Home › Forums › Guitar Techniques and General Discussions › Just carrying on, with occasional bad days and rare good days – is it common?
- This topic has 15 replies, 14 voices, and was last updated 3 years, 10 months ago by wannaplayblues.
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May 13, 2020 at 8:46 am #173890
So, today I hit what I call a “bad day” – certain songs I can’t play at full tempo, I miss hitting a note here-or-there, my fingers refuse to do what I’m bidding and I generally feel like I’m going backwards. Worse is when I end up in one of my obsessive-ruts – I keep trying to play/learn the same lick over-and-over-and-over for AGES, even as fatigue sets in. I mentally know I’m doing it, I just keep telling myself “the next time will be the one then I’ll stop!”
These days get me down. It’s frustrating as I love the guitar as an instrument *SO* darn much!
Do I get “good days” – sure, but they feel rare. Most of the time I feel as though I don’t notice the progress. I just pick up my guitar and continue where I left off with each AM Lesson I do. I’m just thankful for recording evidence when I complete them.
So, after all that – I’m just curious if this is a “me” thing or if others go through a similar thing? Or do you have you’re own mental issues when learning the guitar?
"I hear you talkin' son, but you 'aint sayin' nothin'" - Will McFarlane quoting Muddy Waters hearing a really fast guitar player
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May 13, 2020 at 9:32 am #173895
i think most of us have bad days when we don’t feel we’re making progress, and sometimes i have long plateaus without progress. But after 50 yrs of playing guitar i think i’ve really enjoyed every minute, progress or not. My axe is probably my best friend, and even just noodling or playing old stuff i’ve known for years – it all gives me pleasure, whether i’m making progress or not.
If i’m really stuck or frustrated with a song or riff, maybe i’ll let it go for a week or a month and work on something else.
There’s no straight line here; it’s a twisting turning journey and for me the main satisfaction is to pick up the guitar, tune, and play. Play something you love, enjoy it. -
May 13, 2020 at 10:11 am #173903
One thing that can boots one through a bit of these player blues is to go back to some of your earliest stuff and replay it and you will likely realize how much easier it has become and many more of the nuances you can instill into it which you likely skipped in the early days. That can help create a sense of accomplishment especially if you go through a few, whilst you wait for the next step up to come along. Sometimes when energies are low, I find if you actually have a short break for a few days it rejuvenates the brain a bit too.
Hope that’s a clue .
All the Best
JohnStrat -
May 13, 2020 at 11:24 am #173907
Yes I can relate to all that, having played guitar for more years than I care to admit to, I find some days are downers and however hard I try the hole I’m falling into gets deeper and deeper and as you found, it becomes a struggle to get out.
But, as said above, the way out is to stop, put the guitar down, walk away, do something else. When you return, with a fresh mind, play something you like the sound of or try out a new lesson etc. The downers will return every once in a while, but hey, that’s the journey.Richard
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May 13, 2020 at 1:05 pm #173921
Maybe there is some gold for you in this video by Steve Vai, WPB. This is the best information I’ve seen on performance anxiety and accepting the process as a learner. All the best!
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May 13, 2020 at 1:35 pm #173931
All the time, WPB. I’d say during a normal week, at least one of two nights I pick my guitar up and it feels like I have no clue what to do with it at first. Then when I try nothing sounds right. Usually when that happens, I’ll just play through some simple strummy songs I know and call it a night. I also often feel like progress is extremely slow for me, but I think it’s one of those things that as you learn and play more, it all slowly soaks in a little bit at a time. You may not notice it, but improvement is slowly happening. At least that is how I look at it. Keep it up man, you are a fantastic guitar player!
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May 13, 2020 at 2:48 pm #173937
Absolutely my friend. I have been playing for about 40 years and there were times were I had to just put the guitar down, for a day or two or even a few weeks. When you want to get good, it takes work. And, work isn’t always fun. It takes A LOT of work to get good. We play to have fun. There were times that I wasn’t seeing any progress. It wasn’t fun, thus easy to step away from. I would say this site and the AM community have made a world of difference for me. I know I am getting better and I am having a lot of fun. It is all worth it if you love doing the work. Yeah, we all have bad days. Just push through them. Don’t be afraid to take a day or two off either. A lot of growth can happen when you are not playing. Committing guitar arrangements to muscle memory is as much a result from stepping away as it is from the countless hours of practice. Good luck.
