Rhythm is the Most Important Part of Music

Most of my students have probably heard me say that a million times. It’s one of the first thing I tell them and for a good reason. Most people want to learn notes, but don’t even think about the rhythm of a song. If there is no rhythm, there is no music. You can’t play with anyone without it and you’ll barely be able to play with yourself. Even dancers count music to make sure that they are synchronised. There are only twelve notes in music, but rhythm possibilities are infinite.

Music without rhythm

Imagine an orchestra of a hundred musicians, but none of them have rhythm. What will ensue is a cacophony. Try to clap your hands at the same time as someone else without rhythm, it’s impossible.

I remember when I had just finished high school and was about to go to college to study music, I thought I was a great guitar player, because I could play solos, I knew my scales and lots of chords. When I got to college and started playing with different bands, I realized very quickly (rather I was told very early on), that I had no rhythm. It had not occurred to me that rhythm was that important. I always thought of the notes first.

I had a rude awakening when I started my theory classes, we had to sing and tap rhythm almost every class. We also had dictations where someone would sing rhythm and we had to write down what we heard in a few tries.

So, I started using the metronome a bit more. I also started really focusing on rhythm when I was listening to music. Tapping the beat to each song, trying to figure out the time signatures, creating different rhythms that I would play over songs that I’d listen to. I worked really hard at it, to the point where my friends in school would ask me to help them with their homework. I even started helping my drummer friends when they didn’t understand certain beats. I’m not kidding, I worked really hard at it and I still am. It became one of my favorite things to work on.

Nowadays, rhythm is what I work on the most with my students. They don’t always like it or understand it at first, but in the long run, they are very grateful like I am. Most of the time, when I make a mistake, it is because I am messing up the rhythm, not the notes. I remember playing a solo that I had to improvise and I completely messed it up. I was using the right scale, but I just didn’t get the rhythm.

Time Signatures, Measures and Tempo

Not every musician in a band plays throughout the whole song. There is usually a progression during a song where some instruments will start playing only during the first chorus or they might start later in the song. Even in big orchestras or big bands, not everyone is playing at the same time.

We manage to do these things by counting in our heads. Depending on the time signature of the song, we’ll count to 4 or to 6 or any other number that relates to the type of rhythm played in a song.

A time signature determines how long each measures are and where the accents will be. A measure is a type of rhythmic loop that keeps coming back throughout a song. Most songs are in a time signature called 4/4 or common time. What it means is that if you tap your foot to the beat of the song, each time you count to four, a measure is over and you start again at one. During the song, you will be able to hear chords change and parts of the song change on the first beat of measures. You can get more information on time signatures in our theory section.

Time signatures can vary from 4/4, 2/2, 6/8, 3/4 to 5/4, 7/8, etc. There are a lot of different time signatures, which means that you count a different amount of notes and types of notes. The most common types of time signatures are 4/4 and 6/8. I’d say 90% of the songs you hear on the radio uses those. Each time signature feels differently. 6/8 is used for songs that are generally more mellow like Halleluiah from Leonard Cohen. 4/4 is the most common for any genre from heavy metal to jazz to rock, to pop, funk, etc.

There are other factors that make rhythm feel different like the tempo. The tempo of a song is the speed of the beat in a song. That is the speed at which you would tap your foot to the music. That doesn’t mean that musicians won’t play fast notes on a slow tempo, it just means that you tap your foot at that speed.

You might have noticed that drummers often count out loud before a song, or they might hit their sticks together. It’s not for show, but to tell the band the tempo of the song and when to start. The drummer in a band is like a conductor for an orchestra. He keeps the beat, but also indicates a change from verse to chorus by playing fills. He also controls the volume of the band in a song by playing louder or quieter.

The rhythms within a time signature is also a big factor for how a song is going to sound. Like mentioned above you can have a slow song with fast notes. That is often the case in Funk music. You can also have the opposite where the tempo is really fast, but the musicians play long notes, which may feel slow.

Then there are accents. You could be playing a simple rhythm, but if you put accents at different places, it might feel completely different. It is a good tool to keep people interested in what you are doing on the stage.

Writing about all those things reminds me how complicated rhythm is. One of the reasons that most people struggle with rhythm is that it is not tangible. I can play a note of C on a piano or a guitar, but I can’t play a quarter note without having a point of reference like my foot or a metronome or a drummer to tell me if I am doing the right type of note or not. Rhythm is intertwined with time. Only with a watch or a clock can you tell time, you can’t hold it or touch it, you can only feel it.

