0This article, or lesson if you may want to call it, is aimed basically at the beginners to help them consciously improve the co-ordination that will help make the learning faster by focussing on the physical aspect of learning whether you are just learning how to play or any new technique on the guitar. Applicable to any style of guitar playing. This has nothing to do with any kind of theory or any music in particular. Although it is aimed at the beginners, intermediate players also may find it useful to better their co-ordination skills.
To begin with, even for someone that has been playing the guitar, perfect co-ordination between the subtle motions of the left and the right hand, combined with perfect timing has to be consciously developed and curated. This is a factor every guitar player comes across somewhere or the other, struggle with, while trying to learn every new lick, technique or while improvising. Conscious focus is most essential to master the ability to pull off any piece of music, tune, lick as and when you think of it, WHILE performing. Keeping your mind and body (not just the arms and feet) free of any kind of tension is an essential pre requisite, and so is the posture and a comfortable positioning of the instrument.
At an advanced level, you’re just thinking and formulating whatever you’re gonna play, well in advance to the actual playing and the playing is almost involuntary. To make this happen, the amount of time put into practice directly corresponds to the speed in which you think and transfer those thoughts to the involuntary action of playing that involves the right fingering with one hand and simultaneous strumming, picking or plucking with the other, WHILE playing. This is so important because, the chances are, after you’ve crossed the initial hurdle of getting the left and the right hand moving the right ways, you’ll keep coming back to this while trying to arpeggiate a chord, or while trying to move back and forth a triad or while skipping strings or learning a new lick, or trying to copy a trumpet lick, or trying to develop a smoother legato playing or somewhere else and the possibilities are endless.
Start slowly is the first thing any teacher would say to a student and that is for a reason. It involves a combination of complex mechanism where the fretting arm moves laterally and the fingers, a combination of lateral and vertical movements, while the picking/strumming hand/fingers move vertically. For beginners, this requires a certain amount of getting used to. The more you try playing new stuff, the more you keep coming across this. That’s when you go back to the slow mode and start focusing on the co-ordination, i.e. left, right and center. Gotta run it down left, right and center.
