Practice DOESN'T Make Perfect? - LIVE Session

Hey, guitar enthusiasts, welcome. Welcome to this live presentation. Today. Actually wrote out some notes because I have some important stuff that I want to talk to you guys about. And I want to make sure that I don't forget anything that's important. I also wrote down some things that my students have told me. And what I want to talk about today, today is the fact that people talk about the concept of practice makes perfect all the time. And I am a firm believer that practice makes progress. So I think there is a big misnomer in the fact that everyone wants their practice to be perfect. Okay? And of course, we don't want to practice things incorrectly. But I think it was Les Brown was the first person I heard say say that. And it made so much sense to me. And I don't know if he was quoting someone else, but again, it was practice makes progress, not practice makes perfect, because it can take a very long time, especially on the guitar, to get things perfect. Okay? And again, I want to preface that we do not want to be practicing things wrong, but perfection and mastery takes time, especially on the guitar. So I said I had a comment from someone. I was reading through the comments yesterday because I say hello and I try to respond to everyone's comments. And yes, let us know in the chat where you're from. We have someone from Wisconsin in here. Love the title. So true. You are so welcome. So I had a student yesterday. I wrote this down because I was like, I knew I was going to be talking about this subject today, and his name was Mark. And he said, I tried for five years to learn to play the guitar, but I made no progress whatsoever. Is there any reason to think that if I tried again this time I would get a different result? And I wrote down, I said, now if you do the same exact thing over and over again and expect a different result, that's pretty much the definition of insanity. We do the same thing that we've always done, and we expect. Expect things to magically be different. And what I want to do today is share with you just some simple things that you can do around your practice routine to kind of change things up a little bit or to approach your practice session just a little bit differently. Because I do this in my 7 level system with students. My students tell me the way that systems develop. We designed it as a program so that you could feel yourself moving and making progress. But students in my system sometimes email me and they're like, I feel like I'm getting stuck. And usually when I hear someone getting stuck, it means we need to change up something in the practice routine. Maybe they're not practicing, you know, in the best way possible. I'll usually ask them, like, what are you doing for your practice? Do you have something written down? I. And I'm surprised how many people say no. But this is going to bring us to. To point number one, which is expectations. Expectations of our practice. I got Stephen from Clayton, New Mexico. We got Germany. Germany's in the house. Love that. Nice to officially meet you too. Mindy in Ireland's in the house. I'll be going to Ireland. 2025. I will be in Ireland. So. So looking forward to that. So expectations. All right, page one of my notes is done here. But expectations. So keeping in mind that practice does not make perfect. All right? Practice makes progress. So keep this in mind as I'm going through all of these different points that I. I've written down, because especially for beginners, if you are someone that's just getting started on the guitar, it's not going to be perfect. So I think that is a very high expectation to have as a beginner. I get a lot of students, especially on chord changes. You know, the chords don't sound great, and that's okay because, you know, in my seven level system, the first three levels, all we work on is finger dexterity, the mechanics, getting some basic chords down, some basic strumming patterns so that you can start playing, you know, really, really simple versions of songs. And I keep reminding students these first three levels are about the mechanics. We don't even talk about trying to make the chord sound better until, like, level four or level five. Okay. So that shows you that perfection is not on my radar right now, especially for beginners, when you're just getting started. Because what we really need to focus on is just getting those fingers moving. I said that here. Yeah, I don't. Until level four is. Is when we start talking about cleaning cords. And I said that means if your cords don't sound perfect for the first three to six months, that's totally normal. And I want you to have that expectation, especially if you're an older learner, because my. My seven level system is specialized for older learners. And sometimes, you know, things go just a little bit slower. Okay. I've taught lots of students in person. I've taught a lot of students online. If you're in my seven level system, put a one in the chat, say hello, let me know that you are here. Hello from Cincinnati, Los Cabos, India and Brazil. We have people from all over that are watching on YouTube are in the court. So welcome, welcome. So happy to have you here. And, you know, we really don't get into perfection until level six or seven. And that's where we start really working on finger picking and some picking things that require the chords to start sounding cleanly. So if you go through levels one through five and your chords aren't quote, unquote perfect, that's okay because that's what I'm not. I'm not going for that in the first level. So I want you to understand as a beginner, stop trying to make everything perfect. It's not going to be perfect. Okay? And I have students, they're like, I'm stuck because they're working on their chord changes, and I give people a goal. I'm like, listen, move on from level two to level three when you get these chord changes between, like, 60 to 80 beats per minute. And I'll get students, they all want to hit the 80. They always want to hit like, I gotta get 80. And it's like, no, it's 60 to 80. But sometimes I'll get someone, they're like, you know that C to G chord change, It's a pain in the butt. So if you hate the C to G. Hi, Jeff. I see you. Hi, Jeff, from. In my course.

