21 Tuesday Sep 2021
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Constantly I hear people saying they love this person, or this and that celebrity without ever even meeting, or knowing, them in person. It is easy to love and it is easy to hate someone you have never met. People are enthralled with complete strangers that do not know you exist. But, we do not know the names of our neighbors. When we take a walk and see someone walking towards us on the same side of the street we cross to the other side. Maybe we should start there, first.
21 Tuesday Sep 2021
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Well, that is it in a nutshell. We just do not know how anything will go, or be, unless we try it, first. You see, our mind has a wonderful and very colorful mechanism of protecting us from new experiences because it wants us to stay safe and survive. Anything new is often filed under a big no. This is why we talk ourselves out of trying things that happen to be new experiences.
One amazing thing I have learned is that we have no idea whatsoever how the new experience will really make us feel. Sometimes you think hiking for an hour will suck, but you end up loving it. Sometimes going out to jam with new musicians feels very akward when you are home thinking about it, yet it proves to be one of your favorite experiences, ever.
This also goes towards people. Some of the people I did not really like from afar turned out to very cool people after all. And, the opposite proved true many times as well.
In the end, I just want you to consider that experiencing something is so much different than listening to your own voice of how things will be.
30 Monday Aug 2021
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When you pick up a new hobby, start an exercise program or begin anything that is new, the early stage of motivation is built in. After all, there was “something” that made you want to start something new. It’s the honeymoon and you are excited. This period works for a few days, a week, couple of weeks, perhaps even longer and then it cools off. And, then it gets harder to progress.
This is where most people quit.
This is where most people start another project, another idea, or buy another guitar instructional program.
You have to realize that where most fail is the exact moment that you have to continue the daily progress to get better.
So what is the right thing to do when you start to lose interest in whatever you started to do? Foremost, you have to understand that unless you find a way to continue chieseling away day after day consistenly, you will never achieve great results in anything. Secondly, go back to why you wanted to start the new project in the first place. There had to be a reason for it. Did you buy a new guitar book because you wanted to be better, polish up your technique and be happier? As a side note, most of the things we do in life is beacuse at the end of it all we want happiness. And if that was your starting reason, don’t you still want that today? If so, then you simply have to tell the quitting voice to sit down. You continue to work. By doing this, you will see that your confidence in yourself will rise and it becomes easier and easier to stay on task in whatever you are doing.
18 Wednesday Nov 2020
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I am hoping to provide a quick answer to a short, but long winded question. In the age of the internet it seems that well playing musicians pop-up every 2 minutes, new songs get released all the time, new albums arrive daily. Why bother? Why would you bother to play, to record or to release your own music? It’s so congested out there with so many people doing “this” already.
The answer is this: What you have is special and unique. No one in the world can do exactly what it is that you do. There is only 1 of you in the sea of human life on earth. With that in mind, anything you do will be unique and special and this is “why” it’s worth doing it.
I have seen several guitar players play throught the same exact amp set-up and they all sounded different. I have heard guitar players play the same riff and they all sounded different. You can copy, but you can’t exactly reproduce another human being.
What is important to know is that you doing “it” is the most important task at hand. Likes, video forwards and the like are nice and are all a nod from people getting something out of what you did. But, that is not the point of doing anything. If you do it for doing “it” because what you have to offer is unique and can offer something to others to boot, then that is all of the reason you need.
11 Wednesday Nov 2020
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For the most part, I really enjoy teaching guitar to students across the world. And, some of my most fun and longest standing students are adult guys who have been playing for a while, but really need the guitar playing outlet to let go of stress, or they use our lessons to just simply get better.
One of the most common complaints from them is the amount of time that it takes to master things on the guitar. And, of course I know how long it takes to learn to play the instrument properly. I have been playing for decades and still discover, go over, relearn things all the time.
Guitar playing is an never ending trip that you simply get better at along the way. You never really arrive. Ask any accomplished player and most will tell you what else they haven’t gotten down, yet.
So, I always remind everyone that guitar is a difficult instrument to play well. They all are. I think what happens is that adults have done a lot of stuff in their life, achieved a lot of things (a lot of my students are successful professionals), and they feel their life experience should allow them to learn the instrument quickly by now. But, that is not how it works. This sometimes leads to frustration, but to me it’s the entry price you play. If this might be you, remember that everyone feels the same way. This is important to remember.
Guitar playing levels people together. No matter how many records you sold, what you did in your professional life or how successful you are in your other walks of life – it squares us all off with one simple request. It asks us to play and let the music do that talking, right now, today.
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