Learning

The Art of Speed Learning

Progress isn't determined by how many hours you practise. It is precisely how you practise that makes all the difference.

Learning quickly and efficiently is definitely a skill for every ambitious guitarist to master.

"Vin taught me how to play things I never thought I'd be good enough to play - and only in 4 months!" George, Surrey

Most people who pick up a guitar to learn, will give up. Anyone who hasn't given up, has most likely experienced the frustration of not being able to get any better.

Not everyone who learns guitar wants to become a master. But whatever your aspirations, whatever skills you need to acquire, you'll get there faster with a little learning know-how.

Learning how to do something isn't that hard, really. But how hard it is, depends upon how good you want to get at it.

The better you get, the more difficult it becomes to maintain the rate of progress you had at the very beginning.

Wait for it

Learning takes time. The more complex the thing is, the more time it takes to truly learn it.

It can be very frustrating when trying to learning something complex, something that contains more than one technique. So it is useful to remember that the real improvement comes when you are not practising, in your time away from the guitar, not during your practise session itself.

When you learn something new you have to remember it permanently. To do this your brain needs to synthesise new RNA molecules. This can't happen while you are using your brain consciously, it has to happen while you sleep. So practice diligently and then go have fun doing something totally unrelated and get a good nights sleep.

Let's say you set out to learn a new scale - that is - all the notes in the scale, in the correct order and where they are located on the fingerboard. This is a simple learning task and could be learned (permanent long-term memory) in about one month or less.

However, if what you are learning to do is play that new scale with syncopated rhythms at tempo, then this is far more complex and can take a lot longer. This task involves both hands working in sync very efficiently and there are also technical variables to consider: How will you pick the strings? Will you use legato? Are your hands moving efficiently and accurately with muscle memory?

Complex learning of this kind has to be analysed and broken down into simpler tasks that can each be committed to memory independently. when you put them all back together you have a much better chance of being able to learn the original complex task.

Learning Plateau

Anyone who has studied the guitar and practised/learned religiously will also recognise the learning plateau. This is the frustration that creeps in after a lot of intense learning over many days and weeks.

The frustration derives from our expectation that we must be getting better since we are practising and learning so much - yet we seem to be getting worse. This is usually a sign that it's time to take a break from learning and allow our brain to sort out and file away all this new information so that we may use it.

Two to Five weeks later, we should start to benefit from the improvements. How long we wait depends on how thoroughly we have learned - how well we have practised, and how complex the learned information is.

For example, learning efficiently means not trying to learn to many things at once - too much going in at once doesn't work. Break it down, put it back together, and teach it to someone else.

Set yourself smaller, less complex, achievable goals and try and attach new learning to what you already know well.

bloomin' 'eck

Perhaps the most mission critical skill for the guitarist who wants to constantly improve is the ability to recognise challenging materials that contain new techniques and then study them and commit to permanent memory. Learning new material doesn't deliver technical improvement, unless it contains new information that is challenging.

If you aren't following a reliable guitar method or being schooled, the biggest obstacle you face is making sure the material you're working on is always difficult enough to keep you sufficiently engaged and focused - but crucially, not too difficult that it causes frustration and loss of motivation.

I don't need to explain Bloom's Taxonomy in great detail since you can learn about it anywhere, but I will go over some points in the 'Cognitive Domain' and relate them specifically to learning guitar.

You can see from the pyramid diagram that making sure you really learn something might not be as straight forward as it seemed when you started learning the guitar.

Blooms Cognitive domain (knowledge based) has 6 learning objectives - 6 concepts that cumulate in a guarantee that you have truly learned what you set out to learn.

My personal favourite is the Analysis step.

Analysis involves examining and breaking information into component parts, determining how the parts relate to one another.

So let's say you are learning to strum through a song on an acoustic guitar. What are the component parts of this action?

You have 2 hands at work simultaneously doing different things, so that is 2 component parts already, that can now be worked on separately.

Let's break down what's actually happening with your fretting hand:

Learn the chord shape pattern
Learn what fingers are used and where to position them on the fret-board
Make sure each note of the chord to produce clear sound
Move efficiently and quickly between chords

Having thought about and identified these parts, it then becomes possible to focus on each separately.

Another example - strumming hand, what does it do?

Holds plectrum correctly
Moves arm up and down efficiently
Keeps time and sets rhythm
Strikes the correct strings on a down-stroke
Strikes the correct strings on an up-stroke

I could break it down even further, but I'm sure you get the idea by now.

This isn't just an exercise in analysis - by identifying these component techniques you are then in a position to find out precisely why you can't do it, or why it doesn't get any easier, no matter how many times you seem to practise it.

It could be that when you practised strumming the song, you couldn't change between chords quickly enough without losing the rhythm or timing. You may have learned both chord shapes well, but perhaps you didn't practise the component technique action of changing between each chord.

For example, you didn't identify which fingers are common to both chords. Maybe you are trying to move all your fingers at the same time from one chord to the next?

This is the kind of analytical thinking that gives you the power to overcome problems in your techniques quickly and move on.

effective teaching

Helping people learn is a major part of my job as a music teacher. Understanding how to educate others also helps me understand myself as I continue to learn and progress.

2 of the most effective things a teacher can do to help a student learn, is help them gain control, and help them see why it matters. It's not good enough to tell a student to learn this or that because you say it matters, they must believe it matters to them. Giving a student control over the learning material can be achieved simply by encouraging them to get creative with it, or change it in some way so that they like it more.

Every teacher needs an understanding of motivation and rewards, that are automatically connected with learning. It's not a teachers job to try and motivate students, but try to find out what it is that already motivates them. The teacher who tries to motivate students by offering intrinsic rewards, is not necessarily helping educate the student, who will do better learning from a self determined motivation.

It's a fascinating subject to me, and I'd love to go on and on about the front and back cortex of the brain, but there are lots of good books to read if you want a much more in depth look a this whole subject.

I'd recommend reading 'The Art of Changing the Brain' by James E Zull to get started.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse