I had an interesting conversation with my teacher last night. I was struggling with walking through a chord chart, and whenever I would have trouble, I would stop playing until I could find my place again.

He told me I needed to learn how to fall. :confused:

When I looked confused, he explained that a karate student learns "how to fall" very early in their training, since they will be falling a lot until they get better. As a beginner in reading charts I will fail a lot, so he told me to learn to play just roots if I get confused, so that my bass line continues even if it is just root notes for a while (until I can find my place again).

Any other words of wisdom on working through the struggles (and failures) of early learning?

Jim D.

The thing that I would add to that, which I got from my teacher, is that you really need to keep the tune moving even if it's just in your head. If the music stops every time you have to stop playing, then what you are practicing is STOPPING. Not playing.

I had an interesting conversation with my teacher last night. I was struggling with walking through a chord chart, and whenever I would have trouble, I would stop playing until I could find my place again.

He told me I needed to learn how to fall. :confused:

When I looked confused, he explained that a karate student learns "how to fall" very early in their training, since they will be falling a lot until they get better. As a beginner in reading charts I will fail a lot, so he told me to learn to play just roots if I get confused, so that my bass line continues even if it is just root notes for a while (until I can find my place again).

Any other words of wisdom on working through the struggles (and failures) of early learning?

Jim D.

Hi Jim,

There's a fine line here........So be careful.

At a certain point we ALL need to work things out.....if you don't know what to play, then work it out.......BUT....your teacher is right.....at a certain point you have to "keep things going". So when it doubt......SIMPLIFY and KEEP THINGS GOING!!!! Absolutely!!! Learning to recover from mistakes is a skill we all have to master at some point....

When you fumble a certain part of a chart.....make a mental note of it....and come back later and work out 3 ways to play that measure......then go back and "Play without stopping" and see if you've fixed the problem. It's that or slow it down to a point where you don't make the mistakes....

Like I said.....there's a fine line between "ingraining mistakes"...versus "keeping something going" or "staying on the horse".

Use your common sense.....Your teacher sounds like a good one.

I hope this helps.