If you hate that C to G chord change, it's not an easy chord change. And I have some students, like, all my other chord changes are in that 60 to 80 range, but I have this one chord change that's holding me back and keeping me from moving forward. And I always tell students, like, if you feel stuck, it's time to move on, because we don't want to get stuck. Because if we feel stuck, then we want to quit and give up. And I'm going to talk about mindset a little bit later and why moving on is. Is so important in your guitar learning process. We never, ever want to get stuck. Okay. When we're playing, so let's talk about the practice routine in general. And. And I want to talk about practicing guitar versus playing the guitar because, let's face it, the songs are the fun part. Right? We all want to play songs, and that's why we pick up the guitar. Because we want to play songs for our friends, we want to play songs for our family, or want to go to a jam session or whatever you want to do. That is the fun part is the songs. But what happens is students kind of gloss over the difficult stuff and do the fun stuff instead. So we want to make sure that we're always, always starting our practice routine with the stuff that's a little bit more challenging. Why? Because the start of our practice routine is when our brain is the freshest. We're most ready to absorb new information. Okay. So when we're practicing something, start with the challenging things first. Leave the songs for the end. Okay. So this way you can reward yourself at the end for having an amazing practice session, but do the difficult stuff first. And a big misnomer or a big misunderstanding that a lot of students have is they assume. Yep. Frank says, hi, Lauren, I'm in your seven level course, level five. Awesome job, Frank. Congratulations. That's a great level to be at. I have lots of students who say, hey, Lauren, you know, I felt like if I didn't have 30 minutes to practice or I didn't have 45 minutes or 60 minutes to practice, it wasn't worth practicing. I had a student who would come to my in person studio. She was in her 50s and she was still working and she just had, you know, sometimes life gets busy. We all have a busy time in our life. And I noticed that she was kind of like plateauing. She kept coming to lessons week after week, but I wasn't seeing as much progress as I had seen in the months prior. So I kind of asked her about it because that's what you as a teacher, like, hey, what's going on? Let's figure out a solution to this. So I asked her, I said, what's, what's going on? And she said, life is just really, really busy and you know, I don't have an hour to practice. And I said, well, that's okay. Do you have 10 minutes or 15 minutes? Like, could you do that three times a week? And she said, absolutely, yeah, no, I can find 10 minutes. I was like, perfect. What we're going to do is we're going to create a practice routine for three times a week. So I want you to pick three days. And she did like Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And I said, pick three days. We're just going to do 10 minutes. And I made a 10 minute practice routine for her and she came back the next week and she was like, I was so shocked by how much progress I could make by just sitting down for 10 minutes. Now we gave her a very specific practice routine. So she had to do very specific things on those three days. But it helped her start moving forward again. And that was awesome because it's motivating to see progress and it made her actually want to practice more. So those 10 minutes usually ended up being 15 or 20 minutes, because then she'd play a song at the end as her reward. So we had a very 10 minute specified practice routine. And then she'd play a couple songs at the end. So maybe she practiced for 15 or 20 minutes, which was double my expectation for her. So I tell people, you do not need one hour to practice. I tell students, if you can give me 15 minutes, that's awesome. Because you can focus on the three fundamentals of. Of guitar. And that's what I teach in the seven level system. And that's hitting, you know, chords and chord changes. All right. We do a lot of finger dexterity exercises. The first three left. This is one of the biggest things that I think most guitar teachers overlook, especially for an older audience. Finger dexterity. All right, we have lots of exercises just to work on getting the fingers to move. This is doing. Yeah, I know you're all looking at me like I can do a C chord in the air, but doing these chord changes, it's a whole new mechanic. I don't care if you're someone. Some people are like, oh, I type all the time, so it should be fine. It's like typing is a different mechanic. I mean, there's some similarities because you're. You're doing this and you're doing this, but it's a whole new mechanic. And we have to train the muscle memory, and that takes time. So we focus a lot on that. So there's chords and chord changes. You know, there's your finger exercises for dexterity and then strumming and rhythm. Okay. If you can do these three things as a beginner, or even if you're someone who's been learning on your own for a while and you feel like you're kind of plateauing, if you work on these three things five minutes apiece, you will see so much progress in your playing. All right, so five minutes working on finger dexterity. Five minutes working on chords and chord changes. Okay. And chord progressions. Because if you work on chord progressions, you can play songs. All right? Chord progressions are just the order, just kind of like a formula for the order in which you play chords. And then we have strumming, rhythm, timing. If you focus five minutes on each of those, you will do so much better. But the thing that surprises me is how many people underestimate how long five minutes is. Okay. And Jeff's in here. I saw Jeff in here earlier.

He's actually working with me a little bit more intensely. He's in my Live session, my live seven level intensive. And I did something with them, I think a week or two ago. I took my phone out, I said, I'm gonna set this for two minutes and I want you to pick your hardest chord change, whether it's C to G, whether it's A to E, whatever your hardest chord change is. And we're gonna practice it for two minutes straight. And they sat there and they practiced for two minutes. And I said, okay, stop. And I said, did two minutes feel like five hours? They were like, yes, it does. So unless you are actually timing yourself, a lot of us will play something like, say we're going to do a spider exercise to warm up and we'll play through it a couple times and we'll be like, okay, that's good. That was five minutes, right? No, it's usually only one or two minutes, but you think you've done it for five minutes. So I'm very, very big. Time yourself. Set a timer on your phone. You know, just get a little stopwatch, push play and then start practicing. And when that timer hits five minutes, you stop. But you'll be surprised. Halfway through, you're going to look up and you're going to think, wow, I've been doing this for a long time. This must be five minutes. And you're like, I'm only two minutes in. I still got three minutes to go. So when you really, I mean really focus and do five minutes of very specific targeted practice on just one thing, you will see a lot more progress, I promise.

Barry says that's what I learned to do. Learn from you. Awesome. Love it. Beginner. Been looking for a course and a good tutor. I put a link in the description below. Bob, if you want to check out the seven level system, would love to have you. I see Peter's in here. He's another one of my students. She's right. It was a long time. See, Peter was in the class and I said two minutes and it felt like forever. It felt like forever because we were actually tracking what we were doing. So that is one thing. That's a big thing. If that's all you get out of this is just tracking your practice and actually timing how long you're doing things. You're going to see big improvements in your playing. Something else I emphasize. And you've probably seen me mention this before, A metronome. Okay, what is a metronome? The app I use is actually available for both iPhone and Android. So I'm an Android person. I. I do have an. My business Phone is an iPhone, because everyone that I communicate with, business wise, seems to have an iPhone. So I have a little bit of both. But I am an Android person all the way. Sorry for you iPhone people, it's very confusing for me, but a metronome is just this. Let me see if I can get it into focus. So you can see there's a little red dot going back and forth, and it's set for 70 beats per minute. If I put it down to 60, that's like the second hand on a clock and all that. This is. It's just a heartbeat, It's a pulse. But it gives you a scorecard because you have a number, you have a target here. Okay? So when I tell my students, I want your chord changes to be between 60 to 80 beats per minute, this is the bottom line. I want you to be able to change chords. Every time the beat hits, you're going to change a chord. So it'd be like, if I play B, C, G, C, G, C, G, so forth and so on. So you would practice with the metronome, and then what you would do is once you hit 60, you'd be like, well, let's try 65. And then you'd go faster and you say, let's try 70. All right. So when most of my students start, if you're just. If you're just at the white belt level, level one, you're just starting. I usually tell people, don't use a metronome. Time yourself for 60 seconds so that you can get a baseline. Because most of my students, when they start playing, it's not uncommon for chord changes to be in the teens or even in the twenties. Okay. Which. Which is very slow. Okay. And there's nothing wrong with that. We all start there. So just because I'm saying it's slow, it gets better. But you just write it down. So you're like, week one, 20 beats per minute. Great. Now you practice, and then next week you Write down week two, 30 beats per minute, and you're like, wow, it got faster. Now 30 is still pretty slow. You're not going to play songs at 30 beats per minute. But what it does is that it's the scorecard. You see the number going up, and it is a visual representation that you are making progress. And this is why, you know, I know a lot of people who gloss over this in the course, and they're like, lauren, I didn't listen to you. I'm so sorry. I made a big mistake. I made a big mistake. I. I Didn't use the metronome, and now I'm feeling like I should go back and use it. So it is a great tool, and I have a lot of students. I pulled over this great little tool that many of my students like, because working with a metronome can be very robotic. All right? And if you're not used to it, it can be hard to get a feel. So I have a lot of students. I actually put a link in the description below for this product, because I know a number of my students like it. It's called the beat buddy mini 2. And what it does is there's various drum tracks that you can play along with rock, jazz, pop, even at different speeds and different tempos. Playing with a drum beat, you could even search, you know, if you don't want to buy a pedal. I don't know how much these cost. I think they're under $100 or around $100. But what you could do is you could even go on YouTube and search drum track. Rock drum track, 60 beats per minute. Pop drum track, 60 beats per minute. Country drum track, 70 beats per minute. Find a drum track and then play along with it. Now, why a drum track? Because there's no music. So you can put your own chord progressions over the top of it. Because if you play, like, if you grab a track that has music behind it, you have to make sure your chords match up or it's going to clash. It's not going to sound right. Okay. So that's why drum tracks can be very, very helpful. Once again, this is the beat buddy mini 2. I put a link in the description below for you guys to go find that if you want to get one of them. Cool little tool. A lot of my students like it because the other thing, too, is it's got this little stomper pedal here, so you can hit it and throw in, like, intros and choruses and fills as you're playing. So it makes it a little bit fun for the students. If you want to add a little level of fun to your playing, Beat Buddy Mini 2 is a great edition. Hi, Madeline. We got South Jersey in the house. And we've got Chris in the house. Your Gretch and car partner. Yes, yes, Everett. So this is my. My Camaro. So many people comment on the Camaro. And this is. I don't own this. This is a Z28. And I think this is a 69 model just by looking at the Fenders, because it's got the straighter Fenders. But I have a 1968 Camaro. And for those of you that. That follow me, you'll know I just bought a brand new. It's a 2022, but I found a 2022 with 130 miles on it. So it's a brand new Camaro ZL1. She's fast. She's very, very fast. I'm still getting used to all the power. So, yes, thank you, whoever that was, for recognizing the car and the Gretch there. It's always nice to share something. Some fun things. And someone asked. I just saw a question. I just want to clarify. They asked, should we be practicing chord changes for two minutes? Yes. Yes. You should be sitting there for two minutes going, G, C, G, C, G, C. All right, and then C, D, C, D, C, and then DG, D. You know, you want to practice in pairs of chords because that's what you do in songs. So, yes, I would recommend two minutes straight back and forth. One of my favorite quotes is from Bruce Lee, and you've probably heard me say it before. I'm not scared of the man who knows 10,000 kicks. I'm scared of the man who knows one kick, but he's practiced it 10,000 times. And it really emphasizes the importance of repetition and getting those reps in. So if you practice your chord changes for two minutes, you're going to get a lot of reps in, even if you're not pushing for speed. Okay. If you're not pushing for speed, even if you're just trying to do it at a comfortable, relaxed pace, the more repetitions you get in, the more relaxed your fingers come. Speed comes from relaxation. Relaxation comes from experience in muscle memory. Okay? So the more you do it, the more likely your muscle memory is going to start taking over. So thank you for asking that question. That was a great question there. Yes. Beat Buddy. How much is something like the Beat Buddy? Mindy? I think it's. Most pedals are around $100. I'm not sure I should have wrote down the price before, but I put a link in the description below. If you click on that, it'll take you over to Amazon. It's. In terms of pedals, it's a relatively inexpensive pedal. Sometimes they can be 2 or 300 bucks. So. So that's using a metronome or using something like a Beat Buddy to help you. The other thing is having a system. All right? You can follow the worst system in the world, but as long as you follow a system, it's better than following nothing at all. And it doesn't have to be my system. There's. There's a lot of guitar teachers out there. I think it's very, very important that you find the right teacher for your learning style. Okay, I understand that I am not the best teacher for every student. Student. Okay. I, I really focus that I specialize in teaching older adults. My course is made for students 50 plus. If you're under 50, can you take my course? Absolutely. Absolutely. My court. Why do I say that? Because my course just moves a little bit slower and it focuses a lot on dexterity. Now, if you're younger, if you're in your 20s and 30s, will you still benefit from those things as well? Yes. But just understand, if you're in your twenties, your fingers move a little bit faster than, you know, someone who's older or if you're someone like me who's like dislocated fingers or you have arthritis in your fingers, which I'm starting to get arthritis in my dislocated finger. I woke up, I had put arthritis cream on the other day because my. I, you know, we had some bad weather coming in and the joint in my pinky was, was sore. So if you're someone like that that wakes up with pain in your joints, you might have to do some of the easy cords first. And that's totally, totally fine. I have some. I wrote down something here from a student, Bill from Australia. New student of mine, 87 years old. 87 years old. So just if you think it's too late and you're in your 60s. Bill's 87. 