Are You Investing Enough In Yourself?

Posted on August 19, 2017 by GuitArchitecture

There’s a difference between spending and investing.

Many players spend a lot of time playing the guitar but don’t invest enough time in developing themselves.

A while back, I was reading a collection of interviews with graphic designers and one of them said something to the effect of,

“When people bring me portfolios of their work I often find myself saying, ‘I don’t want to see what you did 2 years ago…I want to see what you did 2 weeks ago, or better yet 2 days ago!”

At different points in one’s journey investing might mean:

Buying a guitar to learn how to play
Perhaps investing money and/or time into lessons
Investing in yourself by practicing
Investing in your gear maybe by getting your guitar set up or getting better gear
Booking gigs
Performing in front of people
Recording your music
Releasing your music
Improving your skills / your tones / your sound
Developing your brand
Cultivating an audience via social media
Developing media relations and contacts
Developing products and services for sale

As a whole trying to take all of these things on can be overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. In an interview with Lewis Howes, Chris and Heidi Powell talked about how they work with clients. I’ve paraphrased one important thread from about the 59 minute mark or so:

So often people see the change they want to make as a huge mountain. They go to extremes to try to tackle the whole thing at once and convince themselves that the fun ends here. Over the course of a day a week a month… they try, and they try and they fail and try and then fail (again). They continue to fail (by trying to take on something too large to tackle) and before you know it they don’t believe in themselves anymore at all.

They then try to convince themselves and everyone around them that they’re happy with who they are and where they’re at – because they don’t believe that they have what it takes to (make the change they want to make). They make excuses for other people’s success and say, “well that’s just my limitation. I’m different.”

The reality for most people is not that other people are different – but the approach is different for the people who are successful. The people who are successful start so incredibly small…transformation doesn’t happen by committing to 20 things at one time. It’s about making one unbreakable promise at at time.But you have to do it every freaking day. You can’t miss a day and it has to be so incredibly simple that you will never miss a day. Guess what? By the end of that week you start to believe in yourself and you keep up momentum.

“Because we take people who have lost hope in themselves, because they’re looking at me and they say, I’ve tried and failed so many times that I’m never going to get there. … That’s exactly how we grow it – one simple promise at a time and by doing that you keep yourself winning. If you can keep yourself winning you start to believe in yourself again and there is nothing more powerful than belief.”

So here’s a question to consider,

“Are you investing in your goals / yourself in some way every single day?”

Not: “what did you do a week ago?”

Not: still reveling in that big gig you played a year ago.

Not: the 5 books you wrote 6 years ago ; )

What is your goal? (and what did you do yesterday / today / tomorrow to reach it?)

Not one epic Herculean accomplishment.

One small significant decision.

One small significant action.

For myself this means a lot of changes by the end of the year. In addition to being 30 lbs lighter (and counting), two new bands, new releases, a re-branding and all new live content. None of these things came from doing anything really radical. They came from putting consistent work in.

Follow up and Follow through.

Change comes one decision at a time.

One action at a time.

Every. Single. Day.

If you’re reading this, it’s likely that you are looking to make a change in something you’re doing.

Try making a commitment to making one promise that you will do consistently. Even if it’s only for 30-60 or 90 days.
Build off of small successes.
See what happens after your trial period and adjust as necessary.

Here’s hoping this is your best year yet!

I’m at a music business conference next week. Regular posts should resume soon.

I hope this helps and, as always, thanks for reading.

Motivation Is A Question Of “Why” Not “How”

Posted on August 14, 2017 by GuitArchitecture

Today I want to talk about a technique for understanding and focusing motivation but first…

The Obligatory Update

I have been remiss in posting here. As I write this I’m taking a break from prep for a back to back recording session coming up on the 15th with I Come From the Mountains (a new duo acoustic instrumental ensemble with Dean Mirabito from KoriSoron playing an Iranian / Middle Eastern / Hindustani hybrid / fusion with me playing modified acoustic guitars (fretless, 10 string guitar modified from a 12 string and a 6-string multiple capos) and Dean playing tabla and Middle Eastern percussion) and Embe Esti (a loosely Afrobeat inspired electric band with guitar, bass, drums and vocals that brings in a lot of North African and Balkan influences as well). WOW is that an awkwardly long sentence!

( In a gear related note – with the exception of the fretless guitar – all of the guitars and amps I’m using are from Yamaha – so Yamaha Guitars / Yamaha THR if you’re reading this and have any interest in sponsoring a future recording session please feel free to get in touch! ; ) I’ve been working with their THR100HD amp and have gotten some really great tones with minimal pedals so I’ll share my different rigs with you in a future post).

So writing a lot of new material and developing new projects. New websites for both soon!

The Best Free Lesson I Can Give You

If you go through old posts you’ll see that I hammer this point over and over again.

You have to have a why to travel any distance on the path to mastering guitar.

