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Whats the weirdest advice you got that worked?

The Raven

New Student
Nov 11, 2019
78
30
Keep this short and simple, whats the weirdest piece of advice you got on learning guitar that worked for you?
Mine was to blindfold yourself playing. Kept looking at my fretboard too much, overthinking things, and messing up. Friend told me to blindfold myself while playing. That way looking at my fretboard did nothing. Helped me tons get sliding down as well as the feel of the fretboard
 

Syn Gates

🦾
Staff member
Legend+
Sep 18, 2019
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Love this question! And yes, that is an unusual but highly effective technique.
I’ll have to think a bit more on this to get a little weirder but one of the coolest pieces of advice ever given to me was from Papa Gates and it was to watch tv and play what you hear. It started off being absolutely impossible. It was so tough that I thought the task to not be possible. I kept at it tho and it became a staple in my day to day. In modern day translation – play guitar to the content you are consuming, be it Netflix, YouTube, Insta, etc.
Not only did it drastically improve my ear and lower the translation time from mind and body to instrument, but it gave me an invaluable tool for the days I didn’t feel like playing at all.
If I am hungover, lethargic, underslept, sick, uninspired, depressed, or just simply don’t feel like playing the guitar that day, all I do is pick it up and put it in my lap or right next to me and zone out to a movie, news, or show and it never fails that I eventually start noodling to something I hear that I think is cool and BOOM, I’m now training one of the MOST IF NOT THE MOST IMPORTANT things there is as a musician, my ear.
Is this short enough Raven?! 😉
Happy 4th of July everyone!
 
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Andrew Fernandes

Free Bird Player
Nov 11, 2019
778
196
30
London
www.youtube.com
A piece of advice I heard from Hector Trejo telling Jak on Instagram was: You know how you play slow to then play fast I think he said you should try from time to time to play really fast like double the speed. I feel like this advice is good because it is like a runner doing a very fast sprint on the spot and the stretches are like playing the guitar slowly, the fast sprint on the spot is playing the guitar twice as fast as the original track.
I hope I didn’t confuse anyone. The analogy I came up with my self.
 

The Raven

New Student
Nov 11, 2019
78
30
Honestly, Syn that is some great advice! I absolutely suck at playing by ear so I might have to give that a try.
That’s some good advice, Andrew. I’ve done that in the past and it’s helped a fair bit. Once you can play it decently at 1.5x speed you should be able to nearly nail it at 1x speed.
 

Ed Seith

Supreme Galactic Overlord
Staff member
Legend+
  • Nov 11, 2019
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    soundcloud.com
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    I used to do that a lot, Syn, but with my wife in med school, most of my “media consumption” is with headphones on, which makes it harder to do that. Great tool, though! Sometimes when I’m on a long, boring work call (I work from home), I will throw a guitar over my shoulder and just noddle through stuff while I, uh, “work.”
     
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