87 years old, he said. After a long time, I have finally decided to try and at least achieve some success in playing the guitar. I've tried to learn some basic lessons on the Internet, but found it confusing because each video method was different. And then I came across Lauren's course and can see it was the one for me. So it emphasizes, you know, this is the great thing about the Internet is there's, there's a lot of information here on YouTube. You've got me, you've got Justin, you've got Andy, you've got Marty. There's like, you know, 500 other guitar teachers that are here on YouTube. And we all kind of have our own thing that we specialize in. We have our own personalities and our own voices. But I always tell people learning on the Internet can be very hard because every teacher has their own system, whether they've put it into a course or not. Over the years, if you've taught you kind of develop a system, an approach, and a way you do things. And sometimes you can get very conflicting information. One teacher tells you to do this, the other teacher tells you to do that. I was actually watching a video the other day, and I made a note of this because I wanted to bring it up. It was from. It's. He seemed like a great teacher. He was a younger guy. He was probably in his 20s. And he started off and by teaching three finger, like, the full C chord, the full G chord, the full D chord. And he swore up and down that learning the guitar any other way was cheating. All right? He swore up and down. He's like, I'm not gonna. There's no easy way out here. And. And I said, this kid, because he's younger, I said, he's probably never taught someone with arthritis before, because if you have arthritis, it's very hard to move your fingers, and it's very hard to do those three finger chords. I had someone email me the other day, someone with arthritis, and he said, I never thought I was going to be able to do this, but by using your easy versions of the chords, he's like, I'm actually able to play guitar. And I told him, I said, I was honest. I said, you know, that may be all you're able to do. You may only be able to use the easy versions of the chords. I was like, but we can make other easy versions of chords for you as well. And there's always an easy, easier way to do something, okay? There is an easier way to do something, and it's not cheating, okay? That's why in karate, they have white belt, yellow belt, green belt, blue belt, orange belt. And when I took martial arts when I was a white belt and when I was a yellow belt, I had to wait until I was a brown belt before they would put a weapon in my hand. Because I had to demonstrate that I had the proficiency and the control to use this weapon without hitting anyone else that was around me. So imagine if you gave a weapon to someone that was a white belt. It might not be the best thing, and there's a reason. So for me, it's the same thing. So I have, like, level one is the white belt, all right? And we learn the white belt chords, and guess what? We'll get to the full chords. I can always make things harder. I tell students, like, the worst thing you could ever say to me as a teacher is like, this is too easy, easy. And I'm like, oh, you want me to make it harder? I'll make it harder for. You can always make things harder. But I think it's better for students to go easier. And it's not cheating. It's not cheating. There's. Listen, there's some really great guitar players out there who are not great teachers, okay? They don't understand what it. Or they don't remember what it's like to be a beginner. And they don't remember how hard it is to get a single note to sound good because, you know, they're playing all over the fretboard. They're doing solos, and it's been so long since they've been there. And there's nothing against those people. They're amazing guitar players. They're probably way better guitar players than I am. But when you're trying to teach someone, like, the many people over here in this chat is, you know, we have to go through a process, and sometimes taking a couple extra steps helps. I've had a lot of students who come to me, you know, for the big box programs like Fender Play or Guitar Tricks, and they're like, it just went from 0 to 60 too fast, all right? And, you know, I like fast cars, so I love going to 060 fast. But when we're learning, you know, we don't have to go 0 to 60 so fast. We can take a couple extra steps again to build the finger dexterity. It's really hard to move your fingers in the beginning, but we have to get there, and we have to build there, and it's okay to take those shortcuts. Okay? You're not cheating. Don't make someone feel like you're smaller than you are or you're less than you are. This is your. I tell students in my course all the time, I say, this is your journey, okay? Everyone's guitar journey is unique. Some people move fast, some people move slow, and that's perfectly fine. My goal as the teacher is, is to meet you where you're at, not for you to meet me where I'm at. I have to meet you where you're at. And we have to make changes, and we might have to make adjustments, but that's my goal. My goal is to help you get to where you want to go. All right? Not where I want to go. Okay? I've been there. I've been playing guitar for over. You know, it's been a while now. It's been almost 30 years, but I've been playing guitar for a long time, so I've been there. My goal is now to help you get There get there too. So this is an important thing that brings us into mindset. Okay. Mindset is so important.

Let's. Yeah. Angry pickle says biggest complaint is that very thing, how to play a C chord now. Awesome. Take that and play Eruption.

I know guitar teachers who do that. And you know, it's. It's because they want to play Eruption. Because that's where they're at as a teacher. They want to play Eruption, and they want their students to play Eruption, but they forget that there's a. There's a progress, there's a process to getting there, and it takes time. So I'm glad that you, you recognize that. It's very, very common. So if you run into one of those teachers, you're not alone. There's so many students I've talked to over the years is that I took in person lessons and I got nothing out of it because it was mostly the guitar teacher showing off, like what they could do. And that's not the point of taking lessons. The point is to, again, like I said, meet the student where they're at and help them get to the next step. So this brings us to mindset, which is so important. I think this is one of the most important things other than using a metronome. And the reason I say use the metronome is because it helps with your mindset. Seeing that number goes up motivates you. Did you know this is a very, very important statistic? Okay. Especially since we're in the new year. A lot of people, January 1st, they pick up playing guitar and people quit within the first 90 days. 90%. 