Using your Foot to Keep the Rhythm

Most of the time, when I teach a new student, they don’t understand why I make them tap their foot so much. They don’t realise how much coordination playing music requires. Why is tapping your foot so important? Because it’s one of the only way to keep the beat and to know what kind of rhythms you are playing. Like mentioned above, rhythm is the most important aspect of music.

When I play a guitar solo, I keep my foot tapping, even if the notes that I am playing are complex, because I have to know where I am in the song. If I make a mistake in the notes I am supposed to play, it sucks, but it’s not that big of a deal, as long as I don’t lose track of where I am rhythmically. If I do, I am in big trouble. It is much easier to get back on my feet with notes, I can move my finger one note higher or lower than where I am and I should be fine. If I lose my sense of rhythm while playing, it is quite hard to get it back. I need to stop playing for a few seconds to get my bearings back.

It is especially important when I am playing a song with punch lines and breaks. Imagine the person that plays the clash cymbals in an orchestra. They have to play only once at the 25th measure. If that person loses count and plays a beat off, the accented note that was supposed to be played by the whole band is ruined.

I strongly suggest to all my students to tap their foot while playing their instrument, especially while practicing. I often make them do rhythmic exercises with their hands while their foot is tapping and they are counting the beat. It is very important to learn the basics of rhythm, even if you are a musician that can play the coolest chords and scales, if you have no rhythm, you are useless to a band. All my students learn rhythm without their instrument and with it. Most of them could probably do basic drums, because I make them work on their rhythm and coordination. It’s very useful to do, because whatever instrument you want to learn requires coordination and multi-tasking with several parts of your body.

Tapping your foot is one of the best ways to understand rhythm. My foot is my point of reference to what kind of rhythms I play. If I tap my hand once every four times my foot is tapping, I am playing whole notes. If I tap my hand once every two foot tap, it is a half note. If I tap my hand every time I tap my foot, I am playing quarter notes. If I tap my hands twice as fast as my foot, I play eight notes. If I tap my hand four times as fast as my foot, I am playing sixteenth notes.

Music is based on those notes: Whole, half, quarters, eighth and sixteenth. There are variations of those notes, like triplets of eighths and quarter notes and more, but I won’t get into that in this blog post. What I am trying to explain is that the amount of notes you play in comparison to how many times you tap your foot is what determines the type of notes you are playing. Make sure that your foot taps at a consistent speed. If I struggle with a certain rhythm, I always go back to tapping my hands and feet to break down this rhythm into manageable parts and work on the transitions until I am comfortable with them.

I remember teaching a mom and her daughter the song amazing grace. One of them would play the chords and the other would play the melody. The mom didn’t understand why I was so adamant about making sure the rhythm was right, so she would rush through the melody to get to the end of the song while her daughter would still be playing the first few chords. The song never sounded right, but the mom still didn’t get what I was trying to teach her. I understand that some people don’t want to work on rhythm or they expect to become good at music very quickly, but there are steps that need to be taken if your goal is to play music with other people and not just play at people. I believe that anybody can learn basic rhythms if they are willing to put in the required effort.

One thing that good musicians do that most beginners don’t understand, is that they take their time when playing a song, keeping the beat, so that the song sounds good. I noticed that most of my students, when they play songs for me that they have practiced during the week, they usually start the song very fast and finish even faster. I understand that they are nervous, but they shoot themselves in the foot when they do that, because the faster they play the harder it becomes and the more mistakes they make. It’s a vicious cycle.

What I have learned to do over the years is to take a few seconds to think about the song that I’m about to play before I start. I imagine how fast the song should be and I play it slower than that. My reasoning is that because I am nervous, when I think of a song, I often think about it faster than it actually is. So, if I start slower than I imagine it, I am sure to be ok. I use that trick in concert as well. It also gives me time to get into the mood of the song. If I am angry and I am about to play a happy song, it might not come out the right way if not in the right mind set.

In conclusion, remember that rhythm is the most important aspect of music. Practice rhythm as much as you practice your notes, or more, because if there is no rhythm, there is no music.

Why Learn Music

Why should you learn music? That is a good question with a lot of possible answers. It’s so embedded in our society, that we all understand it to some level. I think that music is an incredible language. It enables us to communicate in a very unique way. It is also one of the best way to express ourselves. Although learning music is hard, the journey is worth the effort.

Music as a language

Music is the most amazing language in the world. It is spoken in so many different ways. People that don’t speak the same mother tongue can talk to each other through music without uttering a word. I believe it is the first language created. Think about prehistoric man hitting rocks or clapping their hands together to create some kind of rhythm. Drums or percussion and singing were probably the first instruments every played. Music was the first way for humans to communicate with each other.

