A couple of thoughts:
1. When I started performing my playing fell apart, of course, but soon recovered and improved vastly. Learning to do an extra thing (performing, which is a whole new skill)...
A couple of thoughts:
1. When I started performing my playing fell apart, of course, but soon recovered and improved vastly. Learning to do an extra thing (performing, which is a whole new skill)...
Hum or sing the notes as you play them. This will build neural connections between what you hear and what your fingers are playing.
The rhythm is in your picking hand. Stay relaxed without...
All excellent comments above. :mandosmiley: Especially about the different kinds of memory and thinking.
For me anyway, I see parallels between playing music and touch typing. (Beyond just the...
dont't practise scales, practise pieces, chopped into measures
Sing the melody with your voice, then sing it with your mandolin.
Avoid thinking - thinking comes from the wrong type of memory, the...
I've been working with the Strum Machine backing track tool (www.strummachine.com).
I put on a simple song that I know well (Angeline the Baker, or Bury Me Beneath the Willow) at a slow tempo.
...
Take one or more of the pieces that you have been playing for some time. Memorize it and put the paper away. Think of the mandolin as your voice. You know what these pieces should sound like but use...
I like JonZ’s response. Compose some licks.
I’m pretty sure that the “machine gun” players you refer to have built up huge vocabularies of “licks” or phrases they’ve heard, copied, altered or...
Rather than practicing scales, practice using scales to make musical lines.
In other words, practice what you want to do.
At first you might just use one scale over a whole tune, but you will...
I have nothing to add to all the wisdom in the preceding responses except "Welcome to the forum".
I have hope that all my practice time will one day accumulate to a level where music comes easily...
yikes I just wrote a bunch of stuff that probably doesn't apply now that I think about what you asked. All I can say really, is that sometimes it takes a decade to sound like you have been playing...
Play daily … Practice scales arpeggios double stops within a group of chords working a given key example G Em C D … two chord three chords whatever suits your ear … make something melodically...
I don’t know if your problem is the same as mine, but my problem is that I am comparing myself to players with years or decades more experience than me. I still stumble playing scales and have...
Time. sorry about that. The longer you play, the easier it gets to move past the "thinking" and into making music. There really aren't any shortcuts. On the other hand, you can experiment with...
I assume you are asking about how to get past producing music that has been "composed" for you. If so (and it isnt just a question of playing faster like Josh Levine implies above), then my take is...
Are you faster than when you started out? If so, keep doing what you are doing and you will continue to get faster. There is no magic pill to getting better other than playing + time.