Does Practice Really Make Perfect?

You're live. It says, hello, everyone, I am live. I'm checking on my screen over there. I see the chat here. Okay, this will be recorded, Brian. Yeah. So if you, if you can't stay for the whole thing, don't worry. It will be recorded and posted. Julie plays guitar. Thank you so much for the super chat donations. If you guys are enjoying what I'm doing here for you guys on this practice session, feel free to do a super chat or super sticker. Love to shout you guys out. Las Vegas. Dwight, that's awesome. I'm actually going to be in Las Vegas in a few days. I have some traveling I'm doing this week. I'm going to a YouTube conference for YouTubers. How exciting. So just like a YouTuber, I have to learn what to practice, right? We need to know, is practice perfect? Can you make practice perfect? You know, I was listening to a speaker and I feel like it wasn't Les Brown, but it was someone in that similar field and they were talking about practice makes progress. Practice doesn't make perfect. It makes progress because let's face it, none of us are perfect. I'm not perfect. I've been playing this guitar. Well, not this new Taylor. I've been playing guitar for over 20 years now and I'm not perfect. And you guys see me, I leave in the blooper. Sometimes in the videos I drop my pick on the ground. You know, I hit the wrong note or I play the wrong chord sometimes, or sometimes I just don't even use the right words. You guys are probably very familiar with that if you've been watching my channel for a while. So practice does not make perfect. And I think that's a big thing that we have to remember, especially as beginners, as we're learning this instrument, because it's a journey. And Eddie, I don't want you to give up on guitar. I want you to think about it as a journey. Okay? And that when you start on a journey, I always tell people, think about it like a language. I think people assume that they can get from point A to B much quicker on guitar than learning a language. So I just tell people, think how long it's gonna take for you to master or become fluent a new language, because that's what this is. Even though it's an instrument. And there's a lot of mechanical stuff that we have to do. You have to remember we're learning something new, something exciting. So I want you to remember that it's not going to be perfect in the beginning. People Ask me all the time. My chords, they sound like this. No matter what I do, I keep muting the bottom string or this finger keeps muting this string. That's totally normal. You guys are not weird. You're not doing different. The same thing happened to me. Trust me, you're not. You're normal. Okay? That's absolutely. Everyone goes through that period one because of calluses and finger dexterity and your wrist, how dexterous your wrist is, and your knuckles. All right? Everything happens when it's supposed to. I had someone today who was like, I hate this D chord. No matter what I do, I keep muting this bottom string. And I said, you know what? Just enjoy. Just enjoy the process. Remember, we're trying to learn mechanics in the beginning. And I said, one day you're gonna wake up, and all of a sudden you're gonna go to your guitar and you're gonna play that D chord, and it's gonna sound like that, and you're gonna be wondering, what the heck did I do that was different? Right. Thank you so much. Bomb for my. You are amazing sticker. Love it. You're gonna go, what did I do differently? It's just gonna happen one day. I promise you. One day you're gonna wake up, and it's just all gonna come together, and you're not gonna know what you did different. Your hand is just going to be adjusting little micro measurements over time. Okay? So once again, thank you to Julie, thank you to Bob for your super chats and your super stickers. Really, really appreciate that. Yeah. Practice makes permanent. Do the wrong thing often, and you will often be doing the wrong thing. Yes. So let's talk about that. That's a great point, Danny, that you're bringing up. So when you're practicing. Yes. As much as possible, you want to be practicing things in the right way, because not only does your brain remember what you do right, it also remembers what you do wrong. So even though this is an A minor chord, if you train your brain that this is a D chord, it's going to do something different. So you always want to be trying as best as possible to practice the right way. So even though your D chord sounds like this.