Music has transcended every era of our existence as a specie. It also outlasted every other language. At first, it was probably used to communicate basic emotions and needs. Then, it was used to instill a sense of community through hymns and war cries. Once melodic instruments were created, it was used to express a bigger range of emotions and used as a form of entertainment. Then, it was integrated to other art forms like theater, which became opera and musicals. With evolution and the beginning of writing came music sheets. It was the first and only way for musicians to get their songs heard by a larger audience other than live performances. It was probably the only way to reach other parts of the world for the longest time, as the first gramophone was created in the late 1800’. Now, it is used to communicate every type of emotions that exist in every type of media.

It is the best way to communicate emotions with someone that doesn’t speak your mother tongue. It has happened to me to play music with people that didn’t speak the same language as I, but we could still communicate and understand how to play music together. Recently, I had a funk band. Every member was from a different country. The drummer being from Japan and the guitar player from Chili, it was difficult to communicate clearly what we wanted with words. When we played songs together, it didn’t matter, we were great and understood each other through rhythm and notes. If we had to work on a part of a song, we’d communicate it with very basic words, but also sang the part the way it should be.

One time I was on a ferry, sitting in my car playing ukulele. A guy walks by my car playing guitar. He noticed me and signaled me to come join him at the front of the boat. So, I did. I walked over to him and started playing with him. We improvised a song, creating the lyrics and music as we went. As the ferry approached the terminal, we finally stopped playing and introduced ourselves. I thought it was great to be able to play with someone else and not even know who he was, we just understood each other through our music; we could feel where the other was going, even if we had never met. It’s happened to me several times in my life. I find it’s one of the beautiful things about music.

Music is Everywhere

Everybody listens to some form of music every day. It can be through a band, a record, a live performance, a movie, a tv show, a commercial, a ringtone, a call waiting song, on an elevator, at the grocery store, or doctor’s office, in public transit when the train is leaving or the bell at school. Even in nature, there is music; a birds singing, a river flowing, a gust of wind, the sound of footsteps, the cracking of branches. It is present in the beating of your heart and the sound of your breath. It is so important to life that it surrounds us; every animal creates some sort of sound.

Learning music has helped me be aware of this. It has helped me appreciate the little things that I take for granted. When I listen to a bird sing, I can appreciate it’s beauty and it’s complexity. When I watch a movie or tv show, I am more aware of the music. Can you imagine a movie without music? It would ruin every horror movie. Imagine a commercial on television without music. It wouldn’t sell as much. Music is what helps us create a connection between an event or a product and our emotions. When someone watches a movie in a different room than I do, I can tell what is happening in the movie without having to see the images, because the music tells me what kind of scene it is: action, romance, suspense, drama, etc.

I love when students come back to me after a few months of lessons and tell me that they understand music better and they notices it more. They start to hear the beat of a song or recognize a time signature. When they can hear the difference between a chord, a single note, a verse, chorus or a bridge. They begin to hear music differently, like someone learning a language they don’t speak and begin to recognize words and phrases when someone speaks it. It makes it all worth it for me.

An Emotional Connection

Music is so diverse, it can be melodic, dissonant, rhythmic, slow, fast, quiet, loud, scary, calming. It can evoke any type of emotion needed. I often associate certain memories with songs.

I started writing songs, because I wanted to keep more accurate memories of what happened in my life, like an autobiography in a soundtrack. What I mean is that photos can capture a look, videos can capture images and sounds. Songs can capture emotions and a state of mind. When I listen to songs that I wrote a long time ago, it brings me back to where I was when I wrote it in a way that photos and videos can’t. They can instantly remind me of a scene or a feeling that made me write a certain song. I can also sing them anywhere.

Songs are also very therapeutic in a lot of ways. When I feel happy, I can listen to music that helps me stay up beat. If I am sad, I can listen to something that will help me express my sadness in a way that I can’t with words. That is true for any emotion that I feel. As a composer and lyricist, I can go even further and express exactly what I want in a way that songs from other artists won’t be able to do. I can say with words what I want people to hear, but put into the music what I really want to express. Sometimes, the lyrics and music will be complete opposites and at times, that’s exactly how I feel.

Often, when I don’t know how I feel, I pick up an instrument and music flows through me and I say what I need to say without a word being spoken. Words cannot always express what music can. As I got better as a musician, I started to have more tools to work with, so it didn’t have to only be happy or sad. When I started playing music, I only had minor and major chords to express myself with, but as I grew as a musician, I started to have chords and scales that aren’t as black and white. In this way, music represents life very well, it is not one way or the other, the possibilities are infinite.

I have written lots of songs to help me get through rough times in my life. When I learned of the death of people that were dear to me, I have written songs to help me grieve. During hard times in my life, I wrote songs to cheer me up, or to express my anger or sadness. I have written songs to express my love.