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May 13, 2020 at 5:01 pm #173955
When that happens to me, I shift my learning approach. What I do is choose one artist or band – David Gilmour, JJ Cale, Allman Brothers, or whatever – and sit down and watch as much of their stuff on Youtube as I can. I try to absorb the sound and the feeling of what they are playing, and I watch their fingers wherever possible. I study their phrasing and licks. Then I go to the next stage: I watch a bunch of Youtube tutorials on their songs and learn them. Then finally, I use my music-slow-downer app to slow down their songs, and I loop sections and try to play along with them. Then I download one of their jamtracks from Youtube, and try to play some of their licks, and finally, to create some of my own original licks which sound like them. Try that sometime. Practice does not always mean fingers on the fretboard – it’s also listening and absorbing.
Sunjamr Steve
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May 22, 2020 at 6:10 am #174635
Good advice Sunjamr! You just opened up a lot in roads for me on this learning journey.
Thanks
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May 13, 2020 at 6:50 pm #173974
There is always going to be greater and lesser,, you just have to have fun,, play whatever makes it fun and if it doesn’t try something else in the woodshed.. I too take on some personal challenges and smile when it’s tough to get right.. because i make it fun..keep in mind the ole sayin,,no pain no gain.. my fingers get stretched and sore some days from over practicing.. it’s usually the next day i feel the pain soreness from over playing,,trying to rush getting something i can’t physically do in a session is frustrating a bit discouraging at times..but it’s a mindset of failure thinking it’s a bad day ..think positive..the brighter side.. next time you will remember much where you left off and hone in on more specific detail.. usually it is timing thing..
music theory in this sense (timing/good steady tempo) goes a long way for much anything in music regardless the choiced instrument..
So keep that in mind,,anytime practicing there are a few good basic skills/key points to keep in mind..essential for making good use of any time practicing..
know the key..progression..name of the chords..scales.. definitely concentrate on keeping a good beaat ( tap your foot even following a metronome.. be it DAW/soundslice here at Brian’s lessons or wherever
the rest is always practice along and follow the instructors tips.. All Brian shares is perfect for any beginner even myself I consider myself a late stage beginner
/intermediate player.. I think pro is like when you can basically talk the walk with anybody on the fly.. and still even pros exchange new ideas for each other because music is life long thing .. actually every pro knows they can’t master every genre in a lifetime…so welcome to just having fun with your own personal time and priviledge for having the time to learn and practice this wonderful passion.. yes it is common that some days it is best to focus more on theory and less playing or better yet do both but make it enjoyable.. learning some basic theory understanding is always rewarding because it’s learning a skill to help make everything forward progress faster,without a basic understanding of general guitar theory it’s way tougher to advance. gl
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May 18, 2020 at 8:17 am #174357
I try to keep the emotions out of it – “I love my playing so much” or “Oh jeez I absolutely suck” and look at it more as “work”, or a task to be completed. I can play darned near anything if I slow the tempo down enough – getting it up to full tempo is just gong to take a lot longer LOL. And of course getting it from 50% to 90% is half the work, getting it from 90% to 95% is the other half, then 95% to 100% is the next half. That’s a lot of work, 150%! 🙂
I try to be systematic about it – here’s a part I keep screwing up, why exactly is that happening? Well let’s break down the movements and see where things are going wrong. Maybe make a little exercise out of it to train my hands / fingers to do the movement correctly. Or maybe I could move my hand to a different angle to make it easier for my fingers to get where they need to go, etc. etc. And whatever I “fix”, that will just last 15 minutes until my bad habits come back again, then I’ll need to fix it again…and again.
Of course it’s not really “work”, I’m getting to listen to myself play a really nice piece of music the entire time.
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May 19, 2020 at 8:16 pm #174458Anonymous
As Richard said above, put the thing down and walk away. I like to forget playing guitar, hop on the motorcycle and take off for parts unknown. When I’m ready, I’ll strap on the old dead weight again and start playing.
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May 24, 2020 at 7:43 pm #174810
First, I absolutely have bad and good days. But there are a few things I have learnt to make them less painful. First though, I want to point out that I am not a great player. I would describe myself as early intermediate, but I do have a systematic approach to practice which I find helps me progress (when I stick to it!).
The days that feel “bad” are the days that I find things hard. But I find things hard in practice sessions because that’s the point of practice. To work near the edge of ability. I don’t practice the things that are too easy, because that doesn’t lead to forward movement.
Second, I use a method of starting slow and working up to full speed very gradually, usually over multiple sessions. I try to only practice a new lick or scale at a speed that I can play correctly. Once that feels good, I increase the speed a little. This morning I was playing something easily at 55bpm with 8th notes, so I bumped up to 60bpm. Went OK for a bit but then mistakes crept in, so I dropped back to 57bpm. For core exercises and pieces I am focused on, I keep a spreadsheet of which speeds I am up to on each piece. If I find that yesterday I could play something at 80 but today I need to drop back to 70, is that a bad day? Or does it just mean that it’s normal for new skills to go up and down from time to time?
Finally, the thing I find really helps avoid too much frustration with tough pieces or bad days is randomized practice. What’s that I hear you say? Simplifying a bit, there are two ways we can practice new skills: blocked and randomized. Blocked practice is where you pick one thing and stick with it for a long time. Think of the stories of John Coltrane playing the C major scale for 8 hours. Randomised practice is where you jump between different skills in a random order. No too practice sessions are identical. Imagine practicing one chord change for 1 minute, a scale for 2 minutes, a tricky new blues lick for 4 minutes (at a slow tempo) and so on. There is a lot of research into the different effects of this sort of practice. This article is a reasonable summary. The gist of it seems to be that while blocked practice makes us feel like we are getting better, randomised practice actually makes us better.
Where am I going with this? Since I started using randomized practice sessions for guitar, I don’t get as frustrated. When I used to just pick something and play it over and over for an hour, frustration would creep in, followed by anger sometimes. But now, it doesn’t matter if something is too hard. First, I just slow down a bit to get back to the edge of my current ability (practice makes permanent, so try not to practice doing things the wrong way). And second, I know that once the timer beeps, I will be moving on to a completely different exercise. I might be doing worse on one thing today, but chances are good I will find improvements on something else.
Did I say finally somewhere back there? Perhaps that was a bit early 🙂 I just want to apologise for a very long post, and put it into context. I gave up guitar for many years because I used to feel frustrated at my lack of progress. But what I finally realised was that my lack of progress was largely because I had no idea about how to practice effectively, or of the difference between playing vs practice. That’s why I am trying to be a lot more systematic this time around. I think that’s why I wanted to share my current approach, just in case it helps someone else not fall into the same trap I did.
DC
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May 24, 2020 at 7:55 pm #174813
I just found a quote while reading the article I linked above:
It’s natural to think that when we’re making progress, we’re learning, and when we’re struggling and making errors, we’re not learning as well. So people who are responsible for training can often be pushed toward training conditions that are far from optimal. The problem is that if people confuse the current sense of ease with learning, they’ll tend to prefer training conditions where things are kept constant and predictable—conditions that act as crutches to prop up performance without fostering learning
Just because things feel hard, it doesn’t mean you are not making progress. My own progress doesn’t move in a straight line.
DC
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June 5, 2020 at 9:11 pm #177620
I know this post has been around for a while now, but thanks for all the sound advice. This is all great information and helpful.
Success is going from one failure to the next with no loss of enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill -
June 11, 2020 at 10:41 am #178029
Thanks to everyone for the replies – they really helped!
"I hear you talkin' son, but you 'aint sayin' nothin'" - Will McFarlane quoting Muddy Waters hearing a really fast guitar player
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