As long as your fingers are getting to the right spots, that's great. And this is where I talk to students about, are we practicing for clarity or are we practicing for speed? Because, Danny, this is the one occasion where sometimes you're not going to be 100% all right. When you go very slow, when you're trying to figure Out. Okay, I got to fix this finger. I got to make sure this knuckle is bent for this to sound good. But when you're trying to practice going between a D chord and a G chord, and you're trying to do it as fast as possible, as fast as you can, back and forth, back and forth, like we do in the seven level guitar system, we just practice back and forth, back and forth, just two chords. You are going to have to sacrifice some clarity, some little bit of perfection to push yourself to be faster. I did that when I was learning the Stairway to Heaven guitar solo. I mean, it's a very, very fast solo. It's all pentatonic scale stuff, some really cool licks. And in order for me to push myself to get out of my comfort zone and go faster, I had to play the solo every once in a while with a few mistakes, pushing myself as fast as I could. Because that's how you really get yourself to speed up. If you practice perfection every time you sit down and play guitar, you won't get the speed as quickly. And I think that's what happens to a lot of students when they're practicing chords is we get so obsessed with everything having to sound perfect and it really puts us behind in terms of catching up on the chord changes and the chord speed. Alright, so if you're doing G to C, I know that's a tough chord change, but if it kind of sounds like this, but your fingers are going in the right spots, that's okay. We call that. I call that kind of like the breakdown speed, the fastest speed you can play them at without it completely falling apart so that your G chord doesn't look like, you know, like this. And it's not landing on the wrong strings as much as maybe it's muted, but that's okay. Okay, so that's where sometimes I tell people, you know, practice doesn't have to be perfection. It's when you're practicing for speed. So sometimes it doesn't have to be perfect. Because if you want to push yourself out of your comfort zone, you're going to make mistakes. And we learn a lot from mistakes, but not only do we learn from the mistakes, the biggest part, this is what happens with most people. Let's take a spider exercise. Okay? Most people, they'll do this.

Right, and then they'll make a mistake and then they go, and then what do they do? Right back to the beginning.

Then I made that mistake again and I go back to the beginning.

And what happens? I made that mistake. Again. So now you've just made this mistake three times in a row. You're training your body that that's what you're supposed to do. At that point, the biggest progress comes from playing through the mistake. Okay. Oh, made the mistake. Keep going.

Oh, made a mistake. Keep going.

Some of my students are on here. We do live song circles, okay? So they get to see me performing live. And sometimes I prep for these a little bit. Sometimes I prep a lot if I don't know the song, and sometimes I will hit a wrong chord. My students have seen me in the middle of a performance. I hit the wrong chord, and do I go, crap, and stop playing the guitar. Oh, we gotta start over again? No, I just go, you know, if it's Brown Eyed Girl and we're going.

You know, I switch to the chord real quick. So I'll be like, oh, I played the wrong chord. But I don't stop my strumming, and I mentally say, that's not the right chord. Lauren, you played the wrong chord. And I switch the chord as quickly as possible, because that trains you that, oops, I made a mistake. But I can fix my mistake on the fly. And that's what a lot of professional musicians can do a lot of times. I've seen lots of artists perform live, and I can hear their mistakes because, you know, I know what to listen for. But I can hear, like, someone will be playing a solo and nobody else will probably know they made a mistake. But I can hear just because of the way the timing of the note pause. I'm like, oh, they screwed up there. They made a mistake, but nobody noticed because they didn't make a big deal about it. They didn't. Oh, and stop playing their guitar solo. No, they kept playing through it. There's many, many times I've gone to live performances and seen professional musicians that were paying good money to go and see make mistakes on the guitar. So I just want you to remember that sometimes it's not about being perfect. All right, Carolyn's on the chat here. Thank you. I'm not obsessively focused on perfection. I'm more focused on learning and progressing. Carolyn had a nice performance that I got to attend over the weekend, and, you know, she performed very well. She performed very well, and I bet she made a lot of mistakes to get there. Carolyn, you can let us know in the chat how many mistakes you made to get to that performance, because it was. It was beautiful. Keith. Keith Gadwell, thank you so much for your super chat donation and sticker really, really appreciate you guys jumping on here with me talking about practice. So another question. I got some notes here and I'll stick to my notes as well. And I might take some other questions from you guys too. How long should I practice for? It's a question I get asked all the time. And, you know, I have students like, oh, I gotta practice for an hour or it's not worth it. And I don't. I don't believe that that's true. There's actually a lot you can do in five minutes. When I used to teach in person a lot, I had a little timer that we would put on for five minutes and, you know, say you're gonna practice a pentatonic scale. You were just learning how to play the pentatonic scale. And T, thank you for your super chat. Thank you so much. And thank you for always commenting on my videos. T. I do see your comments, guys. I do read them and respond. So thank you so much. So you're practicing this pentatonic scale, okay? And you're going through. And I would say, hey, sit there with this for five minutes, okay? I bet. And it might not be the most exciting thing in the world, right? Just going up and down this pentatonic scale. But maybe you get comfortable with playing the scale up and down, that you start doing different turnarounds and different points.