My wife often says that I am the soundtrack to her life, because I write a lot of songs. Some that I have recorded and others that I just composed on the spot. She, on the other hand, is the soundtrack to my life, as she always sings other people’s songs, even mine, to express how she feels. Recently, she wasn’t feeling well, so I started playing a blues for her. I improvised lyrics that related to our situation and she started singing with me and creating lyrics as well. It is something that we do sometimes, it helps alleviate the gravity of a situation. We might take someone else’s song and change the lyrics to suit the moment. Music helps me get through almost anything.

The Journey of Learning Music

Learning music is not easy, it is a very bumpy ride with a lot of good moments and a lot of hard times. It can be very discouraging when starting to learn. But, it is worth the effort. The better I got, the more fun it became. To be fair, for some reason that I still don’t understand, I fell in love with music the first time I played guitar. I didn’t know it at the time, but it changed my life for ever and in a very good way.

I started playing music when I was a teenager. It was the perfect moment, because high-school was not pleasant. I didn’t know how to express myself, I was shy, I didn’t have much confidence. I didn’t feel like I fit in. When I started playing guitar, it was something that stopped me from thinking about all my problems. When I was playing, it was so hard that all I could think about was what I was doing. It requires a lot of focus. I need to use both hands in a very precise manner, I have to use my memory to remember the parts and what is coming next, I’m tapping my foot, looking at where I am in the chart (if I am reading it). So, when I am doing all this at the same time, it’s very difficult for me to have time to think about my problems or the things that I need to do.

The better I got, the more I wanted to play. I started playing with some friends and created bands. I played concerts at my school, which helped me a lot with getting confidence. I have done some performances that weren’t very good. Those were the times when I learned the most. It taught me to be more prepared. It taught me to work as a team, because even if I know my parts, if someone in the group doesn’t, the whole band suffers. It also taught me to not care about what people think of me. I remember that I was prepared in case someone would make fun of me, I would say to them :”why don’t you go on the stage and do better”. Funny thing is that nobody has ever said anything mean to me about my performances, so I never had to use that line.

One thing that I didn’t realize I had gotten from music until years after I started teaching, it is that learning music has taught me to learn and to live. The difficulties that I have encountered learning music helped prepare me for the challenges I would encounter in my life. It showed me that the only way I can achieve something is through hard work and perseverance. It taught me that I have to get where I want one step at a time. Sometimes, I’ll do two steps forward and one step back. I learned to not give up, I might need to put something on pause and come back to it days, weeks even years later.

Over time, I learned to teach myself other things that had nothing to do with music, but using the same process as I used while learning music. It has helped me learn to be curious. I was probably always curious, but music is such a complex, intriguing language. I never stop learning. Now that I teach music, I learn even more. It pushes me outside of my comfort zone. It also has put me in situations where I met people that I would have never met if not for music. It gave me coordination and rhythm. Most things that I have learned through music have been transferable skills that I use in my every day life. Simple things like getting my car out of the snow. It seems simple for people that are used to snow, but people that don’t have any rhythm don’t know how to rock a car, it takes good rhythm. My pinky fingers are super strong, I can lift grocery bags with them. I can do several things at the same time. I have much better focus than I would have had without music. I can think ahead and anticipate difficulties. I learned to slow down and break things down into manageable steps.

I am extremely grateful for music and all the people in my life that have helped me learn it and get to where I am. All my teachers, all the people that have played with me, all the spectators at the concerts I have played and all my students for teaching me every day. In the end, despite the fact that music is everywhere and it is one of the most amazing language, only you will know if it worth the effort to learn music. All I can tell you is my experience with it and how it has changed my life in a positive way. If you do take a leap of faith and try learning to play music, don’t give up. Know that if you play and challenge yourself as often as you can, with a little bit of patience, you can go as far as you want. And who knows, maybe you’ll get more out of it than you ever imagined.

Play, Don't Practice

One of my students asked me something like this today: “How do I keep wanting to practice this solo that I am working on? I can play it, but I can’t get to full speed and I have a hard time with the transitions.”
My answer was: “Are you bored of playing it?”

He had been working on this solo for a few months and he answered that he was bored with it. So, why would you do something that you are tired of doing?

I am like anybody else, I dislike doing the same thing over and over. Our brains like challenges. Have you ever gone to school or work and arrived there not even remembering how you got there? Now, if you do the same exercise, but take a route that you have never taken, this will not happen, because you will be in the moment, making sure that you get to the right place on time. The same thing applies to learning an instrument. Change the way you learn that song or solo and you will improve much faster. Have fun with your instrument, play with it, don’t keep practicing it like it’s a chore.

