Iām afraid I can hear the āEh?! What?!ā and I foresee some perplexed espression on some facesā¦ā¦but butā¦thatās whatās happening and I thought it worth to share.
I wonāt digress on me being a big fan of Visualisation, finding it impossible when first tried but the concept was so appealing that slowly I found my way to it.
Butā¦speed? Ehā¦yes, speed! Iāve re started wondering about it with Justinās 1rst of April joke about the slowiest metronome ever and the Zen Modeā¦I must admit Iām still laughing
I was getting close to the final bars of a classical piece, well memorised, internalised and able to hear it in my mind and visualise itā¦but as much slow as the slowiest and the most beautiful rendition of it on YouTube; thereās also a video by the composer herself which I slowed down to be able to catch all the notes and the detailsā¦
BOOM! There! That I thought was the root of my problem:
not being able to decode the music at normal speed first and
second not being able to hear it in my mind with all its details at normal speed
third, as direct consequence of the previous, being unable to pass the correct information to my fingers fast enough when practicing!
Ahh-ah! Ok, I thought, now I know what I have to do! And I was sure 100% it would work
So I dissected the piece all over again in my mind, no guitar needed, and tried to hear only short phrases or even chuncks, but at normal speed, visualise the music and train my brain to pass the information to my fingers as fast as needed - without the guitar, this is important. After a couple of days I grabbed the guitar and after only a few attempts I could play about half of the piece along with the composer ( I know you wouldnāt do such a thing with a Classical piece but here my goal is very specific, concrete and skill-oriented). Now I have to do just the same with the final part of the piece
In the end, I hope you wonāt get me wrong, Iām not saying this is THE way to build speed, but rather I would like to suggest that if one is struggling with something then it might be a good idea to give it some thought without the guitarā¦and also that my brain is actually slow at processing information and requires some training.
Soā¦thanks Justin for your April fish joke, now thereās a cool party in my brain with fireworks too
Hi Sylvia Hec here, you are not wrong, I often go to sleep with practice on my mind, and I wake up the next day and I am better at it, it does work, especially with theory and fingerpicking cheers
Iām a big fan of visualisation as well.
And yes, you can use it to build speed without the guitar in your hands.
Visualise your fingers moving faster on the fretboard and pick/fingers moving faster along with the sound of the piece in your mind. You can speed it all up and slow it down at will. It certainly helps next time you practice on guitar.
Question though:
If you spend 10 minutes of visualisation away from guitar, is that 10 minutes of guitar practice?
This was a whole lot to digest Sylvia. I havenāt tried visualisation (though I did dabble in self-hypnosis when I was 12 years old, unsuccessfully). Before trying it on fast guitar work, I think Iāll visualize buttering my toast and see how that goes.
Hi Hec, Iām glad to read it works for you too and also that David @BurnsRhythm can relate!
Can we do that it counts only if we then try on the guitar for real what has been visualised?
I guess this was meant to make me smile and it did, but seriously it would be a very good starting point. And very similar to an activity we do with the young children at school as making a fresh-squeezed orange juice, verbalise after the making (and drinking!), re-build the sequence of actions, colour, cut and with the glue stick put them in the right order, and number them as well. There are ābeforesā and āaftersā and the task as simple as it seems is not so immediate for children. The idea of visualising how you play a piece of music might be very similarā¦so go and start buttering your toast in your mind!
I was pulling your leg. Is that phrase used the same in Italian ?
I think I do visualize chord melody patterns on some semi-conscious level, but not as a learning tool. I should try it. I can close my eyes and see the chord melody for The Whoās Behind Blue Eyes, which I can play fingerstyle now fairly well.
|Em |G |D |Dsus4 D |
No one knows what itās like to be the bad man To be the
|-------0--------------|ā3----------|----2ā2-|3ā2---------|
|-------0--------------|ā0-0---------|ā3------3|-3ā3--------|
|-----0------0---------|-0----3----0ā|-2----2ā|ā2----2-----|
|ā2-----2--------0ā|--------------|0----0-0ā|----------0ā|
|--------------2-------|--------------|----------|-------------|
|0---------------------|3-------3-----|----------|-------------|
|Cadd9 | |Asus2 | |
sad man behind blue eyes
|----0----|ā0----|------0---------|ā0----|
|ā3ā3ā|ā3-3ā|----0ā0-------|ā0-0ā|
|-0----0-0|-0ā0-0|ā2-------2----2|-2ā2-2|
|-------0-|------0-|-------------2ā|------2-|
No, but I can visualise people pulling a leg just for joke
The latest lesson with Justin and Pete Whittard was really super clear on how to visualiseā¦you should check it, if you havenāt already and if you want to use visualization as a learning tool. Now Iām curios and want to have a listen to the song you mentioned.
Nice! Thanks for sharing your story! I have done something similar recently - not for speed, but I am learning a fingerpicking song with a lot of subtle nuances between bars and they just wouldnāt come out in the right order and then I started to see if I could āhearā the bars with the variations in the right order in my head thinking if I canāt even hear it in my mind the way I wnat to play it what chance do my fingers have other than messing it all up. It did seem to make a difference, but I havenāt really thought about it much. Reading your story ā¦ maybe there is something to it and maybe it would have made an even bigger difference if I had gone about this visualisation even more systematically and deliberate. Good food for thought this!
