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Hi All,
I don't feel this way every day, but I do today.
Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of things to work on and practice? I try to remain mindful when practicing, but balancing learning new material with review is always so hard. It really bugs me when I forget parts of a tune I used to know or forget sections of a solo that I spent forever transcribing.
Rick
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08-09-2023 02:33 PM
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yes I feel the same way
I’ve learned to only take small
chunks at a time ….
these long lists of things to do/ learn
freak me out !
one step at a time sweet Jesus
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I feel you.
Only working on a few things at a time helps.
Depends on what stage you're at or the demands of gigs. Eventually you just practice for the gigs and then have to work back in practicing the craft.
Another thing to consider is what you want to be good at. Sometimes the overload could be from the goal of just 'getting good'. Lines like Martino, comping like Bickert, solo guitar like Pass. This may be possible in a lifetime but may not be achieved in a summer. Heck, I know a guy who just knows a few grips and gigs four times a week playing Manouche rhythm. I think he works on his singing and tune learning mostly.
This may not be you but if you're working on a bunch of technical things and feel you're not sounding good/musical. Then focusing on time feel and jazz rhythm followed by language in both your chord and soloing practice would be the best bang for your buck.
Often times horns, pianists, drummers, and bassists have their instrument more together than guitarists so we can get bogged down in the scales/fretboard awareness/accumulating voicings trap.
When I look back at my practice outlines from 2015 it's hilarious. Definitely easy to bite off more than you can chew. Planned on transcribing whole albums etc
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When I have a gig, I just work on those tunes for the week or so leading up to it. I am not unhappy with my practice routine, but at 56, I am starting to see I will die before I get to where I was hoping to get! I need more years and more hours in the day. Lol.
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When overwhelmed, try thinking of it this way:
Everything that you need to know how to play
Is inside all of the songs you want to perform!
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I suspect Sonny Rollins rues every day that he can no longer play as he had so much more to learn.
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Hi Rick5. Your situation is not unique at all and I really feel for you. It does seem...no, it is overwhelming. It's a feeling we have all had and those who are dedicated and love the music will tell you that at some point it'll all come together.
A few thoughts about what you revealed in your OP: You say you've spent a lot of time on transcribing. Might I ask by whose instruction/guidance you did this? Are you working with a teacher? If so, how much time are you spending on serious ear training? How good is your ear when it comes to recognizing a phrase in relation to the underlying harmony, for instance. How is your real time awareness of song form, key centre, modulation and phrase construction?
Yes while it's fine to do a transcription, if you can't retain the inner workings, if all you got out of that work was the notes in order but no sense of shared ownership with the notes being re-created, I have to ask "Were you actually ready to transcribe those notes if you weren't, in some way, projecting your own self, knowledge and abilities into a form that you could have brought to real time playing?"
There is a very intricate and interweaving of skill sets that goes into a solo in real time. All parts need to be on a solid grounding and also practiced to your brain can balance these disparate areas of skill.
A good experienced teacher can help you prioritize, a lesser one might tell you steps towards mastery without having attained a level of true integration.
I do think it'll help you to acknowledge what soloing is really about, and that will help you in prioritizing your regimen, and most importantly, it'll impart a sense of commitment and ownership in everything you practice.
If you remember that the great masters once started from where you are now, and they may have indeed learned to master making strong phrases by ear, keeping good time and not being intimidated by giants looming over them, maybe they can reach out and share something that you can actually relate to.
Seriously, get your ear together. This is done by melodic practice and innovation of ideas. Discovery and self discovery. Knowing triads in real time by ear. Being able to feel and be enveloped by a sense of swing. Being aware of where your hands need to be to converge with and be propelled by the chords of a piece.
Those are what I consider the most basic abilities. When you have these, you will start having fun. When you're having fun, you'll want to learn more. It just gets better from there.
Have fun, good luck.
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For us mere mortals, it's more than one lifetime to work on everything that would be helpful to the inchoate goal of being a well rounded jazz musician. So, yes, if you're not planning on more than one lifetime, it's overwhelming. My best advice is to avoiding thinking too much about it.
OTOH, there have jazz greats who were not well-rounded jazz musicians.
So, if you're working on getting your upstrokes to sound just like your downstrokes, you might note that Charlie Christian used all downstrokes. If you're working on left pinkie dexterity, you might note that Wes didn't use his pinkie on single note lines. If you're working on reading, recall that Tal Farlow could barely read. Same for Warren Nunes. If you're studying theory, remember that Andres Varady made the cover of GP and didn't know any formal theory whatsoever.
In fact, having an individual style may partly be due to what you can't do rather than what you can do. There's an argument for some older players to think about what they can do and make music with that rather than keep trying to develop new skills. Not for everybody, but I found it helpful (I'm pretty old).
Maybe this would be a helpful way of thinking about it. You're climbing a mountain. You can look up and see climbers above you in the clouds, at heights you aren't likely to reach. But, you can also look down and maybe see, below you, people who are looking up at you. We're all musicians at different levels.
So, you end up having to set reasonably realistic goals and stay on the path. If you're a little higher today than yesterday, you're a wild success. Good luck!Last edited by rpjazzguitar; 08-09-2023 at 11:47 PM.
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Never. I strive to know a few things really well, as opposed to trying to learn everything.
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All great comments, everyone. Thanks! Now at the moment I feel fine again. It is a feeling that comes and goes for me.
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Yeah. I don’t think I’m good at this at all, but I really try to be.
Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
I guess there’s some baseline stuff as far as knowing your way around the guitar, but assuming that, I’m always surprised by how working hard on one thing really bleeds over into the rest.
When I spend two months working on a Charlie Christian solo, I’m always amazed by how I come back to other things and find they’ve all inched forward in my absence.
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It took me time to find a deep understanding of what I can’t do, what I can do, and what I want to do. I found the second one feeds the third one, and the first one has varying degrees of relevance. For example, I don’t use picks. At times I have felt like I should be able to. But I have come to realize I like using my fingers. I like to feel the strings. So, I can’t use a pick. I am good with that.
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I have the opposite problem. I underestimate how long it'd take me to get to my next goals. But maybe my goals are more concrete. It's hard to know what each persons experience with this is without knowing what goals they set for themselves.
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Thanks, for the long post! Yes, I have had many teachers over the years (some names which would be well-known here). My post was more of an existential crisis. "I should know 1000 tunes by now." That sort of thing. It doesn't really matter. I know the tunes I need to play on gigs and others that I wanted to learn. I wasn't referring to things I am working on now and forgetting. I meant more about digging up something I worked on 15 years ago and now find that I can't remember it because I hadn't reviewed in in so many years - but I know you can't review everything you learn forever. Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
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I have been working on Pat Martino's Linear Expressions book for about 1.5 years at least several times per week. I am still working on it! Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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Imagine having 10000 years for practice. You sit in a void and learn all..
Then make your first performance.. and screw up because of stage fright
Or even worse - because "not feeling it today"
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Overwhelmed by amount to learn?
Personally, I wouldn't think like that. Nobody would ever start anything if they thought like that.
Say you want to learn a new language. You hear the natives rattling it off, you look at all those thick textbooks with endless lists of verbs and grammatical rules and you despair.
You don't do it that way. You grab a phrase book, learn how to ask for a coffee, a room, the Post Office, and you build it up from there. And if you really want to do it, you will.
Your problem is you want to 'get there' quickly, and of course that's not possible. You have to immerse yourself in it and gradually it comes.
Don't think in terms of time and volume, just start. There's no other way. Apply yourself diligently and in a year's time you won't know yourself.
A Vulcan mind-meld with your favorite player would be excellent but unfortunately... :-)
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Yes sometimes overwhelmed; but even more so "how do I remember all these little licks and tricks I learned". I've taken to writing things down in music staff books when I remember
. As someone said above it is all about the songs so I tend to concentrate on working on actual songs more then anything. I have gotten rid of most of my technique books and now concentrate on instructional videos and just watch and listen more then anything. Many of these videos are Barry Greene's videos where he concentrates on one song at a time. That is what I like. Learning a new song is an accomplishment.
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Yeah. Absolutely right! I am usually that way and pretty mindful about focusing on the moment when practicing. It's not always easy though. For me, some of it relates to now (unbelievably) being 56 and thinking about the number of years left. Those thoughts didn't really cross my mind as much years ago. There was still a lot of time. Now, not so much. Originally Posted by ragman1
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I am on Barry Greene's site. It's great. I haven't watched many of the videos recently. I have been working on Linear Expressions for a long time specifically because Barry Greene talked about it. Originally Posted by alltunes
Yes sometimes overwhelmed; but even more so "how do I remember all these little licks and tricks I learned". I've taken to writing things down in music staff books when I remember. As someone said above it is all about the songs so I tend to concentrate on working on actual songs more then anything. I have gotten rid of most of my technique books and now concentrate on instructional videos and just watch and listen more then anything. Many of these videos are Barry Greene's videos where he concentrates on one song at a time. That is what I like. Learning a new song is an accomplishment.
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Wrong way to think, Rick. You're not dead yet. 56 isn't really that old these days. Originally Posted by Rick5
Why are you thinking about the number of years left? How do you know how many years are left? Does it matter? You do something because you want to, not to tick a box before you pop off.
So you can either sit there enjoying what you're doing, and make progress by default, or you can sit there worrying about the future, which is unknown in any case.
Besides, there is no future, it's all in your mind. Do you realise that?
One more point. Why are you so concerned with learning jazz guitar seeing as you're going to die anyway? What will it matter? Jazz guitar isn't very important.
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How very dare you? Originally Posted by ragman1
[clutches collar, recoils]
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You know at 56 you don't learn things the same way that a kid at 14 does. That's an undeniable truth. But you can also gain advantages of many years of listening to and loving music. Originally Posted by Rick5
There are no shortcuts. That's a truth.
But it's also true that there are plenty of wrong paths to go down, exacerbated by the fact that once you feel the desperation of wanting to learn quickly, it distracts from the belief in your own inherent strengths. You must be pretty good at playing by ear, playing a piece of music without reading the music in front of you, right? I know it might seem counter to what you want to do, but take that ability, and slow down. Savour the individual beauty of that piece and add qualities that bring that out. That's what improvisation was about to begin with. It's what we tend to forget.
Desperation is conveyed as notes that don't flow. If you know the meaning behind what you play, (slow it down until you hear it), play what you hear. There's a term for musicians who understand this: they're the masters of their craft.
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Let me take a wild guess. You're not a collector, are you? Originally Posted by ragman1
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Overwhelmed? - blame the internet
I've also got saxophones and a piano that all say "play me! play me!" when I walk past them, so music has been and will always be a bit overwhelming.
However, I think it's actually A GOOD THING - it keeps me busy and motivated.
Life would be much worse without music - imagine being just another empty-lifed oldie sat there watching crap TV all day.
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