90% of people, it's like 80 to 90% quit playing guitar within the first 90 days because of guitar teachers. Like, that is part of it. Okay. The other part is they realize it's actually a lot of work to learn the guitar, but a lot of it is because they have a guitar teacher that makes them feel like it's not possible. And I tell any student, if you have the desire to play the guitar, you can do it. There are people. Go, go search on YouTube. Person playing guitar with feet. There's people who don't have hands that are playing guitar. So if you actually have hands, guess what, you're ahead of the game. I don't have a technique. I don't have a system for learning how to play the guitar with your feet. That one you might have to figure out on your own. But there's people out there who play the guitar with their feet in their toes. I've Seen it, and they're actually amazing. So the bottom line is, if you have the desire to learn, you can do it. I know you can, because I've helped many people do it over the years. So this is huge. So, like I said, most people, quick guitar in 90 days. The reason, because they work with guitar teachers who are amazing guitar players, but they're not teachers. And they're like that other guitar teacher. They make the first 90 days so hard, they that you, as a student, think it's impossible or you can't even visualize how you could get to that end point. So what I do in the system is we try to have little small wins in each of the levels. Okay? So in the first level, the whole goal of level one is just to get you learning some simple chords, some simple strumming patterns, and playing your first song. Okay? Because that's a win. Because if I can get you to play a song in level one, it gives you the belief, it starts building your confidence that you can do this. Because there's a bit. All of us have that. There's a little voice in the back of our heads that tells us, I'm not good enough or you can't do. Who do you think you are? You think you can go be Eric Clapton? You think you can be Stevie Ray Vaughan? You think you can be so and so? You're not good enough. You can't do this. We all have that little voice in the back of our head, and we need to silence that voice. And we do that by winning. We do that by winning small wins. I tell students all the time, there's no win that is too small. Getting and showing up for your practice every week is a win. Touching your guitar is a win. Practicing playing your first song is a win. Learning your first chord, it's a win. These are all wins. And when you win in those first 90 days, it makes it exciting, it makes it fun. And you start flipping the script in the back of your head. You start saying, this is possible. I get, oh, my. I learned to play a song in just the first level. What am I going to do in level two? What am I going to do in level three? What am I doing? Level four, you start future casting. I used to do this with my students in person all the time because we would have student recitals. And we do have a recital for the online students as well. We had one a few weeks ago. And I future cast with the students, be like, what are we doing in three months? So that they're already Starting to think about three months down the road, six months down the road, nine months down the road. Cool. We can't do this song right now. This song might be a little bit tricky. Let's put this on the list. Let's. Let's take this on again in three months. And they're like, okay, great. Because now they're looking forward to that goal. So I tell people, when you feel good about yourself, you want to keep doing more. Okay? You want to keep doing more. And if you keep doing more, you don't want to give up. Okay? And I'm not going to gloss over that. Learning the guitar is easy. It's not easy. It is, actually. It's a very hard thing to do. But if you are consistent, if you show up, you will be successful. I guarantee it. Especially if you have a structure, you have a system, you have your practice routine in place, you will be able to do this. It's for. Someone says, for new guys, set goals that are realistic. Amen. Appreciate that. Amen. That's exactly what it is. Now you could have the goal to be like, I want to play like Eric Clapton. Great. That's our big, you know, maybe that's our like two or three year goal. We want to play like Clapton, or I want to play Layla, or I want to play, you know, something really, really cool by Eric Clapton. That's our big picture goal. So that's up here. But on the way to that goal, there's all these little stepping stones. Okay, so level one's down here. We're not even in the screenshot. Then we get to level two, and then we're climbing our way up this mountain to here. But it can take years. You're not gonna learn to really play the guitar in 90 days. And that's why most people give up, because they're like, this isn't what I thought it was. But I guarantee it's absolutely worth it if you. If you put in the time, it's worth it. If you do what I said to do earlier in this video, you set up your practice routine, even if it's 15 minutes. 15 minutes. 5 minutes on strumming, 5 minutes on chords, 5 minutes on finger dexterity. And then if you got extra time at the end, throw a song or two on the end. You're gonna start making progress because you're focusing on the things that help you get better. You're going to see the progress in the songs because the songs are going to start sounding better. That's going to bring you more Joy that's going to bring you more happiness. You're going to want to practice longer, and you're going to want to keep going. All right? And like I said here, I said, that's the last thing I want for my students. I'd rather let the fire engine go by here. Busy morning here in Lynn. I don't know if you guys can hear that through my mic. I can never tell what you guys can hear in the background. I said, the last thing I want for my students is for you to give up. I'd rather cheat and make things easier for you and help you have success versus have you take the guitar, throw it back in the garage, throw it back in the closet. You know, say maybe, maybe in 10 years. I have a lot of students who say, you know, I tried to do this 20 years ago, but then I got busy, Life got in the way. Or, you know, I took lessons a year ago or a few years ago, and the teacher made me feel so bad, I thought it wasn't good enough, and I want to try it again. And that's such a common story I hear from a lot of students. I started, I stopped, I started, I stopped, I started, I stopped. That was my journey. I, as some of you, don't know, for those of you who don't know me, I do not have a degree in music. I did not go to school for music. I am exactly like you, okay? I got a guitar when I was 16. My sister bought me my guitar, 16, as a confirmation present. My mom told her not to do it. She said she's going to waste it like the piano lesson. She's not going to do anything with the guitar. You're wasting your money. Which made me want to learn the guitar just a little bit more. But I liked the guitar because I understood it, and I learned chords, and I learned on my own because I wasted the piano lessons. You know, we weren't. We didn't have a lot of money growing up, so my. My grandfather used to pay for my piano lessons, so my mom didn't have the money to pay for guitar lessons. So I didn't get guitar lessons growing up. I had the little Hal Leonard book, which I've heard a lot of people, they start that Hal Leonard one, okay? They had that Hell Leonard book. I started by sight reading, and it was hard and it was boring. And then I learned my first chords, and forget it from there. I was done. All I did was chords, rhythm, and strumming, and I loved the guitar from that point, and that's why I start with chords, because it's so much fun to be able to play songs. That's. That was my learning experience. But things happened over the years. When I was 16, so shortly after I started my guitar journey, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma. So I got cancer. So I put the guitar away for probably about a year. I didn't touch it. And then I brought it back out once. My cancer was because the chemo and stuff, it makes your fingers hurt and all this other stuff and joint pain and all these other things. So it was really hard for me to even play the guitar. And then once I got into college, I started picking it back up again. I would play it a lot. And I kind of had this same journey of start and stop, start and stop, start and stop. And then when I was 26, I said, you know what? I'm going to start really taking some guitar lessons. I hadn't had any guitar lessons, and I really wanted to learn how to finger pick. That was, like, the big thing I wanted to hear was finger picking. Okay. Yeah. Some people say, sorry to hear that. It's. Well, I've been cancer free. This will be 25 years, so. So even I just did all my tests last month in Boston. They all came back, knock on wood. Good. So no more thyroid cancer cancer. No breast cancer. Those. Those are the two I have to watch for. I have to watch for thyroid cancer and breast cancer. And that's why, you know, I relate to you guys so much. And I think that's a blessing. That I got cancer when I was younger is because I understand how precious life is, and I understand how important it is to do things right now. I'm a very immediate person. Like, someone was like, let's do something. I'm like, great, let's do it. And they're like, right now? I'm like, yeah, why are we gonna wait? Why are we waiting? There's no time. So I.

