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Living the dream/ Phase 1 - The first crossroads

Workout was good again

Practice:
A couple songs on my acoustic are coming along nicely.
Feel like I needed more sleep for better focus
Recorded the songs but that tempted me to try and speed them up and make mistakes.
The played super slow which is actually a lot more difficult as I'm not able to do thing automatically, kept struggling to focus but got through. Other problem is my mind will drift when playing this slow but this is a learnable skill as well.

I think this is the best way to make sure the motor patterns are practiced. It needs to get to the point where its difficult to hit a bad note.

Developing a lot as a musician doing this and my baseline speed and dexterity have improved. Everything except these two songs now feels very easy.

I'd like to take a week off work when I get the time and do two a day practice sessions. I'm not sure what the cool down period is but I feel like playing twice a day 5 hours or so apart could potentially double my rate of progress.
 
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Every guitar plateau buster:

1.Play ultra slow and ultra clean.
To improve where mistakes are present throughout the piece.
Goal is to ingrain proper motor patterns before building speed - ultimately it should become difficult to play it wrong

2.Loop a section.
To overcome problem sections, start ultra slow to where you can play 100% cleanly. Loop and gradually increase the speed, rest and start again once you make a mistake


3.Play throughout the day.
To accelerate learning and get more quality repetitions on a piece when you are mentally fresh.
Play ultra slow and clean as you will not be warmed up and the exercise will be pointless if you practice mistakes.
The idea is to program and reprogram correct playing


4.Separate both hands.
Play the song with each hand - strum/pick with no fretting, fret with no strumming.
Very challenging, will improve coordination and knowledge of the piece as you will need to ‘play it in your head’ to follow along without the feedback from the guitar. It also allows complete focus on each hand’s job.


5.Play everyday.
There is no way to know if you will succeed at playing a piece properly or not than to play it over and over again and wire yourself to play it correctly. This takes time and consistency to build the proper muscle memory and to stop it from deteriorating.


6.Listen to each song and each section.
Make Sure you are playing the same way a
nd picking up each detail.


With this in mind I have a problem section in each song, general accuracy (clean playing) issues and could know the songs on a deeper level, where I'm not following the structure (melody or bass) but I know without feedback what comes next, this will really put the songs on auto and free up each section.
For each song I'll apply the following:
Three ultra slow play-throughs
Play each hand separately
Play through each problem section with the loop method.
Play ultra slow once more
Push the speed

This will be very mentally taxing so I'll have to take breaks but will push me in a more structured way, addressing my sticking points.
 
Practice done
Used my methods
Tiny amounts of progress being made
Felt very sluggish this morning and slept poorly
The more I repeat each song the more my brain gets fried so right now I have no way to accelerate my progress.


I remember my guitar teacher telling me about a student he had who was in his 60s - being able to make a chord transition while strumming was a big milestone and took him months. So that might be where I'm at right now.
 
To do:
Build a cognitive health stack + practices
Find a singing teacher, sent some more emails yesterday but the fuckers are elusive
Get acoustic guitar set up to make it as easy to play as possible
 
More small gains today. The ultra slow technique has helped the most.
Upped the speed a bit and was getting clean passages with good dynamics.
Woke up early again but not feeling nearly as groggy today so my focus was solid.
 
I think the highest leverage activity I can do right now is to turn my room into the ultimate sleep environment.
I'm an incredibly light sleeper and small noises get me basically 100% awake.
I wear earplugs already but there must be some way to really cut out almost all sound and all light.

The guitar playing is really coming along. There is another level above these songs and maybe a level above that but from there that's as far as humans have been able to push it.
Being able to play these two songs will put me in the category similar to being a 405 bench presser.
The level above that I think I can reach in three years or so, even if I'm poor with no bitches it would be worth it to play something like this:
 
Good workout, good diet, guitar practice done.
Sleep was solid too.
Wanted to spend more time practicing but time for work.
 
I think I've cracked how to get to the next level. I've been looking at my hands and getting visual feedback.
But to get through tough passages my brain needs to know where my hand is going before my eyes. This will help me learn exactly where I am in relation to the guitar from just spacial perception.
Occasionally I can do this and rip through sections far quicker than I could if I was looking at what I was doing.
I'm drawing on a lot of my classical piano training with these ideas and it makes sense to employ all their practices for these type of songs.
 
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Lots of practice today.
Assault bike cardio later.
Find ways to optimise sleep and brain health/performance.
Email all singing teachers on my list.
 
I've found a better arrangement of on of the songs in learning, there's an orchestral version and a solo one which sounds much more filled out than the one I was playing. A few parts to relearn but shouldn't take too long.
When people nail this song on YouTube they get about 40k views which is cool and why I'm going to do it as well as possible.
 
Practice was solid.
I cancelled a date with kenyan girl because I wanted to keep playing.
Getting a little bit autistic now. Apologised to her but I would have been pretty bad company.
Last week I was so bored at work I ended up making basic mistakes, my challenge is to push my practicing and maintain going to the gym while balancing work, life, friends.
 
Tried some nicotine gum 4mg, was probably a bit strong but markedly reduced the constant background chatter I have when I'm practicing.
Got a lot more reps in and stayed focussed for longer than normal.
Finally getting some clear runs going on Rylynn.
The guitar also feels and looks slightly different each time I pick it up like it's getting bigger compared to my hand - I think this is my perception as my dexterity continues to improve.
I'll do some more research to see if there are any downsides apart from addiction. Obviously I'll have to cycle it so as not to build a tolerance.
A good experiment for me though.

I've also designed an accessible way to teach beginners to solo pretty well and generate musical ideas when improvising.

@MakingAComeback sperg season is beginning haha
 
Practices were decent. The second one I got too greedy and upped the speed too quick. Lost the clean playing I wanted and fried my brain from the repetitions.

Breaking the sessions up with a workout was really good.
Used 2mg nicotine gum for the second one and I can see why people like it so much haha, really helps me relax and focus on what I'm doing.

I want to take a week off in November and just practice, nap and workout all day to see if I can achieve a breakthrough. If I can punctuate practices I can probably get up to 5 productive hours in a day instead of the usual 2.5

I really can't set a timeline on these two songs, they seem fairly easy to get to a certain level but getting beyond that is just incremental. I am progressing though, I'm noticing different things getting easier and all the songs I learned before these two seem so easy now by comparison.
 
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