rent somewhere and look after myself. 

Still, I'd rather be poor than rich - I've long felt there is more of everything I need in that realm - could be why I keep sabotaging my own privileged life. 

Sore Seat Syndrome

Do you get a sore bum when you cycle ? I used to and like everyone else just blamed the saddle and bought new ones. Some were better than others , but ultimately none of them cured my raw rear. It only really happened on longer rides, but on multiple day rides the pain was cumulative. 

But surely, a wide saddle with 2 inches of soft padding will fix it! ? Any saddle with a hard plastic base will never be that comfy on a very long ride, unless your arse has serious padding  of its own of course. This is why I prefer leather saddles without a base to bottom out on. But this isn't the way to fix Sore Seat Syndrome, oh no! 

Sore Seat Syndrome or as it is more coloquially known; Arse Ache, can be permenamtly fixed by checking bike size and saddle height. Yes it can. 

The reason my arse isn't sore anymore is  not because I have a nice leather saddle, or because I wear padded lycra shorts- heaven forbid. My arse is happy because my saddle is the correct height. My bikes are also the right size for me and I have good riding technique.

Most people I've met with SSS have good bikes that fit. But they also have saddles that are too low or too high. If the saddle is too low then too much of your body weight is on it when you peddle. If it's too high, then your sit bones are getting too much action while your arse moves from side to side as you stretch for your peddles. Either way, you'll get SSS sooner or later. 

If you've ever been for a professional bike fit , then you'll already know how important getting saddle height is. Even a centimeter too high or low and you'll feel it. 

Once your saddle is the right height , your weight distribution across the bike will be much more balanced and your peddle strokes more efficient too. You won't be sitting on the saddle so much as perching on it. 

So what else can you do to give your arse a break? No, not padded lycra. You can however learn a couple of cycling techniques that reduce the load on your saddle. 

Assuming your saddle is the correct height, then you should be able to lock out or straighten one of your legs as you coast - this will cause your bum to lift slightly while still being in contact with the saddle, thus mostly reducing the load. You can also stand up on both peddles as you coast or freewheel along and peddle while out of the saddle like the pros do. 

Once you can do these 3 things, you will find , as I have that you can peddle along all day without arse ache and , dare I say it, without padded lycra. 

Skin tight clothing on any man who isn't in a race , just doesn't sit well for me. Sorry chaps. 

I have nothing against lycra on women. Nothing at all. 

Virtual Life

Like a lot of people who's lives have been profoundly affected by Covid19,  I've found myself thinking more and more about setting myself free from all financial burden and cycling off into the sunset. These thoughts probably  have to do with my lifelong craving for uncertainty and adventure. 

This thought of leaving it all behind usually forces me to consider the reality of doing such a thing. Previous experiences have taught me that embarking upon any lone journey is very different to the wanderlust fuelled imagination that saw only freedom and sunshine. I've tasted something of what it is to journey alone, self powered without support and I know that for me, loneliness on the road is something that is very hard to live with. 

Even if my only connection to the life I'd leave behind is my smart phone, I doubt that would benefit my quest for a new way of life - or at least the ongoing search for my ever burgeoning 'personal legend'. (The Alchemist)

Like most people, I have quite a few active social media accounts, but unlike most , I don't really engage with them regularly. I do try to post more and 'like' and 'share' more, but that behaviour just won't stick. I'm not anti social at all, I just don't like being drawn into virtual socialising as some kind of new world replacement for spending time in the actual company of friends and family. I've never liked being indoors or on computers and I'm quite sure that anything that sits me down to one spot can't be good for me.

The more I think about leaving, the more I remember how it was before the internet, certainly before smartphones and online shopping, and of course, before social gatherings became something you do by yourself. I think that is why I can't help seeing social media like a virtual prison that I am being drawn into, with more and more of the things we rely on daily being done using a smartphone; going shopping, writing letters, listening to music, taking pictures, reading a map and a many more things that all used to involve getting out of my chair, going somewhere and doing something that needed a different skill.  I mean, anyone can move one or two fingers over a screen - maybe evolution will turn us back into fish , this time with just a couple of really fast thumbs and a smartphone sized kangaroo pouch. I suppose our brains will get smaller too. 

That's all I've got to say about that this morning. Think I'll go for a cycle ride while the sun is out. I don't want to take my phone with me... but I probably will.