Practice Backwards. No, I don’t mean to play the song in reverse to reveal secret subliminal messages. Instead try learning the end of the song first. This has two advantages.

1. When you perform the song you will be get more and more comfortable with the material as you go along. This should help the escalating feelings of nervousness that can cause a major catastrophe!

2. You are more likely to focus you efforts. Picture this: You are trying to learn the first part of the song by playing measure 1 and 2 over and over. Problem is that you usually don’t stop at measure 2 since your curiosity gets the best of you. Well, if you were playing the last two measures that wouldn’t be a problem since there is nowhere else to go! And when you back up a couple measures you will always be playing into material you already know, which is not nearly as interesting as uncharted territory. Give it a try, or should I say try a it give.

Ever wonder who comes up with those crazy sayings like “every goody boy does fine”? I think it’s people like me. My student Boaz and I came up with one for the order of the flats, see post from July 30th. Rather than remembering the order of the flats with “Bead” + gcf you could use our new one “Bad Elephants And Donkeys Get Cold Fast.” Nice! Hey, this is history in the making.

Often the question comes up what a left handed person should do when learning the guitar. Should they string their guitar upside down ala Jimi Hendrix? In a word, no. First of all the most difficult part of learning the guitar is in the left-hand (the fretting hand) so that puts you lefties at an advantage. Secondly a lot of guitars are built with right handers in mind. If you were to look underneath the soundboard of a quality nylon string guitar you would see that the supports are asymmetrical, in other words they build it to support the varying weight of the bass versus the treble strings. So if you string you guitar upside down it won’t sound as good. There are some “lefty” guitars in production but they can be hard to find, and the selection isn’t as good.

The great jazz guitarist Barney Kessel also recommended that guitar players practice when ever they can even if it was only for a few minutes. John Coltrane used to practice at the dinner table even when he had guests. Another way to increase the likelihood of practicing is to use a guitar stand. Keeping your guitar on a stand when not in use means that it is in plain sight not tucked away in its case. Want to practice it for a few minutes just grab hold and go. Remember out of sight out of mind.

Here is one I like, click on it for more info: