Home › Forums › Guitar Techniques and General Discussions › How Many of Brian’s Lessons Can You Play?
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October 11, 2023 at 10:03 am #353343
We’ve often discussed on this Forum why we can learn, play and record a lesson pretty accurately from Brian, which we’re often proud of at the time but within a very short while, almost forget how to play it.
I know from my own experience how to play those iconic pieces Windy & Warm, Mississippi Blues, Hesitation Blues etc. etc. which I learnt more than 20 years ago from various tabs and tape recordings but, I would find it difficult to play (without much recall) an ActiveMelody lesson I learnt and recorded just 12 months ago.The answer to this conundrum I believe is in this YT video by the very well respected guitarist Tim Lerch, during which he discusses and demonstrates how to really learn and practice.
One of the best comments I read in the side-bar was something I often do but don’t put into words. ie: ‘Don’t just practice to get it right but practice until you can’t get it wrong’ Good advice for all of us I suspect.
Richard
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October 11, 2023 at 1:50 pm #353344
Richard, I guess that depends on what you mean by play. Honestly, I have to regularly maintain the ones I think I mastered, on a regular basis in order to play them competently. Otherwise, I lose it. I can relearn about 20 in a timely manner. 20/500 isn’t a great percentage. It typically takes me 1-3 weeks for me to grasp a new lesson adequately. More importantly, I am able to take the skills, licks, rhythms, phrases and what not from those many many lessons and apply them to my overall repertoire on a regular basis. That to me is a more worthy endeavor.
JH
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October 11, 2023 at 3:05 pm #353351
I’m like John: There are about 50 lessons that I consider to be in my repertoire. At the moment, I can play about 10 of them on demand, because they are burned deep into my memory. But as for the others, some of them I can just run through 3 or 4 times while looking at the tabs, and I’ve got it. Others I may have to spend 30 minutes on before I can play them well. It depends on the complexity of the lesson. I don’t feel bad about that, though. I recently heard a famous singer-songwriter say he composes and records a new song, then just totally forgets about it so that his memory is wiped clean within a few weeks. He almost never performs the same song twice. This is all thanks to social media and Youtube, where we find losts of musicians who never go on tour. For performers who go on tour, of course they have to play more or less the same set at every different venue.
What boggles my mind is that there are classical pianists who can sit down at a piano and play complex pieces non-stop for 8 hours. How can the human brain do that?
Sunjamr Steve
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October 11, 2023 at 6:43 pm #353352
I find that as my understanding grows of how music lays out on the fretboard, my ability to learn and remember lessons has increased. I learn them quicker, and remember them longer by knowing the structure and how the licks connect to the chords, etc., as Brian teaches. But all that said, if they aren’t played often they get filed away in some brain-archive of semi-remembered songs. I’ve recently heard more than one jazz player talk about remembering standards: melody and song structure seem to be key. Like a map, if one knows the melody they can improvise around it or play it directly with a decent ear, and the song structure tells them it’s an AABA form, a ii-V-I major here, move to the relative minor there, and on and on. Not too unlike how Brian explains his lessons.
A big factor is the driving motivation. If you’re putting together a set to play publicly, it would pay to work hard and get to the point of “not able to play it wrong”. But for most of us, playing for ourselves at home or maybe jamming with a friend now and again, there’s not a strong need to have it down that well, as long as we can still enjoy making music and sharing good times.
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October 12, 2023 at 3:24 am #353355
Some great points in this thread!
Learning how to memorize long pieces is part of any classical musician’s formal training. There are several key aspects:
1. Piecewise memorization
This is Tim Lerch’s fundamental point in the video posted by John. Learn one chunk at the time and learn it well. Pay special attention to how the chunks connect to each other.
