Shreditation

You're practicing your butt off, slaving over alternate picked runs in lydian augmented mode until they're perfect, but despite all the effort you hit the stage and immediately become afflicted with a terrible case of the sucks. "Gee whiz", you exclaim, "those licks worked out fine at home. What went wrong!?" Well, I'll tell ya what went wrong... your brain.

Playing the guitar at a high level, much the same as any other physical activity, requires both movement practice AND "brain practice". Since I dig ludicrous word-play, I hereby dub it "shreditation" for you guitar nuts. If you want to get the most out of your guitar playing, and your life in general, you must shreditate.

Sound like hocus-pocus? It's not. In a 2004 study, it was concluded that the subjects were actually able to increase physical strength merely by thinking about it; they visualized making strong contractions for 15 minutes, 5 days a week, over a 12 week period, and increased strength between 13.5% and a whopping 35%, depending on the movement. Again, that is with no physical training at all, only using visualization. Imagine what results you could get from combining the two!

While I'm not aware of any studies examining musicians and visualization, there's certainly a lot of anecdotal evidence, and there's obviously a strong connection between what one thinks and what one does. How can we use this to enhance our guitar playing? While there are a multitude of mental practices one can use, we will start simply.

Our shreditation will consist only of visualization exercises for now; namely, you will spend a bit of time simply imagining a specific thing. First, loads of legato for you to learn:

Spend an ample amount of time learning the piece first, and once it's memorized, the shreditation starts. After practicing the piece as you normally would, I want you to then sit comfortably, close your eyes, and envision yourself playing it flawlessly. Get as detailed as possible in your visualization; "feel" the strings under your fingers, hear the notes, and believe that it's all completely effortless. Imagine you can play it better than anyone else ever could, and don't think for a second that it's hard in any way.

Apply this technique to any specific exercise or piece you are working on, but be specific. The more general your visualization is, the less you shall gain from it. Give it 10 minutes daily for a month, and let me know the results! In a future article, I will discuss further tactics one can employ to get your brain squarely on your side.