Here’s why this is important. Let’s say you’re in a playing rut. You keep playing the same thing over and over and don’t know how to get out. You get motivated and sign up for a video course and give them your credit card number. You log in the first day and start working on the first lesson. In this case, you happened to go with a player you like but you didn’t understand that the material is way too hard to process at your current skill level. So you work with it for about an hour and take a break for a bit…and then never come back to it. Or you buy a book and it comes in the mail and you crack the cover and never return to it.

Does this sound familiar?

The problem most players face at some level is they don’t understand why they are doing what they’re doing.

As a beginning player: if you don’t have a strong enough motivation you won’t play enough to develop the callouses you’ll need to play.

As an intermediate player: if you don’t have a strong enough motivation you won’t practice the things you need to work on to develop the skills you’ll need to progress to higher levels of expression.

As an advanced player: if you don’t have a strong enough why you may get to a point where you have developed a substantial skill set but can not earn a living from that skill alone.

This is kind of the mid-life crisis of guitar. Fortunately, I’ve gone through many of these throughout my time playing guitar but players who have never faced can be in for a devastating experience .

See The “What” Is Easy

There’s 12 notes. Simple. You can get the basics of chords and scales in a day, grasp them more fully in a week and start to really do something with them in as little as a month if you really put the work in consistently.

The “How” Is Also (Relatively) Easy

When you buy an instructional product what you’re buying is instruction on the how. There is a literal deluge of instructional material both online and in print. Even the most basic of searches will lead you to someone who can show you how. The how is something that is also pretty easy to get under your fingers if you really put the work in consistently (and can be patient about how long it will take to do that work).

The “Why” Is Where You Are On Your Own

If you don’t have a reason for why you are doing what you are doing you won’t put the work in day after day and without that consistence – you will never progress.

Here’s the simple thing to do to get to the core of matter

When I teach a guitar lesson to a beginning student I will often attempt to drill down to what the motivating factors are by asking a series of “why” based questions.

Q: “So what brings you here today?”
A: “I want to learn how to play fast?”
Q: “Why?”
A: “Why what?”
Q: “Why do you want to learn to play fast? What will playing fast allow you to do that you can’t do now?”

Based on the answer – this starts a series of drill downs of variations on the question to get to the bottom – why are you really here? What are you really trying to do and most importantly, what is the real goal that you are working towards?

Playing fast isn’t a goal – it’s a pathway to a goal that might be better reached a thousand ways. If the actual goal and motivation is understood it’s much easier to commit to putting the work in consistently to reach it.

Here’s a hypothetical non-musical example played out a little longer

“I want to exercise”
“Why?”
“So I can gain muscle”
“Why”
“So that I look better”
“Why?”
“So people will date me”
“Why?”
“So I’m not alone”

So in this example the exercise is in service to a larger goal – excising loneliness.

This process for me came about after years of me feeling guilty about going to Berklee and never really delving into jazz improv, only to dig deeper into why I thought I should be working on that and realizing I didn’t really like a lot of standards I was pursuing it in a half-assed way because I thought it was a skill set I should have, but in reality the tunes never moved me so my motivation to work on them wasn’t there. When I spent the time working on things that moved me emotionally, I got into more challenging music that required doing some of the work I didn’t want to do before because the context was one I wanted to explore. So I kind of came to the same place through the back door…

Here’s the takeaway

If you have an issue with motivation, try diving deep with a series of “why” questions to get to what the underlying reason behind what you are doing really is. Once you understand your real motivation, it’s easier to be more objective about how to best work towards realizing an associated goal.

I hope this helps and as always, thanks for reading!

An Update and Part 1 of a new lesson

Posted on February 15, 2016 by GuitArchitecture

One small step for man

I’ve been doing a LOT of research on pedagogy and rapid skill acquisition versus mastery in preparation for the new teaching project I’ve been developing. It’s reinforced a lot of what I’ve learned through trial and (a great deal of) error, and it’s given me some new tools and insights for how to get people to learn new skills quickly and how to get people who want to go past competence to go past their current limits towards mastery. The new project I’m working on is audacious and big and, to be candid, intimidating to try to develop, encapsulate and ship out to people, but it’s getting closer to being done!

In the meantime, it’s been a while since I wrote a lesson post. Mostly, it’s because what takes 5-10 minutes to explain in person takes hours of work to explain to people in a way that you can learn from reading online. With that in mind, I’m going to take a lesson regarding how to come up with your own licks and how to learn them efficiently and break it up into a multi-part lesson. In this lesson, I’m going to give you an approach to generating new ideas and then in the next lesson, I’m going to take you through a practical application and show how I develop a new idea and get it under my fingers (and into my ear so I can have it at my disposal when I play).

Where do licks come from?

In my experience there are two primary ways to develop your lick vocabulary.

Learn licks from other people and make them your own.

Discover licks on your own.

Improvisation

There are several ways to discover your own licks but a the one I invest the most time in myself is improvisation. When I’m really improvising (and not just sticking licks I already know into things I’m playing over), I always find some new angle or approach that I never expected. But if you’re really in the moment, it’s impossible to keep of all those ideas afterwards using only memory.

