"Building Technique"
Unless you've been in a coma your whole life, you know that to become a great player, you need to have crisp technique and a full bag of tricks. Everyone who has ever played an instrument knows that some techniques definitely come easier than others. How then can you build your reportoire further?
First off, it can very well be your approach to practicing the technique. If you tend to practice very dryly, just doing your technique in question over and over again until you're blue in the face (and red in the fingers), you will only achieve frustration and boredom. The best way to practice is in a musical way. Throw yourself into a song, an improv will do! When you hear the music in your head, and you come to a part where you feel the new technique you want to work coming right at you, THEN do it! You need to develop technique out of neccessity, not out of technique itself. Let the music teach you! You use technique, never let IT use you!
Think of it this way: In ancient China, several styles of martial arts were developed out of need, because clans and dynastys were constantly at war with one another and people in certain clans wanted to have an advantage over their adversaries. Martial arts were developed out of NEED for them, and so should your techniques that you use to play!
Another way to think of it: Whenever you exercise, be it for strength, flexibility, speed, weight loss, mass building, or endurance, you can never meet your goals if you do not tailor your exercise program to your desires. You need to specifically see yourself as being what you want to become in order to figure out how to get there. Once you are working out, your body has to adapt to what you're doing to it out of need to get itself through the workouts you are doing. Notice, you never once told your body to do anything, you are simply exercising and letting your body do the rest!
I remember a time in my life where I was lucky enough to meet the great Victor Wooten, and at the time I was working very hard on his style of double thumping. I was very very close, as I could do it in short bursts, but it wasn't quite there yet. I talked with him on it and he simply told me a new way of what I thought I knew already, and his advice was to practice it in a musical way (which I always have), but the one way of practice I was missing was that I shouldn't be gearing my practice specifically toward technique, but to the music itself, and when I hear the sounds that this technique will produce, THEN go for it and it will come much easier! He made me think, "all this time, I've been practicing musically but not musically enough, because just having a technique in mind isn't enough. You need to do it because you feel and hear it, and because you need to!" I went home that night and played for endless hours, and it came to me within maybe two days just like that! I had to NEED it, not only want it!! Before that day, I had forgotten the true meaning of "practice in a musical way.' It is a very pure meaning! ALWAYS put the music first, the rest will fall into place! Whatever you hear in your head will make it happen easier!
After all, an oak tree has DNA, the instructions for building a tree. How then, does an acorn know how to grow into a tree without thinking at all? It grows an entire tree because the instructions are there already! The acorn really doesn't have to do anything but what nature intends! So the musician should do what music intends in the same way!
Technically Speaking,
Mark McAnaney
Unless you've been in a coma your whole life, you know that to become a great player, you need to have crisp technique and a full bag of tricks. Everyone who has ever played an instrument knows that some techniques definitely come easier than others. How then can you build your reportoire further?
First off, it can very well be your approach to practicing the technique. If you tend to practice very dryly, just doing your technique in question over and over again until you're blue in the face (and red in the fingers), you will only achieve frustration and boredom. The best way to practice is in a musical way. Throw yourself into a song, an improv will do! When you hear the music in your head, and you come to a part where you feel the new technique you want to work coming right at you, THEN do it! You need to develop technique out of neccessity, not out of technique itself. Let the music teach you! You use technique, never let IT use you!
Think of it this way: In ancient China, several styles of martial arts were developed out of need, because clans and dynastys were constantly at war with one another and people in certain clans wanted to have an advantage over their adversaries. Martial arts were developed out of NEED for them, and so should your techniques that you use to play!
Another way to think of it: Whenever you exercise, be it for strength, flexibility, speed, weight loss, mass building, or endurance, you can never meet your goals if you do not tailor your exercise program to your desires. You need to specifically see yourself as being what you want to become in order to figure out how to get there. Once you are working out, your body has to adapt to what you're doing to it out of need to get itself through the workouts you are doing. Notice, you never once told your body to do anything, you are simply exercising and letting your body do the rest!
I remember a time in my life where I was lucky enough to meet the great Victor Wooten, and at the time I was working very hard on his style of double thumping. I was very very close, as I could do it in short bursts, but it wasn't quite there yet. I talked with him on it and he simply told me a new way of what I thought I knew already, and his advice was to practice it in a musical way (which I always have), but the one way of practice I was missing was that I shouldn't be gearing my practice specifically toward technique, but to the music itself, and when I hear the sounds that this technique will produce, THEN go for it and it will come much easier! He made me think, "all this time, I've been practicing musically but not musically enough, because just having a technique in mind isn't enough. You need to do it because you feel and hear it, and because you need to!" I went home that night and played for endless hours, and it came to me within maybe two days just like that! I had to NEED it, not only want it!! Before that day, I had forgotten the true meaning of "practice in a musical way.' It is a very pure meaning! ALWAYS put the music first, the rest will fall into place! Whatever you hear in your head will make it happen easier!
After all, an oak tree has DNA, the instructions for building a tree. How then, does an acorn know how to grow into a tree without thinking at all? It grows an entire tree because the instructions are there already! The acorn really doesn't have to do anything but what nature intends! So the musician should do what music intends in the same way!
Technically Speaking,
Mark McAnaney
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