The Objective Observer

Learn this “trick” and banish anxiety for guitar practice wins! Full lesson here.

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Fixed

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This is a very important piece of advice. The way we handle our mistakes is one of the major factors that distinguishes beginners from advanced players.

Because no matter how good we are, we’re always going to be making mistakes. Professionals make them too, but they make them with confidence. They don’t stop. They don’t apologize. They continue as if nothing happened and frankly, more often than not, the audience will not have noticed the mistake in the first place. Confidence really is the key word.

As Justin said, don’t worry about mistakes that you could be making. Focus on what you’re playing ‘in the moment’, don’t let fear take away your focus. The last thing you want to do is make mistakes in what you CAN play without any problems, just because you’re getting nervous.

This is by no means an excuse to ignore any technical issues, like ineffective string muting, fret buzzing etc. You should definitely keep working on that, but if it happens - let it happen.

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In my language I would say this “touches my uncovered nerves”, I can’t find the english expression for this, the meaning is that I can deeply relate to quite a few things you mentioned. The main thing is being able to be in the moment, being in the music and not on the edge of it, I often feel like I’m a step behind (often, not always :blush:).
Painting a good picture is also something that has been taking quite a lot of effort, but along the way I’m learning to be more positive and less hard to myself. Recording has been my lifeline and this wonderful Community really helps a lot as well :heart:

Thank you for your 360 degrees approach to learning, it is very helpful… and thank you for the books’ recommendation, I’m going to read both. Cheers :blush:

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In English we use “touches a nerve” in the same way.

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Just a quick note to let you all know that I deliberately made a very specific mistake for a few days and guess what?! It disappeared!! Just as Justin predicted! Which in practical terms means it’s not occuring anymore :slightly_smiling_face::upside_down_face::grin::upside_down_face::sweat_smile: yay! Now I waited a few weeks before writing this so just to be sure of it!

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What does it mean when we have to deliberately make the mistake? What would that look like? Because when i try and make the mistake i actually make the mistake, but justin said you should most likely get it right. Someone please explain.