Okay? And you start doing different things with the pentatonic scale. But I would say practice that for five minutes, okay? Just like chord changes. Oh, my chord changes stink. That's okay. Spend five minutes working on chord changes. Do a minute. Do five chord changes for one minute, okay? And you will start getting better, okay? It's better if you can do it for like two minutes in a row. Really get the repetitions in there. But I always tell people, try to break things down into the three fundamentals, okay? Scales are another thing. I don't. I mean, you put scales under picking. But the three fundamentals that I really work with my beginner players is finger dexterity. So your spider exercises, okay? Getting those fingers to move. Just getting the fingers to move and then chords and chord changes. Because you need to be able to play chords and change between them, right? To play songs, even if you're doing power chords.

You gotta practice changing between these chords. Because if you can't do that fluidly, right? You're not going to be able to play songs. And that's what everyone wants to do. We want to play songs so that, you know, when. When the family comes over, we can just, you know, hey, look at this song I can play. And everyone has a lot of fun. Or you go over a friend's house and there's a guitar in the corner, and they ask you to play a song. So lots and lots of great things. And then the last one is, it's timing, okay? So whether you are picking, whether you're playing chords.

Whether you're singing over the chords, whatever you're doing, whether you're strumming, there's timing. Timing is one of the most important elements of music, and that's why in the seven level system, I focus a lot on rhythm. I think there's maybe 50 or 60 different strumming patterns, but we really focus on timing, okay? And the first thing I tell people, really, level one. I know we keep it simple, but it's so important to just understand timing, because I know a lot of people down the road, when things get more complicated, they feel like they lose their timing. So we start off very simply with quarter notes. Hey, can you strum a chord? 1, 2, 3, 4. Count to four and then switch. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4 dot in one. That's Brown Eyed Girl again in 1, 2, 3, four. 1, 2. Because if you can't do this, I can't ask you to do 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 2. So getting that foundation of timing is super, super important. And as a rhythm guitar player myself, even when you're playing solos, there's timing in solos, all right? There is counting, there's timing. But for me, as a rhythm guitar player, timing is so important. And some of you who are my students know I took drum lessons for a few years. I can actually play the drums, too. I don't teach drums, but I played them for a few years. I played in some bands as a drummer, and I found when I was drumming that it actually made me a better guitar player because I was so much more cognizant about the timing. So if you're someone who has difficulties with rhythm and timing, sometimes it's best to just walk away from the guitar and clap your hands. So say we were doing a rhythm that's 1, 2, 3, and 4. And for some reason, you just couldn't get 1, 2, 3, and four.

And you're like, I don't know. I can't get the timing of this. I usually would tell students, hey, let's take the guitar away and let's clap and go.