Let’s talk about improvisation for a moment. As even Derek Bailey couldn’t really encapsulate it over a hundred or so pages it’s not something that I’m going to be able to do here in a few sentences, but I’ll do my best to give you some thoughts on improvisation. I’m going to use language as an example as we improvise when we speak every single day and generally do so quite naturally without a great deal of stress or worry.

Let’s say you’re going to give a speech. You want the speech to be professionally delivered and polished so you write it in advance, edit and revise it endlessly and practice giving it over and over again so that when you go in front of a room full of people you can execute it in a perfect manner. This is kind of a classical music approach to having every performance be perfect. It’s like working out a solo and playing the same solo every night over a song. There’s nothing wrong with that, you may need to be that comfortable with the material to get up in front of an audience and speak. But over time, you’ll probably find that it will be difficult to maintain the passion in performing the same material exactly the same way every time.

As an intermediate step, you might find yourself interjecting some new observations into the speech on the fly. Perhaps someone asks for a clarifier about something you said and you need to come up with a more detailed explanation or an analogy. Maybe a Q&A is added at the end of the speech. It becomes a “thinking on your feet” moment. Now you’re improvising a little. Maybe you add little flourishes in a pre-written solo, or throw some licks in between a vocal melody if you’re playing guitar on something.

Now you know the speech (and the subject matter) thoroughly. You don’t want it to be stale, so you have a series of talking points on an index card. You know how you’re going to start the speech and how it’s going to end, but you just have a few bullet points on an index card to use as a launching point for talking about them in more depth. This is how many people approach jazz/rock improvisation. They know the material enough to be comfortable, they’re going to start with a lick or two – develop a few ideas and then target specific things to happen at certain points in the solo with an end in mind.

Then you have the next level. You walk into an unannounced meeting and have to make an impromptu presentation on something. Now you’re REALLY improvising.

In my mind, improvising in any capacity involves some level of working without a net and limiting yourself to specific approaches.

For example: If I’m improvising on a tune I’m practicing – I’ll pre determine things like:

I’m not going to play any licks I already know.
Perhaps I limit myself to a scale or hand full of tetra chords
I’m only going to solo on certain strings or solo in certain areas of the fret board.

Save it for the ages

One thing I recommend doing is dedicating at least one part of your practice session to developing new ideas and recording it in some way, shape or form.

In Korisoron, we have an inexpensive Tascam recorder that doubles as a live mixing desk that we use to record shows just so we can do pre-production for tracks we’re working on – but you don’t need anything fancy. I picked up a ZOOM mini recorder used for well under $100 that just sits on my desk top for this exact thing (or when inspiration strikes) but an iPhone of android device would also work just fine. Whatever you use – just make it something that is easy to access and works for you!

Assess and Analyze

Now here’s the part a lot of people don’t want to do. You gotta go back and listen to what you recorded and find the things you like. Since you’re improvising a lot of these things won’t be pristine ideas, they might have mistakes or only be partially formed ideas. The process here is two fold:

1. Really assess where you’re at with your playing to determine what you need to work on. If you find that your time is all over the place – that’s something to work on. If you find yourself going back to the same rhythmic approaches for every phrase – that’s something to work on. You want to be detached in this process. This isn’t about beating yourself up over what you didn’t do well or giving yourself a pat on the back for something you did. This is about coming up with an accurate assessment of where you are really at. One way to detach yourself is to go into third-person mode and listen to the recordings as if someone else made them. You don’t listen to it directly as a measure of what you did but as what happened musically. One way to do this is to listen to the recordings a few days (or weeks) after you record them. I’ve come back to recordings I did months ago and have no memory of any of the ideas that happened there.

2. Find the diamonds in the rough and clean them up. This is where the vocabulary part comes in. For me, when I improvise my ideas and approaches are not often pristine. So when listening back, I’ll take a little fragment of something I like and practice it and try to add it to my repertoire. By practicing it – I mean:

Getting the lick under my fingers and being consistent in picking.
Working the lick in a variety of harmonic and rhythmic contexts.
Expanding the lick. So if it’s an intervallic lick from a scale moving that interval up and down the scale to see what else it yields.

Get Swoll

Doing this consistently can not only add new ideas to your playing and writing (I can’t tell you how many of the things I improvised and recorded became songs at some point), but it can radically improve technical aspects of your playing.

To Review:

Here’s part one of the plan:

Improvise. (Create)
Record everything.
Listen back and find the new things that you improvised that you like. (Assess)
Learn (and when possible improve upon) the best ideas you came up with when improvising.

In Part II of this series, I’m going to use a specific example from my own practicing to show how I generate ideas by:

Creating.
Deconstructing.
Refining.
Executing.
Observing.
Correcting (and)
Executing Again.

You might want to write that down somewhere you can post it. That’s an important key to getting things done.

As always, I hope this helps! Thanks for reading.

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Respect The Process (Effectiveness and Efficiency in Practicing)

Posted on February 7, 2015 by GuitArchitecture

Efficient Vs. Effective

We live in an era of tricks and hacks and workarounds all in the name of efficiency.