Limits on. On life. And. And that if you want to do something, the best time to do it is right now. Because we know none of us are guaranteed tomorrow. I'm not even guaranteed tomorrow. So, you know, if this is something you've wanted to do for years, do it now. Do it right now. I really, really do encourage you. But when I was 26, I decided I was going to start taking guitar seriously. So I've been playing the guitar for 10 years. On and off, on and off, on and off. And I came to a point where I was Like, I really want to play this thing. I really want to understand it. I know people who've been playing guitar less than me. They sound better than me. They can do cooler things on it with me. I need to hire a teacher, all right? And I was working, so I had money and I could afford to take some lessons. So I took some lessons with an acoustic guitar teacher in my hometown of Medford, Massachusetts. And it made all the difference. It really did. Getting that help. I took lessons with her maybe for like a year and a half, a couple years. And I learned a lot. I learned a lot from her and just made my strumming so much better. I learned about music theory, songwriting, finger picking. It made me a much better guitar player. And I was so sad that I wasted so many years of that start and stop and. And you know, when. When I was young also, when you guys are young, there was no YouTube. You guys didn't even have Internet. I at least had the Internet, and I had ultimate guitar. And I used to look tabs up online so I could play, like a bunch of little bits and pieces of songs. I could play intros to songs. I could kind of strum things, but I didn't know how to play. Like, I really wanted to play Melissa Etheridge, and I had no clue what she was doing, how she was playing, what she was playing. So it's very, very hard on the Internet to learn. Even, you know, even 20 something years ago, we didn't have YouTube. I had a VHS tape. I had a VHS tape. It was some like, 80s rocker showing me how to play an A chord, a G chord. And I have the How Leonard book. Like, that's what I started with. The frustrations with the. The Internet and YouTube. And I love YouTube because I've helped so many of you. On YouTube, we have Rob from Houston. What camera do I use? I am using a Canon EOS 800D with the. I think it's the T6i. I don't know if they make them. They probably have an updated version now, but. But that's what I'm using. Great question. Interesting. No one's asked for that before. Someone says, I just started playing the guitar used two years ago. I'm turning 39, and I just felt I should have played the guitar a long time ago. I find it hard to strum and switch chords. Yep, absolutely. And I wrote that down because this is one of my favorite quotes. Okay. I said the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is today. Is Today. So whether you're 39, whether you're 87, like Bill, my student that I was talking about before, I have lots of students in their 70s and 80s. The majority of my students in my course are in their 60s, 70s, and 80s. I have some students in their 40s and 50s, and I have some people in the, in their 30s that are in my course as well. I know because they, you know, they tell me their ages and they say, hello, I'm, I'm 30 and I'm in Massachusetts. And what I want you to know is today is the best day. Today is the best day. We had 20 years. We had 30 years. Don't look at the past, look at the future. Look at today. All right? And I put a link. I pinned the link here. I put a link in the description below. If you're interested in checking out the seven level system, go check it out. Click on that link below. And again, understand, I know that I am not the perfect teacher for everyone. And that's why I love YouTube because you guys get to experience stuff like this with me. You get to watch my videos and you can decide if I'm the right person for you. And if you really want to know what the course is like, go take my crash course. Okay? Go to laurenbatement.com and then there's a red button that says, grab your free course. I have a free crash course. If you really want to see if it's possible. If you really want to see if it's possible, give me a chance and I guarantee in next two weeks I can get you playing a song on the guitar. And it's not, it's not clickbait, it's not bs. I used to do it in the first lesson with every student. My goal by the end of the first lesson with every in person student was that they could play a full song by the end of the lesson. And I'm not talking about like Mary Had a Little Lamb or Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, okay? I'm talking about we will play a full song. We would play a real song together by the end of the lesson. Because the whole goal, again, it's that mindset piece. The whole goal is understanding. This is possible. Yes, you can do it. You, you can do it. If you're old, you can do it. If you're young, you can do it. If you're healthy, you can do it. If you have arthritis, okay, again, on the point of arthritis, because my dad has really debilitating rheumatoid arthritis. So there's days where he can't get out of bed. So I understand. You have your good days, you have your bad days, okay? And I had a student who had rheumatoid arthritis. She couldn't play bar chords, okay? We just never did them. It was too painful for her to do bar chords, so we just created easier cords for her to play. We used a capo a lot, this little tool here. All right. And go watch a video of mine. The Hotel California. I have a Hotel California video. If you want to play Hotel California, you need to use a lot of bar chords. But if I slap this baby on it, you don't need any bar chords, okay? So just because bar chords are a very useful thing, and I know a lot of teachers who teach bar chords to beginners. And I'm going to. I love. I hate throwing people under the bus. I'm not going to say his name, but there's a guitar teacher here on YouTube who last year released a beginner guitar course, and he put an F bar chord in the course, and I wanted to strangle him. Bar chords are not for beginners. They are not easy. If you see a beginner course with a bar chord in it, run away. I'm promising you. I had so many students, so I'm in Boston. I have a lot of Berkeley teachers in the area, okay? So these people went to Berkeley College of Music. Okay? They're much better guitar players than me. And I would have students come in with their notebooks, and I'd be like, okay, show me what your guitar teacher was working on. And it was notes of. It was all bar chords, music theory. They were just like. I didn't. I. It was so hard. I couldn't learn anything. And I was like, okay, we're gonna take this, and this is what we're gonna do.

