The Importance of Completing Projects
One of the topics I wrote about in How to Practice Guitar was the importance of completing projects and that is advice that I’ve had to apply to myself.
Something I want to achieve with my guitar playing is composing and releasing my own music. I find the composing part relatively easy, but learning and recording is much more challenging, learning a a piece can take me months. The more challenging the music, the longer it’ll take to learn!
How much music did I record last year? Nothing. Why was that? I was focussed on all the wrong things.
I was taking lessons, working on technical exercises, working on improvising, working on fretboard knowledge, working on this and that.
I was doing a lot of good stuff and all of it was beneficial to my playing, but when it came down to it, not much of that was moving me towards the goal I wanted. I was also working on learning my own music… but how much time could I put into it when I was also working on everything else? Not as much as I needed to in order to move the needle!
It all comes down to the big picture, or the long-term vision.
That’s why this year, the only thing I’m doing on guitar is learning the music I composed (nearly four years ago now), and that’s all my guitar practice is. Several hours a day working on this mammoth composition.
And I’m making progress. The first movement is under my fingers. Yesterday I hit the 3 minute mark on movement 2, a 6 minute piece I’m working through (it’s a real beast). It’s taken since February to get that far.
Who you want to be, not what you think you need to do
Do I need to work on technical exercises when this piece contains a ton of technical sections to work on? There have been two sections, each one bar long, that have taken me a month each of practising several hours a day.
Do I need to work on my ear training when I’m listening to see if I’m out by a 16th note, and if so where?
Is learning a new chord shape going to help me move closer to the goal I have of composing and releasing music?
The answer to all of those is no - focus on the thing that moves the needle.
It’s very easy to fall into the trap of thinking “I want to do this, therefore I need to do this”:
- I want to be a good guitarist so I need to learn jazz
- I want to be a great guitarist so I need to learn all scales in all positions and shred them at insane speeds
- I want to be a good guitarist so I should be able to improvise in all scales and arpeggios anywhere on the neck
What’s the big problem here? Mainly in how we define what a good or great guitarist is… these terms don’t mean anything.
And if we define them properly in terms of something more concrete, it’s very easy to see if our goals make sense:
- I want to play Megadeth solos, so I need to learn jazz - Wait, what???
- I want to be playing sets of 80s rock songs at my local bar and do the lead parts, so I need to learn all scales in all positions and shred them at insane speeds. Really???
- I want to play in a band writing my own songs, so should be able to improvise in all scales and arpeggios anywhere on the neck. That’s helpful, but what else do you need to know? Maybe you need to learn how to write a riff and structure a song.
By being more concrete about what we want, it becomes very easy to see if we’re practising what we need to… or if we need a course correction.
Now don’t get me wrong, this isn’t to say that we don’t need to work on technique and exercises on guitar, we do, and a lot of guitarists would be a lot better if they did this a bit more, but, we should ensure that we are learning things that move us towards what we want to do… and not learning things because we think we should.
Can you draw a line from a particular exercise to achieving what you want on guitar? If the answer is yes - work on it!
Applying these ideas yourself
So what does this mean for you?
Whether or not this advice applies and how it applies is going to depend a bit on your situation, but the fundamental idea still applies: You need to finish projects. You need to achieve milestones. You need to tick off goals.
And those goals need to be built around what you want to do on guitar and what kind of guitarist you want to be.
It’s easy to get stuck in the mindset of “I need to learn this and I need to learn that”, without taking the time to think “Who do I want to be and what does that person need to know?”.
If you’re a beginner, then you need to work on technical exercises, drills, learning the fundamentals. If you want to shred Paganini but you’re struggling to change from Em to G open chords, then you’ve got some work to do before you get to those etudes. But, you still need projects to work on. Your projects will be things like learning your first rock guitar song from start to finish, or being able to improvise for 1 minute over a backing track. These are things a teacher or good course can help you with.
If you’re an advanced player, then maybe it’s time to answer the question of what type of guitar player you want to be, and how you can best get there. Is learning the Byzantine scale in all positions and shredding it at 160bpm going to help your playing? Sure. Is it going to help you achieve the goal of who you want to be? Maybe. Maybe not. Take some time to day dream and figure out if there is a better way to get to where you want to be going - or to put it another way, can you change your practice so that you’re much more focussed on the thing you want to do, instead of trying to get to the thing you want to do? For example, I was focussed on improving my ability to play music so that I could play my music better… when I should have just learned my music!
This might be tricky to work out, maybe you need to ask a teacher or ask around to help you figure out if there is a blind spot. For example, I wanted to compose music but didn’t know about voice-leading or form, and learning those subjects created major shifts in my ability to compose.
Intermediate players - you’re probably in some awkward middle ground. You’ll need to be doing intense training to improve your ability while also starting to complete projects. Your projects maybe things like playing your first gig, learning to play five songs in a row, composing a short ternary piece etc.
Again, this depends on your goals. And it’s ok for those goals to change over time, but you have to keep working towards them.
Conclusion
There’s three main take-aways from this:
- Learning something difficult can take a very long time, and it’s easy to underestimate how long something will take and get discouraged. An ambitious goal might take an entire year of focussed practice. Maybe more!
- You have to set goals based on who you want to be, not what you think you need to do, and adjust and work towards them as you go.
- Avoid learning for the sake of it. Learn in order to do something.