Being efficient can be a very good thing but doing effective things is (IMHO) even better.

Most people equate the two terms but I think that’s a mistake. Here’s a shortcut to differentiate between the two:

Efficient means doing things better.
Effective means doing better things.

You might be able to learn every trick in the book to be able to analyze a spreadsheet as fast as you possibly can (i.e. be as efficient as you can) by hand, but if you have an app that can interpret the data in the same way (and that is also working in an efficient manner) – that app will do it faster than you regardless of whatever steps you take to be efficient.

Ideally, it’s good if you can do things effectively and efficiently because that maximizes what you can get done but determining what is effective and efficient in practicing is often counter intuitive.

Effectiveness and Efficiency in Practicing

Many players I come across equate skill set with mastery. Particularly for lead playing, the concept seems to be, “Here’s this lick. I’m going to get it under my fingers and then it’s going to be something at my disposal when I play.”

In context, it’s akin to saying, “I’m going to lean every chord voicing I can on guitar so I can use them live.” You can learn a few voicings for a 7(b5 b9) chord but if you don’t understand how to use that chord in the context of a song knowing some fingering isn’t going to help you remember to actually play that chord on a gig.

In other words, mastery is also contextual. If you don’t have a specific reason why you are trying to play something then it will be much harder to be able to access it when you really want to.

So what’s effective practice material then?

Well – it’s an elusive question as what’s effective for players changes over time as their ability level increases.

For example, I think developing aural skills (be that formal ear training or the ability to really listen what is happening in a musical context and know how to engage with that in a musical manner) – is a critical skill regardless of how long you’ve been playing but if you don’t have any technical or theoretical skills at your disposal it’s going to take even longer to utilize that ear training and be able to translate that to your instrument.

Effective practice requires reflection and analysis.
It requires the ability to look at what’s going on with your playing and make it better. You don’t get that from learning lick #4 from someone’s YouTube channel. (p.s. there’s nothing wrong with that either – but interacting with someone else’s material in a vacuum generally won’t reveal what you need to work on in your playing.)

The easiest way for most people to understand what will be effective to practice is to take a private lesson with a good teacher. Mind you I am fully aware of just how difficult that can be. There are a lot of bad teacher’s out there – but finding someone that can look at what you’re doing in an objective manner makes it easier to diagnose what’s really going on. The internet makes it possible to take skype lessons with players all over the world. While not ideal, it’s probably going to get you further than taking a lesson with the 17 year old kid in the back of a music store who is trying to show you how to play the intro to “Sweet Child of Mine” – in response to a generic question of wanting to get better at playing guitar.

Since what I’m saying means that every player will have to tailor what they’re working on to meet specific goals – I’ll throw out one suggestion that I think is universal. I’ve never once regretted taking the time to learn something aurally. Whether transcribing it or just being able to play it back – the biggest stylistic elements in my playing came from learning licks from other instruments on guitar and adapting that material to songs I was playing on.
Yes you might get a lick under your fingers faster if you find a tab for it, but you’re more likely to be able to pull that lick out of your hat on a gig if you’ve internalized it and the most effective way to do that is to learn it aurally.

With that in mind, here’s a recommendation that I’d make to anyone that’s practicing anything or trying to gain any kind of skill set:

Respect the Process – Not Just The Product (Result)

So much of what is “sold” to guitarists in instructional material utilizes the concept of a trick or a hack to be able to play something faster – but most players only have a profoundly general idea of what they are trying to achieve on guitar.

If you don’t have a specific goal for what you are trying to do, what advantage is there is getting there faster?

So yes, you have thousands of videos out there now of people playing a lot of notes very cleanly but for many of those people – that’s the extent of their skill set. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but having sat in auditions and rehearsals with players that just didn’t have the ability to play anything other than those riffs and solos that they worked out, it became a problem in a larger context of – what are you trying to do musically?

I’ve met many, many players (and former players) who were frustrated because they didn’t reach some arbitrary goal in an equally arbitrary time frame.

“Yeah….I’d love to be able to sweep and I practiced it a bunch for like a month but I just can’t do it.”

When it comes to practicing, perhaps the best advice I can give anyone is to try to surrender to to process of developing a skill set and not get hung up on the end goal. Players who get hung up on the final product of what they’re doing (like being able to play a certain lick at a certain tempo by a certain time) are typically the ones who reach a frustration threshold and bail on it.

For example: I’m about to record some more solo acoustic material. Originally, I wanted to track these tings as quickly as possible, but instead I decided to just work on the pieces consistently and adopt the motto of, “It is what it is. – Whatever rate I progress at this is the rate that it progresses.”

By taking away a strict time frame of when I “should” have everything down – I started focusing much more on the nuances of each piece an the things that actually made the pieces more musical. Now, quite a bit later, the pieces have all developed and matured in ways that I could never have expected and I can communicate them in a much more sincere manner to a listener. That sincerity is the most efficient way to make that communication with the listener which is the end goal.

Was it the most efficient manner to get the notes under my fingers? Probably not. Was it the most effective way to reach my end goal? Absolutely.

