Sitting In On An Open Jam (Page 2 of 2)

This is true.  I've become facebook friends with him and he is a music major at a community college.  He told me he has been playing for 11 years, I've been playing 13 but I'm 10 years older.  When I started I was putting in 6-8 hours of practice time a day in, then around 3 years into it I only practiced 3 hours at the most if I praticed at all on a few day...  Then life comes in and I've got 3 kids now.  Pratice at work for 30 minutes at a time for lunch break, and then I go home and I might get an hour a night if I bring the guitar upstairs and play.  I'm really excited for this kid he has big dreams and I'd love to say I sat in with this guy way back when.  I have unfortunately got as good as I'll ever get I believe and I'm fine with that.

All I can tell you is this kid was bad.  I'm not saying he was the best around, I've seen homeless people in Denver Co. that could play the blues like nobodys business.  I'm just saying this kid for his age was scary good.  I wish I had a video of him.  The whole bar talked about how good this kid was before we even went up on stage.  Thats why I'm saying some people just have God given talent.  Its a talent just to stand there and practice for however long he had to to get to where he is now.  Only other thing I can say is he has ambition.  His facebook page said he was a music major and his dream is Nashville.... Oh and did I mention this kid can sing?  He has a great singing voice to go with the chops!  And all I can do is continue and try not to be upset that I didn't have a great time out.  The bright side is I made a lot of new friends so I got some folks I can jam with next time including the 20 year old who is already asking me to come over and jam.  One way to get better is to jam with people better then you so maybe I'll have to take him up on it.

I always subscribed to the "raw hours" theory - how good you are is a function of how much time you spend.  But it's a little bit more nuanced than that.  It's not really about how many hours you do something, it's how focused you are during the time you spend.  Think "what am I learning" and not "how much time am I spending."  If you play 6 hours a day, but just spend the time going over things you can already do you're not going to get much better.  Sure, the hours on the fretboard help, but you may not grow as fast as you'd like given that time.  Spend an hour a day on really learning and pushing yourself and you'll be that much ahead.  Spend 6 hours a day really learning, and you'll be even farther ahead.  That said, focused, deliberate practice is mentally taxing.  You probably can't just jump into concentrating for 6 hours a day.  It might start at 15 minutes.  Eventually, though, you can build it up.

I've been conscious of this lately.  It's amazing how quickly I can start wandering into noodling.  I'll sit down to work on a piece, and within 5 minutes I'm just off jamming or noodling and had to force myself to get back on task.  Being aware of that was pretty eye opening.