Exponentially increase your rate of improvement

[mawmow]

I almost always play sight reading, so almost never look at my fretting hand.
The exception : long travels on the neck.

[Golffishny]

Practice while watching TV.

LAR, try hitting an iron at a driving range first. It teaches you to not lunge at the ball.

[Pura Vida]

Originally Posted by jaymarsch

When I practice a song to perform, I play it until I can make all the chord changes cleanly while watching a movie. Then I know that it’s in my muscle memory.
Best,
Jayne

Hopefully a movie you've seen before. Otherwise, you might miss a good scene!

[rick-slo]

Look or not look. Whatever works for what your playing and the situation.
Personally I am generally more accurate and clean playing when looking
at least part of the time.

[jaymarsch]

Originally Posted by Pura Vida

Hopefully a movie you've seen before. Otherwise, you might miss a good scene!

Ha! Yes, or a cooking show. I definitely look if I’m moving up the neck and back down again but that just requires a glance really.
Best,
Jayne

[RodB]

It might be a good exercise for those trying to get chord changes down, but to the exclusion in the long term of helping with visual learning.

Motor memory is clearly a part of any repeated activity and will help formation of chords, repeated licks, location of strings and frets, but I rely on pattern recognition and use my eyes to anticipate the next phrase(s) whist listening and thinking about how the music will be expressed. More a case of watching my fretting hand and visualising the next move rather than looking hard at placing each finger. And wanting to see rather than having to…

[marciero]

Originally Posted by Silly Moustache

I've been telling my Zoom clients for a long time that you need to develop muscle memory with eyes averted/closed or in the dark.
Looking at your hands while practicisin chord chsnges etc., develops a visual but not a muscle memory.

Is there any evidence of this? This is the type of thing that neuroscientists and psychologists study. My hunch is that visual and muscle are separate but complementary. And looking might actually enhance the development of muscle memory. Not saying that that is true but it is certainly plausible. When I play without looking I can sometimes picture the fretboard, as I do when thinking about playing away from the instrument. Visualization is a practice used to improve performance in other endeavors like sports, so it is also plausible that looking while playing also aids in learning to play without looking.

Originally Posted by RodB

It might be a good exercise for those trying to get chord changes down, but to the exclusion in the long term of helping with visual learning.

And I think that visual learning is likely a good thing in its own right. As an educator I've seen plenty of evidence of this. I used to think that thinking in patterns on the fretboard was a bad thing, but I dont believe that anymore.

Originally Posted by janinep7

I started doing this because I noticed when I was switching from an open chord to a bar chord, I was slowing down to look at my fingers and then losing the beat.

I used this same "trick" when I was trying to learn how to do simultaneous interpreting. As soon as you close your eyes, you have a ton more mental processing power available for your other senses to use. Same turns out to be true for guitar. I started doing this a couple of days ago, and I can tell the difference already.

Not to discount your experience, but I am not convinced that looking was the reason for slowing down. "Slowing down to look" sounds like your were not looking to begin with. Have you tried looking the entire time? I am also not convinced that the perceived improvement is not simply due to practicing; that is, that this improvement might have occurred had you been looking all along or not.

The connection with "simultaneous interpreting" is interesting. But I am going to guess that whatever your eyes are looking at when performing that task are unrelated to the task, and so are a distraction. That is not the case with guitar, where looking at your hands might focus your concentration rather than distract.

Not trying to be contrarian, just suggesting some other possibilities.

Plausible counter-arguments are never contrarian. Thank you for proposing some alternate explanations. Your thoughts are good and appreciated.

I do think, in my case, asking my fingers to do the "heavy lifting" and learn to "braille" their way around the strings instead of constantly looking at them has helped me improve, BUT you are correct that it's probably not *just* due to that. The time I spend practicing is helping, too.

It's interesting how the years I worked as an interpreter turned out to be a good foundation for something like guitar, because to be a professional interpreter you have to develop the ability for your brain to handle a high level of sustained and intense multi-tasking. Guitar is nothing if not multi-tasking! You're always multi-tasking when you play, even more so if you are playing and singing.

You're always doing at least two things - fretting and strumming, or fretting and finger picking and then when you sing, you're adding a third thing.

Simultaneous interpreting also requires three channels - incoming message in Language A, analysis and translation in your brain, outgoing message in Language B. You have to be able to listen, translate and speak at the same time. Just like you want to be able to fret, strum/pick, and sing all at the same time and have it look, sound and feel coordinated and effortless.

So if you really want to get better at guitar, then study to be an interpreter! LOL.

[Andyrondack]

Originally Posted by janinep7

Plausible counter-arguments are never contrarian. Thank you for proposing some alternate explanations. Your thoughts are good and appreciated.

I totally think your first post was on the money, problem is you used the wrong phrase and many people above misunderstood what you were trying to describe.
What we call 'muscle memory' is the creation of pathways in the brain which map a sequence of actions which once memorised we can follow on 'auto pilot' , subconsciously while watching tv if that's what we want to do.
Neuroscientists tell us that to create the pathways we must pay attention to what what we are doing but once the memories are laid down to retrieve the information at maximum speed the 'replay' needs to be subconscious and automatic. I have not read anything to suggest that closing eyes makes any difference to the learning process one way or another but there is research which indicates that once learned and memorized a sequence of movements can be performed much quicker and more accurately with eyes shut.

