Guitar Real Talk #2 | Don't Judge it
Now, this might be the most common problem I have seen in many people, students, and most of all, myself. It's probably the most typical disease guitarists of all levels and ages suffer from. It's beating yourself up and judging yourself every step of the way.
Another term for this diagnosis is perfectionism.
Some people do this more than others, but in general, this is a very guitaristic phenomenon.
I have seen numerous students who knew all their scales and materials, did their homework and there was nothing left to practice anymore. But the negative self-talk and inner judging were so bad that it put a bottleneck on their progress. As soon as I say “Try to improvise, play something simple” they would freeze or stop after just a few bars. You can literally hear the fear and the question marks coming through their sound. They have accumulated all pieces of the puzzle but then stand in their own way because of perfectionism. It’s this desire to be able to play something perfectly all the time, which comes with the fear of making mistakes.
Fear will hinder you. It's like putting on the brakes while driving. And it all starts with that judging voice in your head. If you can't let go of this nagging pressure to play everything perfectly, you will never be able to free yourself. Don’t be overly focused on not making mistakes and not messing up. If you focus on not making mistakes, you are going to make mistakes, that's the irony. There is no perfect. Especially in Jazz. Welcome the mistakes. Embrace the chaos and unknown. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Real experience also comes from dealing with unexpected imperfections and problems. How you deal with “mistakes” is part of the process.
You'll also gain experience from failure. Let me remind you that:
New knowledge can only be achieved through a process of trial and error.
Don't think that you are able to play something immediately by understanding it intellectually. Reading something in a book or even in this blog will not instantly make you play it perfectly. You have to go through a process of trial and error.
You could read a thousand books about how to go surfing before trying it out for yourself. I'm pretty sure you’re going to fall off that surfboard on your first day. No matter how much you have prepared for it intellectually, it's never ever going to work immediately. You need to have a balance between new incoming information and the experience of actually applying it.
Now here is a dichotomy. As I have mentioned in the previous “Guitar Real Talk” blog, you should always monitor your practice and double-check your tactics regularly. So you obviously will need to question yourself along the way. But that doesn't mean you have to beat yourself up with a stick every time you make a mistake and lose all of your motivation. You need to have a healthy balance of re-evaluating what you are doing, giving yourself the space to mess up, readjust and then move on.
When you make a mistake, don’t even think of it as an error or messing up. Think of it as “adjusting” or “testing”. Think of yourself as a mad scientist doing science. It took Thomas Edison supposedly 10.000 attempts to create his first light bulb.
Or think of yourself as a basketball player who practices his jump shots. You are not going to hit the basket every single time. That is the reason why you practice in the first place. The music is your playing field and you have to keep your playfulness.
Also please note that the “talented” guitarists tend to give themselves A LOT of space to make mistakes. They always keep a playful attitude, which frees them from messing up. They embrace the unknown and allow themselves to have fun. Being perfect is not part of their agenda. There is an approach of child-like enthusiasm to soloing. As soon as the music or the solo starts, they are in the zone. Come hell or high water, they are in the moment and there is no room for negative self-talk.
Whatever you want to achieve on the guitar is reachable. We humans are all able to do much more difficult things than playing a strange scale in the key of F#. Some people build rockets that shoot into orbit. Some are designing nano-chips and others are healing diseases. And you seriously still believe you can't play a great solo and enjoy yourself?
You have so much potential, why don't you finally use it? Remind yourself that no matter how much success you will have practicing, you will always fail again anyway. But you will fail smarter every time. You'll be relentless in your efforts to learn as much as possible.
Now you know full well that there's likely more failure to come because the only way to avoid failure altogether is to do nothing at all - and that’s just not an option.
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