Okay? That's one thing I would do. I'd say clap the rhythm. Most people are pretty good at Clapping rhythms. Then I would say, I don't care if your voice is horrible. It's just us here in the room. And if you're at home, no one's going to hear you anyway. I would tell people, sing the rhythm. Because there's an interesting thing that happens when you sing. If you. I find a lot of times if you can sing a rhythm, you can play it. All right, so if we go 1, 2, 3, and 4, and 1, 2, 3, and four, and 1, 2, 3,. And. And then we put it over the guitar. 1, 2, 3, and Four, and 1, 2, 3rd, and 4. And if the timing falls apart at that point, it's usually not that you have bad timing. It's usually that there's a lot of tension in your strumming hand and you're kind of. Oh, you're kind of like roboting or your arm is kind of like spasming as you do these up strums. So for a lot of people, it's not necessarily that the timing is bad, and for some people, it is. I've taught students who had horrible rhythm, and we were able to get them on. On beat. All right. Just takes a little bit more timing, a little bit more practice. But that's where is practice perfection? No, practice is progress. Practice is saying, okay, I'm just gonna sit here on this quarter note and see if I can count to four. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, four. Frank, you're welcome. I'm glad. This is incredible. Makes me feel happy. We have a question over here. Grave Encounters says I'm new to your channel. Hello and welcome and new to guitar. I've been playing for a month, but I couldn't play a single thing until I started watching. Your chann can play six songs. That's awesome. Congratulations. That's fantastic. And you can see, sometimes it just takes hearing things in a different way. And, you know, there's a lot of great guitar teachers here on YouTube. I'm not the only guitar teacher. I think what makes me a little bit different is because I didn't go to university. I didn't go to college for music. For those of you who don't know, my degree is actually in biology and archaeology. I used to be a research scientist. I work in cancer research for many years. And I just think about guitar in a different way. And sometimes it's hearing things. So that's why when you go off this call, go back and watch the replay because you might hear me say something a second time that you didn't Catch the first time. Or maybe it hits a different way, right? I've had lots of students who have gone through my course, and then they go through it a second time, and they hear things from a total. Totally different angle. Totally different angle. Or they try something that they weren't able to do the first time. So this is the great thing about practice. Just because you can't do it the first time or just because you don't understand it the first time doesn't mean it's not going to happen on the second time or the third time or the fourth time. So, all my students, this is a guitar journey. It's unique to everyone. Okay, I've been playing guitar now. How old am I? So I've been playing guitar for almost 23 years now. Okay? I'm on chapter 23, the book, and I still have so much more to learn. But you guys are looking at me and some of you are maybe on chapter one or chapter two or chapter three, and you're like, wow, you're so good. I'm horrible at this. And it's like, well, you're on chapter one. I would expect you not to be as good as someone who's chapter 30 or chapter 50 in the book, right? Same thing with learning a language. If you're just getting started, you know, you're piecing together some words, you know, you're throwing some things here and there. You don't sound so great. But the more you get into it, the more developed your strumming patterns can get, you know, Because I get a lot of students, like, I'm playing it. We'll play Brown Eyed Girl.

It doesn't sound like the song. It's like, well, you know, we're not doing really intricate strumming yet. It's not like. It's not like a song like, you know, Wonderwall, where you play the strumming pattern.

Like, you guys are like, oh, yeah, that's Wonderwall. Yeah. But if you're just going.