But that's not what you were describing in your first post, you were describing not 'muscle memory' but proprioception which is the ability to know where parts of the body are in relation to the rest of the body and yes there is research to show that proprioception is improved when the mind is trained with eyes shut.
Blind people become very good at proprioception because they spend so much time training the mind to be aware of where different parts of the body are.

[jwing]

I wonder why pro basketball players don't shoot free throws with their eyes closed. I wonder why pro golfers don't hit tee shots with their eyes closed. Both of those scenarios are perfect for the use of 'muscle memory'. Maybe the conscious visual input enhances the subconscious neural/motor pathways.

Walking and bike riding are examples of common 'muscle memory'. They are more challenging to do with eyes closed.

[FrankHS]

Originally Posted by jwing

I wonder why pro basketball players don't shoot free throws with their eyes closed. I wonder why pro golfers don't hit tee shots with their eyes closed.

If there were enough golfers and bb players who claimed it helped their accuracy and product, they would be practicing with "eyes closed" or not looking. Instrumental music offers an additional neural option toward mastery. Haven't heard of any unsighted PGA or NBA players, but I've seen Doc Watson flatpick (for two hours!)

[Andyrondack]

Originally Posted by jwing

Walking and bike riding are examples of common 'muscle memory'. They are more challenging to do with eyes closed.

No these activities do not involve 'muscle memory' in the sense being discussed which is going through a memorised sequence of actions which never change.
If your cycling or walking the same route to work all the time then muscle memory means you can think about something entirely unconnected to where your going but still show up at work on time without getting lost.
Personally I can walk and ride my bike fine with eyes closed, I just can't see where I'm going so I don't do it.
But to prove it's perfectly possible some blind folk have taught themselves to ride a bike and guide themselves with echo location and most blind people still walk just fine they just need some assistance to avoid obstacles, but this has nothing to do with muscle memory .
The other reasons why you shouldn't close your eyes should be too obvious to spell out.
Don't confuse muscle memory with proprioception, they are not the same thing.

[jwing]

Originally Posted by Andyrondack

No these activities do not involve 'muscle memory' in the sense being discussed which is going through a memorised sequence of actions which never change...

Don't confuse muscle memory with proprioception, they are not the same thing.

Well, I should have written walking/riding in a straight line. I thought that would go without saying, but I admit my error. Anyway, walking and riding a bike are definitely muscle memory tasks. Arriving at a predetermined destination is an entirely different task. Given the constraint of simply walking in a straight line for 50 yards without some kind of directional aid may be possible, but I doubt that most people could do it. The matter of proprioception is interesting when considering bicycling. With feet on the pedals, hands on the grips, and butt on the saddle, the body stays motionless relative to the bike. To a blind rider, the only senses that inform proprioception would be balance and the apparent wind caused by movement through air. I don't have a point that I am trying to prove; I'm speculating that vision is a major stimulus that informs and improves muscle memory.

Circling the analogy back to whether practicing with eyes closed improves guitar playing, would practicing riding a bike with eyes closed improve ones sighted bike-riding skill?

[jwing]

Originally Posted by FrankHS

If there were enough golfers and bb players who claimed it helped their accuracy and product, they would be practicing with "eyes closed" or not looking. Instrumental music offers an additional neural option toward mastery. Haven't heard of any unsighted PGA or NBA players, but I've seen Doc Watson flatpick (for two hours!)

That's a good point about music having an aural feedback as opposed to golf and basketball having just visual feedback. I wonder if free-throwing percentage would improve if players practiced blindfolded with a coach telling them in which direction their shots missed.

Bringing the discussion back to guitar-playing, I know that for me, it is faster to learn a tune by looking at TAB, and my hands when necessary, rather than to bumble through numerous attempts to figure things out by ear alone. The caveat being a line from Bruce Cockburn's "Child of the Wind": It depends on what you look at obviously, but even more it depends on the way that you see. And once I learn a tune, the TAB is no longer helpful and the fun of making music the way I want to hear it begins.

[Andyrondack]

Originally Posted by jwing

Well, I should have written walking/riding in a straight line. I thought that would go without saying, but I admit my error. Anyway, walking and riding a bike are definitely muscle memory tasks. Arriving at a predetermined destination is an entirely different task. Given the constraint of simply walking in a straight line for 50 yards without some kind of directional aid may be possible, but I doubt that most people could do it. The matter of proprioception is interesting when considering bicycling. With feet on the pedals, hands on the grips, and butt on the saddle, the body stays motionless relative to the bike. To a blind rider, the only senses that inform proprioception would be balance and the apparent wind caused by movement through air. I don't have a point that I am trying to prove; I'm speculating that vision is a major stimulus that informs and improves muscle memory.

Circling the analogy back to whether practicing with eyes closed improves guitar playing, would practicing riding a bike with eyes closed improve ones sighted bike-riding skill?

I don't waste my time answering flippant questions, what do you think?

You need to read some David Eagleman.