"You are allowed to make mistakes"

[phcorrigan]

Originally Posted by Tico

Pay no attention to mistakes.
Just do your best to not repeat them.

Unless you're playing jazz. Then, when you make a mistake, repeat it!

[Tico]

Originally Posted by Tico

Pay no attention to mistakes.
Just do your best to not repeat them.

Originally Posted by phcorrigan

Unless you're playing jazz. Then, when you make a mistake, repeat it!

That means, I've actually been playing jazz all my life?

[PapaC]

The definition of experience: recognizing a mistake the second time you make it.

[pegleghowell]

I think Jerry Garcia said something along the lines of;When you`re diving for pearls you`re bound to hit a few clams.Sometimes a mistake can lead you along a path you would not have otherwise taken.

[Don W]

I play finger style and a lot of the pieces I play (not original) were very complicated and took a long time to learn. As I learned them and tried to perfect them I, of course, made tons of mistakes that I would correct as I practiced. Now my problem is...when I make a mistake I tend to go back and correct it rather than just play through it. A really bad habit and a hard one to break.Its like I loose my place mentally. I don't mind a mistake, I mind loosing my place and having to start over again.

Thanks for all the responses guys. I used to make one imperceptible mistake and start all over again. It had to be perfect which caused me a lot of stress. My wife says "Be kind to yourself" so yeah I'm cutting myself some slack.

[tbeltrans]

It would drive me nuts to have to learn somebody else's fingerstyle arrangement note for note. I would much rather play it my way and recognize that I, too, might have something musical to say. There are people I know who are always quoting somebody else. My question is always "don't you have any original thoughts"?

There are times when quoting somebody else is appropriate, but there are times when we might want to express ourselves in our own way. In lother words, the two approaches do not necessarily have to be mutually exclusive (either/or).

A "mistake" is when you play something written by somebody else note for note, but miss one or more of those "note for notes". It isn't a mistake, but at worst a "happy accident" if you play it your way and do something unexpected. To me that makes music a much more enjoyable adventure.

Tony

[blacknblues]

Originally Posted by Don W

Now my problem is...when I make a mistake I tend to go back and correct it rather than just play through it. A really bad habit and a hard one to break.Its like I loose my place mentally. I don't mind a mistake, I mind loosing my place and having to start over again.

That is exactly what I meant when I said ‘suck the fun out of playing guitar’. I did this obsessively and to the point where playing was no longer enjoyable.

[Mr. Jelly]

Usually by the third time through there aren't any.

[phcorrigan]

Originally Posted by Don W

Now my problem is...when I make a mistake I tend to go back and correct it rather than just play through it.

I have a friend who does this when playing at open mics. The sad thing is that he is a very good player. Several of us have tried to convince him to just play through, but it hasn't helped.

I have learned to play through most mistakes, but I know I tend to visibly wince at the more egregious ones!

[dhalbert]

I learned piano as a youngster, and learned to play through mistakes while performing duets. The other player is not going to stop for you.

So playing in a group, or playing along with a recording of the piece, may help you to get used to plowing through.

(Worst experience was accompanying my brother and his violin teacher in a concert. We'd rehearsed the piece several times, and then the teacher started off in the actual performance twice as fast as we had ever rehearsed it. I vamped my way through the piano accompaniment, catching every other chord if I was lucky. But the audience seemed fine with it.)

[tonyo]

A lot of the mistakes we hear as guitar players the audience doesn't hear.

[Neil K Walk]

Good advice.

As a student I often frustrated myself by trying to learn songs note for note and never learning complete songs. What changed my mind was from going to art school and learning how to focus on basic structure before moving on to details.

Shifting that mindset to guitar playing, I learned the fretboard (in bite sized chunks of 4 feet spans) and learning the CAGE system. As a musician, that meant breaking songs into sections like verse, chorus, bridge, etc. Only once I was able to get through playing an entire “rough draft” of a song, then I would shift my thoughts to nuances such as dynamics, fills, etc.

It was at this point where I could begin to hear the technical idiosyncrasies or the original artist. Sometimes I’d be able to approximate them passively but never exactly. At that point I would make a conscious decision to stop trying to play note for note and just follow my own inspiration and make the song my own.

[raysachs]

Originally Posted by tonyo

A lot of the mistakes we hear as guitar players the audience doesn't hear.

Unless you're the audience - then the audience hears every one of 'em!

What's the old blues line, "if it wasn't for bad luck, I wouldn't have no luck at all". To adapt that slightly, "if I wasn't allowed to make mistakes, I wouldn't be allowed to play at all"!

I just look at the positive - there's no progress without mistakes. I just play through 'em. Unless I have a recorder running - then I start again. But I'm not good enough to record myself much, so that doesn't happen a lot....

-Ray

[reeve21]

For those of us who play solo as a hobby it can be hard to learn to soldier on and keep the groove going after a flub or 6.

What helped me was first, recording myself, and second, taking lessons with a teacher who has me perform the lesson piece every week solo, and then with him, no stopping or whining allowed if I set the tempo too fast.