I took a class from Leo P over the summer (Leo is a ridiculous sax player).
He adamantly stated that you should spend time trying to figure out what kind of sounds you can make from your instrument, basically, noodling.
I think noodling brings us closer to our instrument.
In our desire to master things at top speed due to our limited time we have, I think we sometimes forget to noodle.
I also think noodling gives the brain another pathway to connect to the instrument as well, connecting dots we don’t even know need connecting.
I agree! Just noodling around, in my case to a drum backing track, is precisely what allows me to set in Josh’s lessons. I’ll go through some of the patterns to a beat, just noodling and trying out. Not only is it helpful, it’s also super fun and relaxing.
@John_E yes makes perfect sense and I agree. I was doing this simple little riff on the A string and just repeating it over and over making sure I was focusing on my fretting hand and making sure my finger position with relation to the frets were spot on and it was good. More noodling in my future for sure
You got this. I started B2B as an almost-intermediate, I’d say. Blew through everything up to a certain point, then (and it might’ve been Billie Jean) had a sort of break in the action where I went off and practiced some songs or slap or other stuff, and returned to B2B on a regular basis like a week later. Had weeks where I’d get through several lessons, others where I’d recognize I needed to slow down, and some where I’d put it on the back-burner and practice something else.
Point is, I am THRILLED with the progress it helped me to make, even though I didn’t follow any particular schedule. To me, the course has become this little cheat-sheet I “keep in my back pocket”. I reference lessons all the time, even having officially completed it maybe a month or two back. Use it as you see fit!
Too, Josh is big on bite-sizing your tasks, so when you get stuck on a lesson, break it down into parts. I have a feeling that if he was sitting in on your practices, he’d have you do the exercise slowly until you could pinpoint exactly what isn’t clicking with it, and have you do that, over and over and over. Just like the noodling you described, in fact
@chordsykat Thanks! I like how you describe having access to these lessons as a cheat sheet. Great way to put it I think impatience might be another issue and this is based on the fact I did online lessons in the past (various brands and models) and after 6 months I was worse than when I started, with B2B I am feeling much more confident and little things are starting to click and make sense and I have @JoshFossgreen to thank for that. As @John_E mentioned at 47 I am not old but my brain does not absorb like it did when I was 17 nor do my fingers want to naturally do fretting which they have never done, so it’s little by little and chunk by chunk. I think what I will do is slow down on parts that are giving me issues and then move on only when I feel I can move to the next lesson, and then possibly go through the course a second time to reinforce the sections, parts, techniques that can be improved or that I struggled with the first time around. I have a feeling as Josh mentioned a few times that those sections will be much easier the second time…
@MonsieurFahrenheit, we’re the same age. Old dogs CAN learn new tricks, even in my case when people have told me for the last 47 years that an elephant stepped on my ear and I would never learn anything musical.
Moving my thumb around on this glossy neck… It feels as if I’m playing with glue on my thumb. I know, part of the problem is that I’m still gripping too hard, but it feels so much easier on my “plain” Ibanez.
My Hofner has a glossy neck, but I don’t feel as if my thumb is sticking to it. Perhaps my playing style is different; which is quite plausible, being that most everything I do is unconventional.