So if you’re someone who gets frustrated with practice, try to think about this idea of enjoying the process of learning something new and being as musical in each moment of practice that you can be.

You play what you practice – so if you can practice in a musical way, you’re much more likely to play in a musical way as well.

Also, one thing I’ve been really focused on in the last year is gratitude and not taking things for granted. I am so grateful that I can make music and in being grateful that I can do something it makes it a lot easier to approach practice in that mindset as well. It might be a little woo-woo for some people but – believe me – audiences pick up on it as well. For a number of years I practiced in a pissed off manner and played that way and let’s just say it didn’t make for a lot of repeat customers. ; )

So there’s a rambling post reflecting on last night’s gig on a Saturday morning! Hopefully it’ll be of some help to you!

As always, thanks for reading.

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Addendum: for some of the deepest wisdom about this and related topics check out part 2 of my interview with Miroslav Tadic here.

Doing Something Versus Getting Something Done

Posted on January 23, 2015 by GuitArchitecture

Has this happened to you?

One thing I run into with students very often is a common sense that while they’re playing a lot or have played for years that their playing never got any better. Perhaps some of you have come across the same thing.

Generally they’ve confused doing something with getting something done.

Here’s the difference:

Buying a gym membership is doing something.

Going to the gym and getting a good work out accomplished is getting something done.

A golf story:

I’ve only been to a golf course once and I didn’t like it so feel free to take the following observations with a grain of salt.

One thing I noticed on the course was that most players weren’t very good. (I’m being kind in my description here – awful would be a more appropriate term for what I saw.) We’re talking about players that couldn’t approach par – but – and this was the part that was shocking to me – some of these guys had been playing for 20-30 years!

It took me a while to figure out what was going on, but eventually I figured out that they were following Einstein’s model of insanity – doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. For example, let’s say one player learned a basic stroke from another player. Well, what had happened was this player never examined what they were doing. He simply learned the stroke and then repeated it over and over with the assumption that since the stroke must be “right” that it was simply a matter of mastering it. So he went out and hit thousands of balls for hours on end over the course of years using the same poor stroke over and over again and then wondered why he wasn’t getting any better. A lot of these guys there talked about new clubs and more expensive gear – but the issue wasn’t the gear – it was poor muscle memory that came about from ingraining a bad practice model!

There are a number of things that separate professional and amateur players – but here’s a big one that I’ve noticed in a lot of pro (and pro level) players that isn’t intuitive:

Pro players don’t tend to operate on some of the assumptions that amatuer players have.

For example – Many times when I’m teaching a lesson to a beginning or intermediate player who wants to get into lead playing I’ll bring up the major scale and nine times out of ten, they’re completely dismissive and say, “Oh I already know that.” and proceed to play it in one octave in position. I’ll start taking the student through the paces of the scale, “just humor me…” and within 5 minutes or so most of them realize that they don’t know the scale as well as they thought they did.

“The tyranny of the shoulds”

One related lesson I had to teach myself involved getting rid of the “shoulds” in my thinking. Should is an amateur concept. “I’ve been playing arpeggios for the last day, I should be able to play this other form ( even though I haven’t practiced it before) because it’s also an arpeggio – and I know those!” “I can play sextuplets at 120 so I should be able to play this sextuplet at the same speed.” Pro players move away from should and focus on can.

Can I play this?
If not, why not?
What do I have to do to play it better?

Pro players examine WHY something isn’t working and then address it.

The dojo story

I saw a Karate demonstration once. While the young guys were showing off the flashiest moves they had, the master was in back doing Kata – which (in a reprehensible over simplification) are the basic starting points for the style. in other words, fundamentals.

Guess what happened to the flashy kids in the demonstration? Strewn all over the place.

Everything you do on guitar is based on cumulative development. The better you can execute basic techniques, the better you’ll be able to adapt to new techniques as they’re thrown at you.

That means really being present in practicing. Really focusing on hand tension, timing and tone and using the “Do – Observe – Correct” model to make sure you’re practicing it the right way. Pro players do what it takes to make things better. Sometimes that’s practicing something at a VERY rudimentary level to make sure that it’s fundamentally sound before trying to get it up to tempo. In other words, they’re willing to humble themselves and do some (often) unglamorous work that other people aren’t willing to do.

A lot of players who play guitar have been playing the same tunes the same ways for the last 30 years and then never wonder why they don’t get better. If you’re one of those people, don’t assume that a new guitar will make it better. It might be as simple as taking a lesson and getting a handle on what you’re doing wrong and developing a proper methodology and practice schedule to get something done towards achieving your playing goals. It may require getting out of a comfort zone – but that’s where the rewards are!.

That’s it for now! I hope this helps and as always, thanks for reading!

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Loking Forward To 2015 : How Not To Repeat The Mistakes Of The Past (Or Nothing Ever Got Done With An Excuse)

Posted on December 23, 2014 by GuitArchitecture

It’s that time of year again…

(This is a repost of something I wrote for the end of 2009. The dates and information have been updated, and this has become one of the few yearly repost traditions I indulge in.)

