Lesson 1: Engage in Deliberate Practice

In case you don't know, I'm 35 years old now and I've spent 20 years playing guitar, which, to be honest, made me good enough at it to be able to travel the world playing. But this skill evolved not because I'm a genius or because I have innate talent. The reason is that I was stubborn and it's the only thing I stuck with during my whole life.

However, if you ask me if you need to spend 20 years to reach my level, the answer will be a big fat bold NO. And this for a simple reason: For 16 years, I didn't know what I'm explaining here in this course, and I especially didn't know how to engage in Deliberate Practice.

Deliberate practice is a focused and purposeful way of practicing that targets specific areas for improvement. By concentrating on the toughest parts and utilizing constructive feedback, you can make significant progress and improve your playing more efficiently.

For many years, I just sat down to play without any structure, plan, or specific objective and methodology, which was fun because I love guitar, but it really didn't speed up my process. Now I would love for you not to make the same mistake I did, and let's start exploring the critical parts of engaging in Deliberate Practice.

If you want to get deeper into deliberate practice to apply it to any skill you want to learn, please check this video:

Applying Deliberate Practice

1) Identifying Tough Guitar Sections

The key element to practicing guitar deliberately is to spend time learning how to analyze your guitar songs or techniques to pinpoint the sections that challenge you the most. This might involve looking for parts where you frequently make mistakes or where you feel less confident.

How to Analyze Your Guitar Songs:

• Play Through the Song:
  Begin by playing the song piece to get a sense of the overall flow and identify any sections where you struggle.
  
  
• Mark the Challenging Sections:
  Note down the areas where you consistently make errors or feel less confident (that chord that is not sounding good, or that chord transition, or the consistency of the strumming pattern, or singing while maintaining the time, etc.)
  
  
• Isolate the Difficulties:
  Forget for a while about the things that you can play well and focus on the problematic sections by isolating them and breaking them down into smaller, more manageable parts.
  
  
• Slow Down:
  Use a metronome to practice these tricky parts slowly, ensuring you understand the technical demands and correct any mistakes.
  
  
• Record Your Practice:
  Make recordings of your practice sessions to hear your performance from an external perspective and identify further areas for improvement.
  
  
• Seek Feedback:
  Play the challenging parts for your teacher or another experienced guitarist to get targeted advice on how to improve. Or just listen carefully to your recording and identify the areas for improvement.
  
  

2) Break Down the Tricky Stuff

Break down difficult sections into smaller, manageable parts. Practice these parts slowly, gradually increasing the tempo as you gain confidence and accuracy.

3) Use Feedback

Play what you practiced and look for feedback from your teacher or make recordings of your own practice. Listen critically to identify areas for improvement and engage in deliberate practice again to correct and improve it.

Deliberate Practice Song Challenge

To solidify your understanding and application of deliberate practice techniques, you'll work through a specific song that challenges your current skill level. This project will help you implement the strategies discussed in Lesson 1 of Module 2, focusing on breaking down difficult sections, applying targeted practice, and using feedback for improvement.

Instructions:

1) Select a Song:

Choose a song or a piece of music that you find challenging. This should be something that pushes your abilities but is still achievable with effort and focused practice.

2) Analyze the Piece:

Play through the entire song to familiarize yourself with its structure and identify the sections that are most difficult for you.

3) Mark and Isolate Challenges:

Use the techniques from the lesson to mark challenging sections and isolate them for detailed practice. Consider aspects like complex chords, fast passages, or difficult rhythms.

4) Apply Deliberate Practice:

Break down each challenging section into manageable parts.

• Slowly practice these parts using a metronome, focusing on accuracy and technique.
• Gradually increase the tempo as you gain confidence and control.
• Record and Review: Regularly record your practice sessions, particularly the segments where you're working on the challenging parts.
• Listen back to these recordings to objectively assess your progress and identify areas that still need improvement.
  
  
• Seek Feedback: Share your recordings with a teacher, peer, or online forum to get constructive feedback.
  
  
• Apply this feedback to refine your technique and approach
  
  
  

As you can see, applying deliberate practice is not that fun. It can be a slightly uncomfortable feeling because requires effort, but if you asked me when i was younger if I want to spend 20 years “just having fun” or improve my playing 5 times faster , I'd definitely have taken deliberate practice more seriously.

How about you? 🙂  🎸✨