Do I post about my latest improvements?

[kurth83]

I wonder whether anyone wants to read these silly posts, but it is exciting to progress so quickly after the early years of frustration where progress seemed so slow, and I doubted I was ever going to be able to play well.

- On a side note: my Eastman MD604SB has opened up, after being played on for many hours over the last 3 months. I have not had an instrument open up that fast before, but it was used, so unknown how much it was played on before I got it.

- I signed up for the Artist Works classical music course a few months back. After many hours of practice (all on the above Eastman), lots of things about my technique have improved. The classical motivated me to practice a lot more, and I focused on improving the stuff I wanted (mostly arpeggiation forms - since I want to play in a church band where that kind of stuff is handy).

The big surprise is I can at long last play 16th notes at 90 bpm - you've all heard me whine about this frequently, since our bluegrass jam plays at 90 bpm and I couldn't keep up. Many of the Bluegrass tunes I know are now playable at that speed. It just sort of happened, I wasn't really working on speed. With classical it was all about slow precision fretting and careful tone production. It is still limited to good days when I sleep well, so we'll see how long it takes before I can do it on most days.

If I think back over the years I remember when a steady 60 bpm became doable, then 70, then 80, now 90.

The beginning etudes in the Calace book are marked q = 112 for 16ths, that's my next goal. :-) And the showpieces by the pros often go at 140-160ish, doubt I'll ever get there but I am not giving up any time soon either.

[Mandoplumb]

Keep posting, newbies can become less frustrated hearing some one else has had a problem and overcame it. Also I've been playing 50+ years and I'll see something posted from someone just learning and think " he's right why have I never thought of that". I was told early in my mandolin journey that no matter how inexperienced I thought some one was if I watched them long enough I would learn something. I've never forgot that statement and hope I never do, for that is when you stop learning.

[JPS]

Thank you for posting this, Kurt. I've been playing only about a month and a half, and it's encouraging to read the story of someone who can remember being there and has seen himself progress.

[Mark Gunter]

Great stuff, Kurt, thanks for sharing.

[JEStanek]

Congrats on the improvements and challenges to yourself. These are more fun than which new instrument should I buy (those are fun too but actually getting better on your instrument is better than just getting better instruments!).

Jamie

[kurth83]

Thanks guys, if you want some more 'encouragement', here is my timeline.

It's the end of the third year for me. The first two years were less than 1 hour a day practice. And progress was frustratingly slow. And my bad playing made it drudgery at best.

This year was the breakthrough year I learned to control the tone from the instrument, and began to enjoy listening to myself play.

Also this year, at the advice of a guitar player friend, I focused on modifying my instrument for playability. He described his own career as a series of plateaus, each of which was the instrument holding him back. I had three huge breakthroughs there: Increased fret height, nut spacing for more space between courses, and setting the action more precisely to my playing style.

All that motivated me to practice a lot more, and things seem to be self-sustaining now, meaning I don't have to force myself to practice like I did.

Recently, I also began to treat practice sessions like high-school band, where I spent endless hours playing music that was 'beneath' me technically. Something about that is magical. When playing simpler stuff, I focus on consistency, careful fretting, good tone, and expressing music, rather than just picking notes as fast as I can.

Other recent breakthroughs include the ability to play without looking at my left hand (I can't play nearly as well though), which opened the door to sight-reading music, something I now regularly practice.

[HonketyHank]

I enjoy reading about your progress and hoping that your success will rub off on me just a bit. We do seem to be following similar paths.

[UsuallyPickin]

Not every post is for every reader. The strength of a good forum is a wide variety of posters and readers. Keep up the good work on both your posting and playing. R/

[EdHanrahan]

If I've learned anything in 72 years of "stuff", it's that you never know what will be meaningful to someone else.

Just an example (from a radically different arena!): Way back, I taught a whitewater kayaking class for my local club, geared to intermediates and fine-tuning specific skills, which really means recognizing river flow features and the opportunities to use them. One guy seemed a bit too newbie and over his head (meaning I didn't screen him carefully enough beforehand, or not...) and probably missing much of what we discussed, but was clearly ambitious and enjoying it. A year or two later, I watched him perfectly place his boat into an impossibly small eddy in the middle of a major rapid, a very advanced move. When I yelled over "Whoa!" with a big thumbs-up, his response was, "Thanks, you taught me that!"

So yes, post away!

[JonZ]

You might even consider posting videos. Both the video, itself, and everyone throwing in their two bits about your playing, will help you focus your practice.

[Posterboy]

Please do post about your improvements, I think for many of us the motivation we get to practice more/harder is gained more from these types of posts and videos than from watching Chris Thile and the other masters.

[Mark Wilson]

If I think back over the years I remember when a steady 60 bpm became doable, then 70, then 80, now 90.

Congratulations! I know the feeling well