So ... how to practice something that you don't know how to play ... yet ...

We humans are a fantastic sort of animal that potentially combines state of the art physical gear with an intellect and spirituality unmatched by any other species of animal on this planet. This means that such statements such as “where there’s s a will there’s a way” is potentially boundless. In regards to learning new musical ideas we cannot play, a “will” will find a way. Some suggestions.

1) Assess your skills and try to understand your learning style, i.e., how you learn best. For knowing this can accelerate your ability to gain new ideas. If you’re lucky enough to have a teacher, do let them know your learning style. "Know thyself" is so often the key to success, in all of our life's endeavors.

2) Depending on what you are trying to learn and what tools you have handy, be realistic to what you can achieve with what you have at the moment, so as to not frustrate yourself through no real fault of your own. Gradually expand from there as new resources come your way and you get better at what you are trying to do. “Wear thin and wear it out, make it do or do without.”

3) “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." As the Irish might say ..."the harder I work, the luckier I get."

4) Get help. Always good to get with folks who already do well what we want to do. It’s the way it’s been since the dawn of the civilized world. Even wild animals are said to teach other how to do things, for sure with say a Mama Bear teaching her cubs. It’s the way it’s been for musicians since we were drumming on logs and creating melodies on bone flutes and the gigs were often at the community cook fire.

5) When learning with others, try to remember that the “learning dynamic” can always be improved if all parties approach it with an open heart and mind and leave their egos on the porch. Learners seeking knowledge will hopefully get what they need and also get a better sense of their learning process. In a healthy teaching dynamic, teachers get smarter by teaching, when they must oftentimes reshape and present their knowledge to a learner’s unique style of learning things, and do believe that this reshaping of the knowledge is not such an easy thing to do.

Here are a few common ways to help get the music you want under your fingers.

1) Sing the line. This will internalize the music and help project it from our hearts.

2) Slow it down. Modern gear helps us to do this so as to understand what’s happening, giving us a better chance at learning the music.

3) Break it down. Learn the rhythm first, then the pitches. Look for a better "fit" of the music by exploring for alternate fingerings.

4) Play what you can. If the music is over our heads, we play as much as we can and gradually, over the days, weeks, months and years fill in what we can. There are pieces of music we can spend half a lifetime just understanding, let alone trying to play it. And this is a cool thing, challenges in life make us stronger, smarter and humble.

5) Isolate the tricky parts of a musical line, then simply play them over and over and over till mastered.

6) Create loops of the tricky parts. Try to find a way to make a tricky spot repeat itself to strengthen your facility with the idea. This learning technique may also generate new musical ideas for us.

7) Gradually reconstruct. Once the component parts of an idea are under our fingers, we can simply put the parts back together and begin to smooth out the entire idea.

8) Gradually increase the tempo. Once the reconstructed idea is under our fingers, we can gradually bring it up to tempo.

9) Work with a metronome, for it puts us into a physical "time" environment, being in which can demand that all of our musical skills be used to create our music, thus we can strengthen our skills. Many of the above suggestions are improved as learning tools with the addition of a metronome, which really helps to keep track of where the “time” is. This is especially true when we slow an idea down to get it under our fingers, then once mastered, incrementally increase the tempo towards the tempo we want to play this music at. It's interesting how even slight increases in tempo can raise the level of difficulty of performance dramatically, which calls on us to strengthen the entire thought process we use to make our music. If you’re lucky enough to have a musical group to work with, then try some of the previous ideas to help your group get beyond the musical obstacles encountered.

Vocabulary terms for this chapter.

Well, "that's all folks" as we used to say. So, on to get your diploma if you may. Hope you enjoyed this little soiree and that it set you right upon a path of musical joy today! First a quote.

You must do the things you cannot do. Eleanor Roosevelt

"diploma"