So I stumbled across an ingenious way to slow down my changes in a minute:
Change chords while keeping time to a metronome.
This has done two things (at least) to my one minute chord changes:
Slowed down the CCPM (chord changes per minute, a FLA)
Sped up the slower of the two directions.
Begun to get me more used to getting there on time
I don’t know what it is about working to a song or to a metronome, but I get more “flustered” when I just gotta get there on time. I originally suspected the “Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle” had nothing to do with guitar practice.
Now, I’m not so sure.
It seems that if I know where my fingers are, then my temporal perception is altered.
And if I know where the time is, the spatial perception of my fingers goes somewhere other than to the correct strings/frets.
Dmin to G:
it looks something like this in my brain: complexity I can handle
G to Dmin:,
and it, my brain that is, misinterprets the intended instructions.
Something not too dissimilar from this is the translation:
Has anyone else tried their “Changes In A Minute” to a metronome?
My rule of thumb is to start the metronome at about 75% the rate of unmetered (unfettered?) changes, and then bump it up in 5 BPM increments as I’m better able to defeat the uncertainty of Heisenberg (though anything with Dmin I start at 60%).
I found I had settled at a certain level with the changes I was doing, and couldn’t go faster, even though I could in songs. I had my own internal metronome going - I was changing to a beat of my own devising and my fingers/brain wouldn’t let me do so out of time. So I used a metronome to be able to get out of that slower internal timing and challenge myself. It helped enough that I no longer need to do that, although I will be doing it again to get my speed and accuracy consistent. But the internal pause has been mostly eradicated for that activity now.
That’s what I do too. I find it a bit stressful to keep pushing myself to make chord changes as fast as I can, which results in the changes becoming somewhat sloppy. It’s psychologically much easier (for me) to use a metronome, and speed it up the moment I feel somewhat comfortable with the current tempo. Unlike practicing scales, I bump the speed up as soon as I get the hang of things at the current bpm, and not when I have them perfect ten consecutive times (as Justin recommends for scales).
I don’t remember which lesson, perhaps late BG1 or early BG2, or a Nitsuj practice recording, but Justin talks about
OMC - speed drill but precision may be low, helps improve finger dexterity, independence and coordination so you can eventually land all fingers at the same time
PFC - slower changes, aim is to get the change precise (fingers land about the same time, finger placement is correct, notes ring out clearly or are muted when needed.
Changes over a backing track or metronome - helps smooth out uneven timings and improves our rhythm. For eg I tend to rush when my brain thinks it’s a difficult change and actually land earlier than I need to. OMC and PFC masked this, but, to coin new terms, BTCC and MCC revealed these.
I suggest that you work on all three of these and vary the time spent on each as needed.
I’ve been studying this in myself for some time. I have never been all that fast with only a few exceptions. Guitar is extra slow.
For guitar, I think the problem is that I still need to think through the chord change, even minimally, and that takes just enough time to make me late or need to hurry into being slightly off target.
I haven’t found a way around this other than repetition and lots of it. I noticed that when I don’t do a thing for a while I revert back to a slower pace again, but I do speed up with better accuracy much faster than the initial learning. It is still annoying.
Hey all, thanks for the updates.
You mean, “I am not alone”?
I think the psych term for this is “cognitive overload”, where our brain, as it currently is, just “can’t take any more”, and “fritzes out”, just abandoning all/part of the less familiar tasks.
(To add yet more cognitive overload, film yourself thinking you’ll post the video, or perform for a friend/partner–egads! You’re also performing, (rather than just playing) which requires sooo much brainpower of itself (and therefore practice).
Cognitive overload can be powerful tool to use to manipulate others.
Casinos freight up their environments with lots of input for your brain to process, making it more difficult properly calculate the odds (hint: they’re always stacked against you):
televisions, loud music, quick motion of the croupier, glitz everywhere, people tapping on your shoulder seeing if you want to order something
Devious signed forms use it, flooding your brain with useless stuff, and slide in some nefarious stuff
Politicians can use it by doing so much that it is difficult to focus on any one thing when multiple novel, complex concepts are flying all around simultaneously
Overload your brain so you cannot possibly process everything, with the net result that performance drops “slowly, then all at once”
If you’ve never done this test about cognitive overload you might find it interesting.
It’s a 1:21 minute video from 1999 where you are tasked with counting how many times the white shirts pass the ball while they are moving around, getting hidden behind the black shirts–though the basketball is always clearly visible it is difficult to do well.
P.S. Don’t spoil the trick for properly counting the passes in a comment
I get this. We get to the stage of thinking we’ve automated a process (such as hitting a D chord on command) but there’s still just enough thinking going on that it falls apart under pressure, whether that’s a metronome or trying to keep rhythm with a backing track.
I think using my example of a D chord, it’s probably that split second where my brain has to go from being told a D is required and then the message comes back that it’s the triangle shaped one on the thin strings and then my fingers go straight to the shape. I no longer have to think about the individual fingers (for basic chords) but there’s still some thought going on. I think this shows up if I have an app that’s firing a variety of chords at me rather than just repeatedly bouncing between two chords that I know in advance
This is why it’s so important to learn songs for memory. The best why I’ve found is to learn then as segments or phases. You can always tell when someone is looking at a chord sheet and not playing from memory. Their timing is never spot on and they seen to force the changes rather than going with the flow.
If you learn the song in Rhythmic section you know what chords are coming up so you can concentrate on the rhythm and vocals rather than the chords.
