This is not really a tip for beginners, but something I noticed which may be useful for more advanced guitar players trying to master long complex licks.
What I say next may be right or wrong (& it may even sound crazy lol), I really don't know! But it seems to work for me ... there's a bit of psychology/philosophy involved (which I generally don't like, so I apologise for that), but ....
... we talked on a few other threads about IQ. And I noticed that in the media some researchers were suggesting people could be very clever but still fail on IQ or other similar tests, because of the way they tried to think of things. Specifically, they would try to conceptualise something in a very complete form, whereas people who scored better on IQ tests or similar, would visualise the complete picture only as smaller manageable chunks.
So here's the tip (I'll personalise it, ie as I discovered it) -
* I was trying to master a rather long fast jazz lick (30 consecutive /16ths), in the past I always did this by learning all the notes, and then as I tried to practice the lick I'd visualise the whole 30 notes in order. Problem - half-way through the lick I'd end up forgetting exactly which notes came next (ie when trying to play at full speed), so the lick would begin to go wrong half-way through. But here's the trick - after learning all the notes, I now try to practice the lick by just visualising the first half (eg the first 15 notes), then when I get to that 15th note, I dismiss that first half from my mind and immediately proceed from memory with the remainder of the lick.
I was surprised to find that actually helped with immediate positive results.
Ian.
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