At the end of every year, I typically take the last week between Christmas and New Years to wind down and center. It not only helps me take stock of what worked and didn’t work for me in in the year but also helps me make sure I’m on track for what I want to get done moving forward. As George Santayana said,

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

As 2014 draws to a close, I think back to many conversations I had with people when this post was first written at the end of 2009. At that time, it seemed like everyone I talked to said the same thing, “2009 was such a bad year. 2010 has to be better. It just has to.”

Now it seems I’m listening to the same sentiment with the same people about 2014 and the coming 2015. And in some ways they have a valid point. Listening to their recollections, 2014 certainly offered some of these people a tough blow – but regardless of their circumstances, I believe that, unless they experience a windfall of good fortune, I will hear the same sentiments echoed at the end of 2014. There’s a reason for this:

“If you always do what you’ve always done – you’ll always get what you always got” – anon

While I fully appreciate the merits of planning and goal setting – life will throw you any number of curveballs that may make a meticulously laid out plan get derailed.

A good plan has to be countered with an ability to improvise (as need be) to make sure that even if your mode of transportation is disabled, that you are still on the path to achieve your goals.

“Improvisation as a practice is the focus of an idea through an imposed restriction.  This restriction could either be self-imposed or could be imposed upon the improviser through other means.

Improvisation as it relates to common experience can be seen in the example of the car that stops running in the middle of a trip.  A person experienced in auto repair may attempt to pop the hood of the car to see if they can ascertain how to repair the vehicle.  Or they may try to flag down help.  Or they may try to use a cell phone to contact a garage.  The point being that within the context of a vehicle malfunction, different actions are improvised based on the improviser’s facility with both the situation at hand and the tools at their disposal.

….life is essentially an improvisation.  As individuals we come into each day not exactly knowing what will happen.  We know that there is an eventual end, but we don’t know when or how it will end.  But we continue to improvise, because it is in both the active improvisation (the present), the skill set and knowledge of that improvisation (the past) and in the philosophical/worldview/goals guiding our improvisational choices (the future) that we create meaning.”

If you approach life’s problems with the same mindset you’ve always had

-and your new year’s resolutions run contrary to that mindset –

your resolutions are doomed.

I say this as a seasoned graduate of the school of hard knocks and as a person who found that while success feels a lot better – ultimately failure is a much more thorough teacher.

2014 had some great ups and downs for me and now there are a number of life and playing upgrades I’m going to put into practice in 2015 to address the things that didn’t work for me. For those of you who are interested in making a real change the new year – here’s what worked for me going into 2014 that I plan on using this year as well:

Know the big picture.

If you have a goal – know why you have the goal. As Victor Frankl once said, “He who has a why can endure almost any how.“

Take stock of what you have done and identify what needs to change.

Have you done things that work towards that goal? If so, what have you really done? What worked? What didn’t work? And what parameters can you put in place to make it work better?

What decisions did you make that set you back and how could you alter those decisions in the future?

Sometimes honesty is brutal but this isn’t about beating yourself up. It’s about taking a realistic stock of what worked and what didn’t work for you in the year, reinforcing that things that work for you and discarding what didn’t work for you.

Revolution not resolution

People typically make resolutions because they recognize a need for change in their life.

Personally, change hasn’t been about making a momentary decision as a knee jerk reaction to something (which usually lasts as long as the time it took to make that decision).

The long-lasting changes in my life have come from making lifestyle changes, setting priorities and working within those changes. Change is not a temporary compromise to a current observation but is instead a revolt against habitual modes of thinking and operation.

Positive habits

Making something a daily positive habit (like brushing your teeth) makes it easier to maintain over the long haul. (See my post about the value of rituals for more on this.)

“Don’t make excuses – make it right” – Al Little

People make excuses for things all the time. No one cares about excuses because nothing ever got done with an excuse. People (typically) only care about results.

There will undoubtably be moments that you relapse into older habits. Instead of making excuses for why it happened – just acknowledge it and move past it. When you fall off the bike, it’s not about sitting down and nursing your scrapes. It’s about getting back up on the bike again. As it says in The Hagakure, “Seven times down – eight times up”

There’s strength in numbers

Try to surround yourself with supportive people.

Not enabling people who will make changes more difficult for you.
Not negative or judgmental people who will scoff at your desire for change

Like minded people who have goals and are motivated.

Talk to the friends and family who will give honest and supportive feedback. Here’s another important tip – don’t burn those people out with your goals. The people around you have their own lives, so if every conversation becomes about you and your goals, you’re going to see less and less of those people!

In addition to (or in some cases in lieu of) that support, you may want to look into some free online accountability sites like Idonethis.com (post on this here) or Wunderlist.com which maintains a private calendar to help observe progress.

Commit to One Change

It’s easy to get hung up and overwhelmed with the specifics of a long term goal. Try making one lifestyle change and commit to seeing that through. (Again, you can read my post about the value of rituals for more on this.)