Repetition will gradually move everything from short term memory to long term memory. Of course, the more technically complex, the longer it will take.2. Many different viewpoints
This is Michael’s point. Learning how to play a long and complex piece of music is not a physical/technical exercise only. Musicians also analyze the music from different angles: harmonic, melodic, intervallic relations, phrases, form, etc. The more viewpoints you have, the better you will remember it.3. Emotional content
This is another important and often overlooked aspect. Actors use this extensively, and so do musicians. A script conveys emotions (and so does a piece of music), and it is easier to remember the sequence of emotions that the performance goes through, than the bare words and phrases (or notes and phrases).4. Motivation to memorize
As Michael also pointed out, if you don’t have to memorize something or don’t really want to, you’re not going to.5. Managing anxiety
This isn’t a memorization technique but rather an obstacle to memorization. Musicians who perform live all have to learn how to manage stress and anxiety to some extent. For some it is only mild levels of anxiety, but for others it is a huge problem. Some people can play long and complex musical pieces flawlessly when they are in their comfort zone, but will fail completely if under heavy stress.All that being said, if you don’t play a complex piece of music for a long time, you will eventually forget it, or at least forget parts of it (much like you probably forgot your very first telephone number or the license number of your very first car). But relearning it will typically be much faster if you learned it well in the first place.
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October 12, 2023 at 9:30 pm #353370
Well actually learning to play songs by rote is not why I’m here. Which begs the question, why am I here? 🙂
In two words, theory and execution. Brian has this consistent knack of presenting self-composed songs that contain all these Easter Eggs that draw us into learning.
So for me personally learning note-for-note renditions is not a priority, at least until I’ve fully understood the theory lesson that he’s trying to convey and can execute it.
It’s that secondary deeper agenda that drew me into AM in the first place. It’s still my main focus each week, apart from stealing as many of Brian’s totally excellent licks as I can get, obviously! 👍
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October 13, 2023 at 12:45 pm #353387
Hi Richard,
You can play ‘Windy and Warm’? I had to look it up, but your are above my pay grade to be sure.With that said I have to agree with Mark. I focus on the lesson not the composition. I can’t play from memory any lesson, but I remember licks and phrases, and where they come from. Songs I remember and can play are the old 60’s surf tunes. Not as elegant as what you can play, but I like it.
Bill
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October 13, 2023 at 10:03 pm #353397
Thanks Bill. And hey BTW, there’s nothing wrong with old 60’s surf tunes 🙂
John D Loudermilk’s Windy & Warm is pretty easy once you’ve got that alternating bass fingerpicking dialed in and the response licks figured out. Great song. I like both Loudermilk’s and Doc Watson’s various versions of it.
It’s a great song to get your “fingerpicking in A minor” thing sounding good and was a pivot point for me when I first learned it. Then I immediately forgot it and moved on but can still dredge it up from my memory banks when necessary.
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October 14, 2023 at 1:38 am #353405
John D Loudermilk’s Windy & Warm is pretty easy once you’ve got that alternating bass fingerpicking dialed in and the response licks figured out.
Hmmm… I’d say that depends on the arrangement! Some variations can be veeeery tricky…
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October 14, 2023 at 2:11 am #353406
I agree, the arrangements of Windy & Warm by Richard Smith, Clive Carroll and Tommy Emmanuel are certainly ‘no walk in the park’
Richard
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December 21, 2023 at 5:12 pm #359313
Richard, thank you. Tim’s guide to practice is precisely the technique I used for calculus and differential equations. After five decades, this technique still works for me.
Mark H, I find the self-composed pieces containing theory Easter eggs highly motivating.
Onward. Does Brian use a great deal of signal processing? I have an old Mesa Boogie DC-2. I like the amplifier because Mesa allows me to very subtly have fun with grid biases. I would like to add some external signal processing however thanks to Parkinson’s stomp petals are out of the question. Any ideas are appreciated.
