Compared to most of the people I surround myself with I have this strange knack for getting decently good at news skills pretty darn fast. Everything from writing, photography, video production, recording music, guitar and now motion graphics. I have a strange adaptive nature to skills that I feel strangely connected to. I have a talent for learning creative skills in a decently fast manner.
It’s great to have all of these skills… but then I feel like I am a master of none of them.
Raise your hand if this is you as well. Yeah you. You might have a few hobbies like me and you feel that you are pretty good at all of them, but wish you were a master of all of them. That’s kind of where our problem lies though.
We divert our focus. The energy of our body and our mind is diverted. The mind is a strange and powerful thing. If you commit it to something you tend to get really good at it faster than others. That is especially true with a plan and a mentor. I have a weird habit of spending hours per day on a hobby for about a few months to a year or so and then moving onto something else. Then I kind of swing back and focus again. All of that gain is almost lost in that long period of silence.
We can get back into the swing, just like riding a bike, but we lose our perfection. Lately I have been focusing a lot of my free time to music more than any other habits in my life. When it comes to anything, I would just focus on everything all the time. I would focus on writing until I wrote a song. Then I would record it and expect myself to just have it sound super mega awesome.
It was until recently that I realized how flawed my process was. I didn’t have a strategy. It was hurting my progress.
I was writing a song without thinking about how it could be better than it currently is. What can I change to make it be a stronger piece? Then I had no idea what my tempo was. When I would go to record, I would play my guitar off beat from time to time. That wastes recording time, energy and then I lose sleep. More time editing and less time writing more music.
I was going into the recording process unprepared. Even worse, I thought I could fix my mistakes or flaws in the recording process. That’s a big NO NO. When recording you should be prepared. You should be able to play your instrument with hardly any imperfection from start to finish before even entering the recording process. There is nothing wrong with writing and making changes in the middle of recording, but you still save yourself a ton of time and energy by simply being prepared to record.
One of the greatest things I have learned from recording my own music is that your song is only as good as the tracks you have recorded. If it wasn’t well written and played well, it’s going sound like crap. Plain and simple. Digital band aids can only do so much. Plugins are expensive and take up unnecessary processing power on your computer. Just get it right in the track and you have a great foundation to build on.
I have decided that my most important focus will now be guitar. More specifically, sweep picking on guitar. I might not be able to give up all of my hobbies at once just for guitar, but I do want to change my strategy. Well….I want to have one for once.
I have recently purchased a instructional package and lesson plan for learning sweep picking on guitar that will help me focus on technique and discipline. It has a great lesson plan and I really admire the emphasis that the video has. I don’t want to share much about it quite yet, but I will down the road. I would like to share my progress with all of you.
What I love most about this particular product is that is has a clear message that tells you exactly how you can achieve results. His focus on discipline and small problems rather than big ones is a big deal breaker for me. My biggest problem is that I don’t have a mentor to show me what I am even doing wrong, so having the video to guide me on my foundational skills will keep me from reaching plateaus down the road. They will most definitely help me defeat the ones I am at now.
To be honest the video series the guys offers has some strange branding…. Somewhat attractive women… lol. But I did some reading on a few forums. The folks that used the lesson plan loved it and excelled. The folks that didn’t use it just kind of bashed it and told everyone to torrent it.
So I am going out on a limb with this purchase, but I am going to make the best of it and see if it works for me. That’s all I can really do right now.
I know some of you might be thinking – “dude. YouTube has a ton of free tutorials and stuff. Just use that.”
The problem with YouTube is that there is no strategy. It’s just a bunch of random lessons everywhere. I want something with a plan and with great focus that doesn’t leave me hanging to learn the rest on my own. YouTube can leave a lot of holes in your learning process and I don’t want a strategy with holes. I want one that is complete with a strong mission.
It’s my first official strategy for guitar I have ever had. I am excited to say that I am very hopeful for my progress. Things might just get interesting from here on out.