Be motivated to do more but be grateful for what you have

Finally, I’d like to thank everyone who took a moment to come here and read my writing. I hope this helps you in some way shape or form and I hope that 2015 is your best year yet.

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2014: How Not To Repeat The Mistakes Of The Past (Or Nothing Ever Got Done With An Excuse)

Posted on December 29, 2013 by GuitArchitecture

It’s that time of year again…

(This is a repost of something I wrote for the end of 2009. The dates and information have been updated, and this has become one of the few yearly repost traditions I indulge in.)

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

As 2013 draws to a close, I think back to many conversations I had with people at the end of 2009. At that time, it seemed like everyone I talked to said the same thing, “2009 was such a bad year. 2010 has to be better. It just has to.”

Now it seems I’m listening to the same sentiment with the same people about 2013 and the coming 2014. And in some ways they have a valid point. Listening to their circumstances, 2013 certainly offered some of these people a tough blow – but regardless of their circumstances, I believe that, unless they experience a windfall of good fortune, I will hear the same sentiments echoed at the end of 2014. There’s a reason for this:

“If you always do what you’ve always done – you’ll always get what you always got” – anon

While I fully appreciate the merits of planning and goal setting – life will throw you any number of curveballs that may make a meticulously laid out plan get derailed.

A good plan has to be countered with an ability to improvise (as need be) to make sure that even if your mode of transportation is disabled, that you are still on the path to achieve your goals.

“Improvisation as a practice is the focus of an idea through an imposed restriction.  This restriction could either be self-imposed or could be imposed upon the improviser through other means.

Improvisation as it relates to common experience can be seen in the example of the car that stops running in the middle of a trip.  A person experienced in auto repair may attempt to pop the hood of the car to see if they can ascertain how to repair the vehicle.  Or they may try to flag down help.  Or they may try to use a cell phone to contact a garage.  The point being that within the context of a vehicle malfunction, different actions are improvised based on the improviser’s facility with both the situation at hand and the tools at their disposal.

….life is essentially an improvisation.  As individuals we come into each day not exactly knowing what will happen.  We know that there is an eventual end, but we don’t know when or how it will end.  But we continue to improvise, because it is in both the active improvisation (the present), the skill set and knowledge of that improvisation (the past) and in the philosophical/worldview/goals guiding our improvisational choices (the future) that we create meaning.”

If you approach life’s problems with the same mindset you’ve always had

-and your new year’s resolutions run contrary to that mindset –

your resolutions are doomed.

I say this as a seasoned graduate of the school of hard knocks and as a person who found that while success feels a lot better – ultimately failure is a much more thorough teacher.

2013 had some great ups and downs for me and now there are a number of life and playing upgrades I’m going to put into practice in 2014 to address the things that didn’t work for me. For those of you who are interested in making a real change the new year – here’s what worked for me going into 2013 that I plan on using this year as well:

Know the big picture.

If you have a goal – know why you have the goal. As Victor Frankl once said, “He who has a why can endure almost any how.“

Take stock of what you have done and identify what needs to change.

Have you done things that work towards that goal? If so, what have you really done? What worked? What didn’t work? And what parameters can you put in place to make it work better?

What decisions did you make that set you back and how could you alter those decisions in the future?

Revolution not resolution

People typically make resolutions because they recognize a need for change in their life.

Personally, change hasn’t been about making a momentary decision as a knee jerk reaction to something (which usually lasts as long as the time it took to make that decision).

Positive habits

Making something a daily positive habit (like brushing your teeth) makes it easier to maintain over the long haul. (See my post about the value of rituals for more on this.)

“Don’t make excuses – make it right” – Al Little

People make excuses for things all the time. No one cares about excuses because nothing ever got done with an excuse. People (typically) only care about results.

There’s strength in numbers

Try to surround yourself with supportive people.

Not enabling people who will make changes more difficult for you.
Not negative or judgmental people who will scoff at your desire for change

Like minded people who have goals and are motivated.

Commit to One Change

Be motivated to do more but be grateful for what you have

Finally, I’d like to thank everyone who took a moment to come here and read my writing. I hope this helps you in some way shape or form and I hope that 2014 is your best year yet.

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My New (Free) Melodic Minor Extraction Lesson Is Now Up On Guitar-Muse

Posted on October 23, 2013 by GuitArchitecture

Hello everybody!

The Power of Pentatonic Extraction

I’ve posted a few times about one of the new books that I’m working on, Pentatonic Extractions, and I’m really psyched about how its coming together so far. It’s going to cover a lot of material in an easy and accessible way and make a great addition to the series.

But you’ll get to see what I’m talking about yourself as the good people at Guitar-Muse.com have been kind enough to allow me to adapt some material from Pentatonic Extractions for a lesson on the site. There’s theory, audio and tab for some ideas that will probably get you shooed of the next open blues jam – but I really dig ’em and I hope you will too! You can check that out here.

More on that Muse of Guitar

All of the audio examples were recorded with the JamUp Pro app by Positive Grid which is just an incredibly useful app. I’ll have a full review for that coming up for Guitar-Muse, along with some other reviews, player profiles and interviews.