I have no idea how many of Brian’s lessons I can play however I practice his modal lessons almost daily. First time posting so kindly, forgive any etiquette errors. Please advise.-
January 11, 2024 at 9:29 pm #361663
Brian has talked about Kemper profiler, and recently he’s mentioned a Line 6 device. Generally I think it’s pretty minimal, amp sim and reverb or delay usually.
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January 11, 2024 at 9:27 pm #361662
Great stuff, thanks for sharing Richard. I’m always interested in this kind of discussion and thinking.
I have about 75 lessons loaded in my iPad. I’d guess I could perform 40 of them with the music chart, and 20 of those could be played cold, no music. Ironically it’s the older, first-learned lessons I know better. I’m guilty, as Tim suggests, of moving on too quickly and not getting the repetitions. As I get better at digesting the new lessons, I “learn” them with out actually committing them to long term memory.
I’ve shared this video before, but there is some overlap with Tim’s ideas and worth a repost. Justin talks about small chunks of time, just like Tim does. What jumps out at me here is the idea of trying to remember a new-ish piece, working as hard as you can to pull it from short term memory before caving in and going to the written music. (At about 5:30 in the video.) Also the idea of increasing the time away from a piece before revisiting totally works, I learned that method from an old trumpet teacher.
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March 7, 2024 at 10:07 am #365175
My takeaway, as a relative newbie/beginner, from the video posted by Richard, is that it points out what a long and slow process it can be to learn to “be a guitar player”
It’s important to make what you are doing enjoyable. But it’s also so important to be patient. When you’re learning something new this is something I can apply to Brian‘s lessons which I have immense trouble with sometimes.Never Stop Learning. Ever.
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March 19, 2024 at 10:27 pm #366900
I think the beauty of Brian’s lessons is the nuggets/riffs/concepts stashed away in the self contained piece. While I can only bring a handful to mind at any given point, they e built up my fretboard and theory knowledge, and given me ideas to go to when soloing, improvising or composing.
I’ve been working on expanding my song repertoire the last several months; getting some jazz and swing standards under my fingers but I do keep coming back to AM to connect some of those other ideas. Plus they are fun to play 🙂
I do find the more you learn the easier it is to learn and as Tim makes clear you need to repeat parts till you get them. Working out some inversions lately that I’ve played 100s of times (thankful to have a patient wife), and am starting to get them up to a speed where they can be used in the actual song.
It’s all a never ending journey, isn’t it? -
June 13, 2024 at 1:21 pm #371907
I just typed up a master list for myself so i thought id share.
I narrowed down what’s in my tablet to what i can play from memory, just by looking at the number/title. I left out the one or two chord “jam” lessons, and just kept the “song” type lessons. things i can play jazz-style; melody-solo-melody. I try to chain lessons together when in a similar groove and tempo; hence grouping by key so i can look for new opportunities. Got over 40 lessons here. Gotta learn more non-A lessons!
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June 24, 2024 at 11:13 pm #372141
I’m pretty sure, may be wrong, Brian does not intend anyone to learn any of his compositions by rote. They are designed to support what he’s teaching.
My goal is, was and always will be, to be able to sit in with any group of musicians, whether I’ve met them before or not, and hold my own with them whether I know the tune, or genre details, or not. So I’m here for the theory, not the compositions, as good as they are.
If you know- and have practiced the theory you can play anything, with anybody, as well as compose your own songs. Learning compositions from the masters by rote was something I did in the past, I learned a lot, and moved on when I hit the limits of the theory, so many questions left unanswered.
So. I got good enough in a couple of genres to be able to figure out what I was good at, my own limitations and arrive at my own path forward. I came to believe learning by rote is incredibly useful but limited, and at some point, after you’ve absorbed the benefits of it, I had to break out of it.
So why am I here? Music theory, and the way it’s taught. Brian’s truly great. I’d try and form a band with him any day if he lived down the street from me!
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June 25, 2024 at 1:29 am #372143
I couldn’t agree more. As the home page of this site says, it’s all about learning to improvise, not to memorize.
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