That's the right timing, right? Could you tell it was Wonderwell? Maybe not. But the most important thing is you're timing and you're playing in time. And if you can play along with the track, that's great. The track will fill in the empty space. So I always tell students, when you're practicing, don't be in a rush to get to the end, because your journey is very unique to you. For some people, it's going to take them years. Some people, it's going to take months to do certain things. You're all unique. You're all at different levels. You're all at different ages, different disabilities. I have some students who have severe arthritis. I even have a student, I think he's missing. His strumming hand is deformed. And we figured out a device that he could hold so that he could hold the pick and strum. One of my students recommended a device for him. And those are just different things. We all have different trade offs. Our bodies are all built differently. So this is going to be different for every one of us. No one's going to have the exact same guitar journey. But that doesn't mean you're doing something wrong. So if you're feeling frustrated learning guitar, I know Eddie said, hey, I gave up. Like, don't give up. Don't give up. You will not win if you quit. All right? It might take you years. And that's okay. That's perfectly fine. Okay. I just want you guys to know this isn't going to happen instantaneously. Anything worth doing takes time. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. Are there easier ways to go about it? Yes. I believe if you have a blueprint like I teach you in the seven level guitar system, if you have a blueprint to follow, things can be easier. But you still have to put in the hard work, the practice. But practice doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to make progress, guys. All right, let's see if I can grab a couple questions here before we sign off for the night. Hello from Los Angeles. Still in chapter one for the 53rd time. You know, Phil, that happens to a lot of people. I've worked with many students who have started and stopped the guitar. Started and stopped, started and stopped. Now, the great thing is it's kind of like riding a bike. If you've built a little bit of muscle memory, you never really lose it. It does take a little bit to get it back to the full extent of where it was. But the reason a lot of people do that start and stop is they overwhelm themselves by learning too much information. And that's why I say, when you're practicing, stick with the three topics. Stick with. Try focusing on three things. Because if you're going to practice a song, learn this lick, practice these chords, do this strumming pattern. Oh, and then I'm going to try this really cool blues riff. And then I'm going to do. You're all over the place. You need to develop muscle memory. And muscle memory comes from repetition. So that's why I say Focusing on less is actually more because the sooner you can get that muscle memory, the better. That's why I only teach my students four chords. In the beginning, we'll learn all the other chords, but there's so much we can do with just four chords. And when I used to teach students in person in my studio, we used to stay on those four chords for months. I mean, we would play tons of songs with just those four chords. And maybe every once in a while, I'd add in an extra one if we needed like an A minor chord or something. But my students weren't like, I want to learn more chords. We were having so much fun with just those four. So that is always my encouragement to people. You know, E minor, C, G, D, those four chords, if you can get those down and master them, you can do so much on the guitar. So don't overwhelm yourself if you're feeling like this. I'm getting frustrated. This is horrible. Just take a deep breath, back it up, and go back to foundation. Just like in sports. All right? Basketball games are won on free throws and layups, right? The most basic thing. It doesn't matter, you know, if you can do spinnings or slam dunks or all these wonderful things. Free throws and layups are really what win basketball games. The basics, the foundation. Same with guitar. Stick with the foundation. Build finger dexterity. So if you're practicing, start with the warm up. Okay? Do one of the spider exercises or another finger exercise that you like. Okay, Focus, then go. Okay, I've warmed up. Let's work on chord changes, right? And just pick two chords and go back and forth, back and forth. Do that for one or two minutes. Great. Now I'm going to do a different chord change. I was just doing G and C. Well, maybe now I'm going to do G and D. I'll stick with the G chord. G, D, back and forth. Okay, Back and forth with your metronome. Now you're like, let me do one more. What's the other one? G and E minor. Okay. G and E minor. That gets me all the chord changes off of a G. Okay. So I really. Even though I did three different chord changes, I really focused on that G chord, didn't I? All of them included G. So that practice was really focused on the G chord. And then I would say, okay, I'm going to try throwing, you know, strumming pattern. So when you're practicing a strumming pattern, don't change the chords. Just practice the strumming. Okay, Strumming and changing chords is something completely different that would be playing a song, you know, Then you would take it over to a song and start applying some of these things you're learning. But that's what I would do in a practice. Finger exercises, chord changes, strumming, and then, you know, do that a couple days in a row. And then on the third day, focus on playing a song or two. Okay. Because then you're going to put all that stuff together. You're still practicing all those things you were learning, but now you're putting it together in an application process. So. Excellent. You're really motivating. Well, that's. I'm so happy to hear that. Bar chords do suck, Brian. That's why I never teach beginners bar chords. They're very, very hard. I do have a course on bar chords and power chords. They require a lot of strength, and I know a lot of guitar teachers who taught those right out of the gate. For students, they're very hard. They're easier to play up here, and then you can work your way backwards. A little tip there for you. So, hi, Angie Davis. How about D2C? I know. I think you were talking about that in the community. So D2C. It's not easy. There's no pivot point. I know you guys know I like pivot points. Okay. And the easiest thing for D2C, just go slow. Okay? Go slow to get the right notes, get it sounding right, and then put it to a metronome. You can even sit and go, D, D, D, D, C, C, C, C. See how my fingers are lifting off the strings a little bit? So now you're kind of getting the repetition of playing the chord multiple times. D, D, D, D. Switch. Even if it takes you a second longer to switch to the C, C, C, C, C. Back to D, D, D, D.

It's just the repetition. All right. And if your fingers are slow, that's totally normal. Don't worry about it. What's the easiest pentatonic shape to learn as a beginner? That would be pentatonic position one.

That's where most people start. A minor pentatonic. If you do a search, go Warren Bateman, A minor pentatonic or Lauren Bateman, pentatonic scale. I have a video. I have a whole series on the pentatonic scale, or at least that first position. And that's a great place to start if you want to get into that. So awesome, everyone. Thank you. Someone calling in from Florida, South Africa. It is so sweet to see everyone. Thank you. So much for jumping in on my little quick practice session. I've been getting a lot of questions about practice, so I wanted to come here live, share it with you guys here. Thank you so much, as always, for supporting the YouTube channel. And thank you for everyone, you know, who gave me a super chat and a super, you know, the super chat and the super stickers. Really appreciate you guys. Supporting the channel means a lot to me. I really enjoy my time being here with you guys, and I really love teaching all of you on your guitar journey. I'll see you guys in a lesson video real soon. And if you watch the replay, make sure to say hello. Bye, everyone.

Oh, one question, Alex. This is a Gretch. It's my George Harrison Gretsch. They want to know what the guitar was behind me. George Harrison Gretsch.