Exactly this! I also had the same thought when I started guessing how powerful Visualisation could be! As simple as that, it makes perfect sense to me!
Hearing the sounds of those notes would suggest to my ear the right order when playing, like where the mudic is going, and knowing exactly and confidently where to find those notes because Iāve visualised repeatedly what I hear in my mind really makes the music flow for me, without almost thinking when playing.
I think that relying on the ear will always be the most important thing, and here Visualisation can actually help to connect it with the fretboard.
Itās a journey of great discoveries and we make them along the way as we develop and are ready for themā¦itās always so nice here in the Community when we can relate to eachother experience!
Itās one of the saddest (E minor key) and most beautiful rock ballads of the 1970s and was on the second music cassette tape (Google it youngsters) I bought in my youth.
I find visualisation very difficult and I may not be wired for it but understand the power of the process in sports for examples. Moto GP riders visualising the whole circuit in their mind as they sit in the paddock.
There is a hard rock piece that has been tripping me up for a few years and I still cant āmasterā the last bar below or the unseen bars that follow.
Visualisation is very difficult in the first place when you first try it and requires to be humble and be happy if you just can visualise only a few notes for maybe 20 seconds before you see some smoke coming out of your brain; the second time itāll be the same notes in 15 seconds and you can start thinking "hey, Iām doing really well! And when you reach 1 whole minute you really are doing great! As anything else the more you do it the more youāre training your brain to do it, the more you get good at itā¦but it requires sometime and you need to give your brain some deserved rest to digest things.
As to your pieceā¦I know from your videos you have a solid Rhythm and you tap your foot; Iām sure you can tell these bars are rhythmically easy to understand, and I guess bpm might be the challenge as those sixteenth notes may be very fast.
This is what I have done with a fast sixteenth notes pieceā¦you remember my Allegretto by Carcassi? Youāll then decide if anything I write makes any sense to you and worth a try.
I first slowed it down and followed the music on my musicsheet with my index while listening and tapping the foot on the beat - then in bed before sleeping I tried to hear the first few bars and tried to visualise only the Rhythm, uncaring of which notes were played and helped my self by recaling the fingerpicking pattern for those bars, which was new but very soecific and repetitive. More listening, more visualising gradually adding the fretting hand when I could well hear the piece in my mindā¦ and even more practice with the metronome to make those sixteenth notes fall into place! This is a case where I tapped my foot while visualizing at a very slow tempo. It took sometime as I wasnāt really good at visualizing either! Not that now Iām good at it, Iām better than what I was!
Really I would never have been able to learn that piece without Visualisation!
Please feel free to ask if thereās something which is not clear. I hope youāll give it a try and persist through some initial frustration, when youāll soon see the first fruits and realise how it works you wonāt need me or anyone else to convince you and youāll be super motivated to keep it going.
Thanks for the guidance Silvia and the odd compliment. Itās been a while since I tried that piece at a higher tempo, as it has been Blues Blues and more Blues but I am adding in different genres again to spice things up, so this could be a useful experiment.
With these kind of piece I definitely slow things right down until I can play them with a degree of accuracy and the build the tempo and this one is certainly a fretting hand/finger challenge. I can certainly hear the tricky part (well in fact the whole piece) in my mind, so I guess the next step is trying to see it !
Later on today I will run through it very slowly, so I have it under my fingers again, which I would imagine would then help the mental image to develop.
Lots of other irons in the fire as usual but this process intrigues me and what better vehicle than some old style Brit hard rock !!
Sorry, maybe this is a dumb question, but what exactly are you visualising? It sounds like you are imagining the sounds of the notes, but is there something you are actually seeing in your mind? Like, your fingers on the fretboard or plucking the strings? The musical (or TAB) notation?
Then take your hands off the guitar - close your eyes and hear the notes in your mind. Move your fingers in the air as if you were fretting the notes. Try to imagine your fingers on the strings, fretting the notes. If that works, try speeding it all up a bit in your mind.
Then play it again on guitar.
Alternate between playing and visualising.
If you can do it youāll eventually be able to visualise away from guitar.
Yes. Imagine the sound and at the same time imagine you are playing it on guitar.
I donāt visualise the tab but I visualise the sound and playing while reading the tab. Once I have it from memory I can visualise it without the tab.
Not really, itās a good question instead! Mostly I visualise how my fingers move on the fretboard while I hear the piece in my mind, I actually sing it in my mind. I donāt visualise the musicsheet @BurnsRhythm , some people does - it helps me in the early stage to use the solfege method and sing the notes in my mind like Do Re Miā¦ but Iām getting independent from that now and I just visualise the fret and which finger to use to get the sounds (notes) I hear in my mind. Hope this helps.
What?!ā and I foresee some perplexed espression on some facesā¦
ā¦but butā¦thatās whatās happening 
and I thought it worth to share.
joke about the slowiest metronome ever and the Zen Modeā¦I must admit Iām still laughing 
There! 
That I thought was the root of my problem:
Ok, I thought, now I know what I have to do! And I was sure 100% it would work 
( I know you wouldnāt do such a thing with a Classical piece but here my goal is very specific, concrete and skill-oriented). Now I have to do just the same with the final part of the piece 
I was pulling your leg. Is that phrase used the same in Italian 
?