That's it. I just ripped up all my notes. We're gonna like. No, we're gonna start fresh, because that's stuff I would teach someone a year in, okay? And, you know, people make funny. Like, real guitarists don't use capos. Listen, Tommy Emanuel uses a capo. Johnny Cash uses a capo. John Denver. I guarantee. Simon and Garfunkel. I guarantee you most of the artists you listen to have used a capo in their lifetime. So it's. It's not cheating. It's not cheating. It's helping you reach your goals. And I will do anything that makes it easier for you to help you reach your goals, okay? So, yes. Need to run. You're welcome. Brandice. Welcome. Do you recommend going to music school? Do I recommend going to music school? I mean, if you want to become a professional. This is something students ask me all the time. Lauren, do I need to sight read music? I don't go over sight reading in, in my course because I think it's useless. What I do think is useful is sight reading rhythm. Rhythm is very important. I learned that when I took drum lessons. I actually became a better rhythm guitar player when I took drum lessons because I learned how to really sight read rhythm. Okay. Because in. In drums, they don't really have. The drums do have pitches, they do have notes, but it's not like a melodic instrument like piano or guitar where you have like, you know, a treble clef and you. You're really reading melody. So I believe that reading rhythm is super important. I don't think you need to go to music school even if you want to be professional. Like Melissa Etheridge, who's one of my favorites. She went to Berkeley for like a semester, and I think she did really good without going to music school. So, you know, if you want to become a professor at a university, yes, you have to go to a music school. If you want to sit in on sessions and play on Broadway or be a session musician, yes, you need to learn how to sight read music. Absolutely 100%. If you want to be a campfire guitar player, if you want to just play happy birthday for your wife or your grandchildren or you want to, you know, just write your own songs. I have lots of students who are writing their own songs now. You don't need to know how to read a lick of music. I still. I'm still not the best sight reader in the world. I can do treble clef really well or fairly well. I don't even want to say really well. If it's single notes, it's good. If it's chords, I start getting tripped up. I'm horrible at reading bass clef. I really. I can read the treble clef, which is the guitar, because I started with the Hal Leonard books and I took piano, so I can do it. It's not my favorite thing to do. I'm much. I'm actually much better at reading guitar tablature, which is what I teach, than I am at actually sight reading sheet music. So it just goes to show you, I don't have a degree in music. All right? So I am proof. I am living proof. You do not need a degree in music to play the guitar. I don't even have a degree in teaching my degrees in full transparency, My two degrees are in archaeology and biology. I went to Boston University, and my degrees are in archaeology and biology. I don't have a degree in music, but I do so much with these instruments. It's amazing. All right. People are like, I can't believe you didn't go to school for music. It's like, no, I just love music. I love the guitar. Just like all you hear in the chat. You love music. You love the guitar. Tony says he's 69 and learning, but I have more fun building guitars. Look at. Oh, that's awesome. I have a few students who built their own guitars. See? And it's just. Whatever. It's your journey again. It's not my journey. I. I really love finger style. I love acoustic guitar. But I have some students, they really want to get into lead guitar, electric guitar playing. Right? They want to write their own songs. They want to do these different things. It's not for me to force you down a path. Guitar, you know, there's the foundation, and that's what we teach in the seven level system, as I teach the foundation. And then once you graduate from that course, you can go into blues, you can go into lead guitar, you can go into finger picking, you can go into music theory and songwriting. You can go down whatever path you want. It's your journey. You learn the music you want to learn. All right. I've had so many. I remember Megan, my wife, when she was taking drum lessons, she took lessons with a teacher, and he wanted to do all classic rocks. I mean, come on. Classic rock's great, but Megan's not. She's not a classic rock person. She loves Dave Matthews Band. She loves Brandy Carlisle. Like, that was the music she wanted to do, but the teacher only wanted to do classic rock. So she ended up quitting because she lost interest, because it wasn't the music she wanted to do. So this is when you're doing your practice. Practice music that inspires you, not the music that inspires me, because it's gonna be different. We like a lot of the same stuff. I like Neil Young. I love the ccr. My dad was a huge Rolling Stones and Fleetwood Mac fan. My mom was the Beatles in Motown. So that's what I grew up on. Okay. I grew up on Motown, the Beatles, you know, Fleetwood Mac, the Rolling Stones. Those were, you know, in Elvis. Lots of Elvis, because. And Patsy Cline and Tom Jones. That's what my grandmother liked. My grandmother was a huge Tom Jones fan. My dad listened to. To Patsy Cline, Dean Martin. Those were like my. My grandparents stuff. Frank Sinatra. So that's the stuff I grew up on and kind of got inspired by. But I also love 90s music. I grew up. My musical error is really the. The 90s is my musical decade, and I love music from the 90s. Okay. That's stuff that I love to do. Goo Goo Dolls, Foo Fighters, you know, Gin Blossoms, Lots of great artists from that decade. I even love Guns N Roses. When I play the drums, I really like rock music. When it comes to the drums. When I play the guitar, I'm more of like the acoustic, like the James Taylor singer, songwriter. I just bought tickets to James Taylor. I'm gonna see James Taylor in Boston September 10th. I'm so excited. It's gonna be great. But when it comes to drums, when it comes to drums, I'm rock. I'm Smashing Pumpkins, Guns N Roses. I love doing the classic rock stuff stuff. Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix. I love doing all that stuff because it's. The drum stuff is so cool. So again, depending on what instrument I'm playing, I might be. Something else might inspire me. Because when you're on the drums, you want to like. It's such great, the drums. Honestly, I. Don't be upset. I like playing the drums almost better than the guitar because it's such great stress relief and it's fun. It's like a whole body experience. Playing the drums is great. I have to get back into playing the drums. But you have to do it inspires you. Okay? You have to do. It inspires you. And that's the goal of the seven level system. I don't teach music in the course. I can't because of copyright reasons. I can't. That's why I use YouTube in conjunction with my course, because I'll say, hey, you've learned these chords. Now go over to YouTube. Try playing with these songs or these lessons. That's how I use YouTube, because I can't for copyright reasons. And I know a lot of you, you're like, lauren, can you play the song all the way through? For copyright reasons, I can't. YouTube could shut down my channel for copyright reasons. So that's why I don't play through an entire version of a song anymore. I'll just do like a little verse and chorus for you to play along with. But, you know, I use that in conjunction. But if you go through the seven level course, it gives you the foundation, it gives you all the fundamentals. You. You need to play the music that you love. Not the music I love. I mean, there's a lot. I got a lot of mixture on YouTube now. But, you know, I know there's a lot of people who love Taylor Swift. They only have like one or two Taylor Swift songs. But, you know, you will have the skills that you need to be able to go over to ultimate guitar and say, hey, I want to learn this Taylor Swift song. Or I want to learn this other song that maybe Lauren hasn't done or doesn't have