And For those of you who wish to guit a grip….

Guit-a-grip is going to be serializing chapters from my book, Nothing Ever Got Done With An Excuse, which chronicles the processes and observations I used to release the first four books of the GuitArchitecture series in 5 months. If you want to get a hold on a project (or a late new-years resolution), this series will definitely help motivate you and keep you on track. Look for a new podcast this week.

More soon! As always, thanks for reading!

The Perils of Panaceas and Instant Gratification

Posted on February 15, 2012 by GuitArchitecture

Hello!

Thanks for coming to this page.

This post has been moved to Get-A-Grip.com.

You can read it here.

Thanks!

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2012: How Not To Repeat The Mistakes Of The Past (Or Nothing Ever Got Done With An Excuse)

Posted on December 27, 2011 by GuitArchitecture

(This is a repost of something I wrote for the end of 2010. The dates and information have been updated, and I suspect this will be one of the few yearly repost traditions I indulge in.)

I had hoped to get a few more things done before the end of the year, but decided instead to take the last week to wind down and center. I find that this not only helps me take stock of what worked and didn’t work for me in 2011 but also helps me make sure I’m on track for what I want to get done in the new year. As George Santayana said,

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

As 2011 draws to a close, I think back to many conversations I had with people at the end of 2009. At that time, it seemed like everyone I talked to said the same thing, “2009 was such a bad year. 2010 has to be better. It just has to.”

Now it seems I’m listening to the same sentiment with the same people about 2011 and the coming 2012. And in some ways they have a valid point. Listening to their circumstances, 2011 certainly offered some of these people a tough blow – but regardless of their circumstances, I believe that, unless they experience a windfall of good fortune, I will hear the same sentiments echoed at the end of 2012. There’s a reason for this:

“If you always do what you’ve always done – you’ll always get what you always got” – anon

While I fully appreciate the merits of planning and goal setting – life will throw you any number of curveballs that may make a meticulously laid out plan get derailed.

A good plan has to be countered with an ability to improvise (as need be) to make sure that even if your mode of transportation is disabled, that you are still on the path to achieve your goals.

“Improvisation as a practice is the focus of an idea through an imposed restriction. This restriction could either be self-imposed or be imposed upon the improviser through other means. Improvisation as it relates to common experience can be seen in the example of the car that stops running in the middle of a trip. A person experienced in auto repair may attempt to pop the hood of the car to see if they can ascertain how to repair the vehicle. Or they may try to flag down help. Or they may try to use a cell phone to contact a garage. The point being that within the context of a vehicle malfunction, different actions are improvised based on the improviser’s facility with both the situation at hand and the tools at their disposal….life is essentially an improvisation. As individuals we come into each day not exactly knowing what will happen. We know that there is an eventual end, but we don’t know when or how it will end. But we continue to improvise, because it is in both the active improvisation (the present), the skill set and knowledge of that improvisation (the past) and in the philosophical/worldview/goals guiding our improvisational choices (the future) that we create meaning.”

If you approach life’s problems with the same mindset you’ve always had

-and your new year’s resolution runs contrary to that mindset –

your resolutions are doomed.

I say this as a seasoned graduate of the school of hard knocks and as a person who found that while success felt a lot better – failure was a much more thorough teacher.

2011 had some great ups and downs for me and now there are a number of life and playing upgrades I’m going to put into practice in 2012 to address the things that didn’t work for me. For those of you who are interested in making a real change the new year – here’s what worked for me going into 2011 that I plan on using this year as well:

Know the big picture.

If you have a goal – know why you have the goal. As Victor Frankl once said, “He who has a why can endure almost any how.”

Take stock of what you have done and identify what needs to change.

Have you done things that work towards that goal? If so, what have you really done? What worked? What didn’t work? And what parameters can you put in place to make it work better?

What decisions did you make that set you back and how could you alter those decisions in the future?

Revolution not resolution

People typically make resolutions because they recognize a need for change in their life. For me – it really isn’t about making a momentary decision as a knee jerk reaction to something (which usually lasts as long as the time it took to make that decision). The long-lasting changes in my life have come from making lifestyle changes, setting priorities and working within those changes. It’s a revolt against what was done before instead of a compromise for a current mode of operation.

Positive habits

Making something a daily positive habit (like brushing your teeth) makes it easier to maintain over the long haul.

“Don’t make excuses – make it right” – Al Little

People make excuses for things all the time. No one cares about excuses because nothing ever got done with an excuse. People (typically) only care about results.

There is strength in numbers

Try to surround yourself with supportive people.

Not enabling people who will make changes more difficult for you.
Not negative or judgmental people who will scoff at your desire for change

Be motivated to do more but be grateful for what you have

In a final 2011 observation, I’d like to thank everyone who took a moment to come here and read what I was doing. GuitArchitecture had a 800 % increase in web traffic this year! It’s going to get even bigger next year and it would all be impossible without the people reading. So thank you all again and I hope that 2012 is your best year yet.

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