on her website yet. Okay. That's the goal of the seven level is to get you from being an absolute beginner to someone who's more of like a late beginner, very early intermediate. And then I have courses after that. They're the next level courses where we get into bar chords, power chords, some theory, some music theory. What else do we have? The finger picking course. All this stuff is on my website too. If you go to laurenbatement.com courses, you can see all my whole course catalog there. So if you're someone that's like, well, Lauren, I'm not a beginner. I'm not a beginner. I know my chords, I know my strumming. The biggest thing I find is people get stuck with strumming. They feel like they're doing the same strumming pattern over and over again. That's where expressive rhythm comes in. I have a great strumming course. It's probably my second favorite after the seven level, is the strumming course. I'm a rhythm guitar player, so I'm a little bit biased on that front. But the strumming courses is one of my favorites. And last year, the end of last year, I just added a whole new section on that on electric guitar. Because people like Lauren, we want to see you play the electric. So I did. I added a whole new module on rock guitar, rhythm playing electric guitar. So that was a cool little addition that we put in that course for last year. Yes. Star fox says love 80s and 90s country. Yeah, I didn't really get into country until I started teaching. My aunt loved country. When I used to go out to Las Vegas, we'd always listen to country. I remember being younger and being like. Like, this is gross. And she's like, when you get older, she's like, you're going to learn to appreciate country. Because she's like, it's like a story. She goes, everything is a story. And when you listen to it, it's a lot like real life. And then I started teaching and a lot of my students Loved country. So I learned a lot of country music because of my students. And it's just like everyone here. You guys inspire me. And I still learn all the time from you. I did a Blues 101 course. I had so many students that. Lauren, we want to learn more about the blues. Can you make a blues course? Now? I will admit, in full transparency, I know a little bit about the blues. I don't know a lot about the blues. So I had to go learn some things myself. And I wasn't really, like, the hugest blues fan. But after I made that course, that's a. That's a big course. That's like 50 or 60 lessons. It's as big as the seven level. And I just. I have so much more respect for blues as a genre of music. And most. You maybe know that blues is the grandfather of rock and roll. You know, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, all those bands. So blues is a very, very important genre. I think it's a really great genre for even learning about theory and how songs work, because it's so repetitive. But that's a really great course if you're into the blues and you're not a beginner. It's not for absolute beginners. I wouldn't recommend the blues course for absolute beginners, but if you've been playing for a little while and you know about power chords and rhythm a little bit, the blues course would. Would be a great option for you. I love your accent. It's so cute. So I have a Boston accent, and when I get excited, when I do stuff like this, it comes out so bad. And when I talk to my parents, it's. It's the worst Italian accent you could ever. I. We literally talk like the Sopranos. And I took voice lessons for a long time, and I worked my way out of it for quite some time because I was so aware of my speech. And also when I went to college in Boston, I got made fun of all the time because I'd be like, where's the body at? You know, because you drop all your R's and I can never. I. They end on idea. I can. I can never get out of adding Rs on the ends of words. I can put them back into words, but I still add them all the time to words that don't need them. But it's funny. I lost my accent. My sister's a speech therapist, and she came home from grad school one time. She's like, you lost your accent? And I was like, everyone's making fun of me at school, so I became more aware. But I'm very happy that it's coming, coming through. And yes, it's, it's, it's not as thick as it used to be, but I have a very, very bad Boston accent when I talk to my parents. Does that pedal work with Android? Because the Vadami did not. Well, it works. This is, this is not through the computer. You would actually plug this into an amp. So you can see here there is a quarter inch cable. So you take your quarter inch cable, you put it in the input, okay. And then the other end, this would go into your guitar. So this is the part. Okay. And then there's an output and you'd plug in another quarter inch cable in the output. And then this end goes into your amp. So it plays through your amp is what it does. And there's a power cord. So it has nothing to do with your computer or Android. If you have the Vadami pedal, my understand, I don't know anything about the apps, but when I started with them, it was a plug in for Google Chrome for a web browser. So I know it works really, really well with a web browser. Does that pedal. Oh, no. Someone said something about Mark. Off topic, have you ever met Mark Wahlberg? No, I have not met Mark Wahlberg. I haven't met any of. When I was younger, New Kids on the Block were big in Boston and Danny Wood was in Gloucester one time when I was down there. So I met him. But I haven't met any of the Wahlbergs now.

They're a little bit older than I am, but they were very big around here. Mark Wahlberg and New Kids on the Block, obviously, because I think they were from Dorchester in Boston. So I've noticed a few of your words are so accentuated like the way you say your name. I know that was mean of my parents. They gave me a name with an R. I can't even say my own name. It's like Lauren. I always go, lauren. People think I'm saying Warren. When I talk on the phone with people, they think it's W, A, R, R, E, N. I'm like, you gave me a name that I can't even say.

But it's okay. It's okay. I forgive them. And that's why, you know, I'm here today and I'm who I am today because of my accent and all the things I've gone through. And I wanted to share with you today that you can do this. You absolutely can. And if you're Feeling like you're in a rut and you missed the early part of this live. Go back and watch the replay. Go back and watch the replay. Because if you're feeling like you're in a rut, something needs to change. It's just something needs to change. Whether it's in your practice routine, whether it's getting a system, buying a course. It doesn't have to be my course. It can be anyone's course. Okay? Get behind a system that works for you. That's the most important part. It's not about me. It's about. About you. Okay? Get something that works for you, okay? That's the most important. And then if you're like, I'm stuck, and you feel like you're doing the same thing over and over again, if you don't change anything, nothing will change. So you need to change something. So go back to the beginning of this. Take my tips about setting up a practice routine. How can you change your routine, your focus? Using a metronome? Using a timer? I'm bleeding. I don't know how. I. I don't know what happened there. It's very dry here in Boston. I must have whacked it on my phone. But take the time to change something. If you want something to change, you have to make the change. And the best time to do it is not tomorrow, not three months from now, not six months from now. It is right now. Okay? It's right now. If you've been trying to do this for years, make the change today. Change your practice. Go get a system. Go buy a course. Okay? Maybe you need to start using that metronome more. Maybe you need to be timing your practice to make sure that you're practicing for 15 minutes. If you say you're going to practice for 15 minutes, make sure it's 15 minutes. Coming up on the hour here. I hope you all have a lovely Saturday. Click the link in the description below to go check out my course or any of my courses, and I'll see you all in a lesson video real soon. Bye, everyone.