Be Creative with the Way you Learn

Try to understand yourself and know what works for you. When I have to learn a really hard solo or song, I will tackle it a few different ways.
I’ll start by learning the notes, I’ll work on the rhythm separately, I’ll try to sing the root note of the chords or solo, I’ll listen to the song several times. I will try to understand the chords or solo in the context of the whole song: Why are these notes used where they are used? What kind of scale are they using? Are there any notes or chords that are not part of the key signature?
I will take certain sections of the song or solo and play it in a different context (different time signature, different tempo, different key, change the rhythm). I might try to create a different song with a section of the song or solo I am learning. I might turn a part of the solo into a riff or simply use that part to create a different solo with it.

I feel like a kid most of the time, I try to fool around with what I am learning to be able to use it in my own songs. I am not talking about stealing an artist’s song and saying it’s mine, but every musician learns from other musicians and get inspired by them. So, I take ideas that I like and play them in other songs. Over time, I start to play the lick or phrase I learned my own way. After accumulating a roster of ideas, I start to have my own musical personality.

Another trick that I use is saying out loud what I am doing as I am doing it. What I mean by that is counting the beats and/or the rhythms that I am doing, or singing and/or saying the notes as I play them. When I teach guitar, mandolin or ukulele, I usually have my students say the strumming pattern as they are doing it. A lot of my students are shy about doing that, but as soon as they start doing it, they usually manage to do things that they weren’t able to do without it. It makes me focus more on what I am doing. If I play a song that I find boring or too easy, my mind tends to go somewhere else. I start to think about what I am going to have for dinner, or what happened that morning, or why this person is looking at me funny, etc. So having my hands and my voice focused on this one thing that I am doing helps my mind not wonder in every direction.

Same thing applies when I tap my foot or move my body at the same time as I play my instrument. I find that some of the best drummers look like they are dancing behind their drum kits, they are feeling the music and it helps them focus and stay in the moment.

Visualization is another great tool to help getting better. I often have students that complain that they don’t have time to practice. My answer to that is that you can always practice without your instrument. This concept is a little harder to swallow for some people, but it is extremely effective if you do it honestly. When I have free time, but I don’t have my instruments around, I can sing the solo or melody I am working on with rhythm. I can visualize myself playing my instrument. If I am somewhere where my hands are busy, like driving, I can say out loud the fingering for the melody, solo or scale that I am practicing. If I am working on a chord progression, I can say what chords are played in order. If I am trying to remember lyrics, I will sing them and recite them. All this is very hard to do, it is often harder than playing the instrument, but it works. When I go back to my instrument, I am way better, I hesitate less and it becomes more instinctual. I used to beat myself down about not practicing enough.

When I started, doing those exercises, I stopped feeling so bad, because I could now practice almost anywhere. It might be five minutes at a time, but it makes a huge difference in the long run. I find that changing the way I practice a hard song helps me keep my practice fresh, therefor I learn faster, because I keep wanting to play it. I don’t like to be bored, so I make sure that my practice is not boring. I try to have fun and be creative with how I approach a song.

They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. Try to not be insane and change the way you look at the song, be a kid with it and see where it takes you, you might be positively surprised by the results.

To Use a Metronome or Not to Use a Metronome, that is the Question

I don’t usually encourage beginners to use a metronome. I love using the metronome for myself nowadays, but when I first started using it, I hated it. When I was starting guitar, I thought I was really good and had great rhythm. It turns out, I had no rhythm. The metronome is a machine that is very precise and when I played with it, I always felt like it should follow me. It never did, unfortunately. It was very frustrating and discouraging. Over the years, I started loving playing with it, because it feels like I’m playing with a drummer and it’s helpful when I am trying out difficult rhythms and want to make sure that I don’t speed up or slow down.

In between the period of time where I hated the metronome and now that I love it, I found a great way to build my sense of rhythm without the stress of the metronome. I was going to college by car every day and there was lots of traffic, so it gave me plenty of time to listen to music and try to tap my hand or foot to the beat of the song (if you do this yourself, be careful, try not to get into an accident). Nowadays, music is almost all recorded with a click track, which means that the tempo of the song is consistent throughout the song. So, when I tap the beat, I am basically practicing with a metronome, but it is much more pleasant. Once I got good at that, I started giving myself challenges, like taping just the 2nd beat, or the 2nd and 4th beat of every measure. Then whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, eight notes, sixteenth notes, triplets. I tried to create different rhythms and play them to the songs I was listening to.

Another exercise that I use is to tap my hands to a certain rhythm, while my foot is keeping the tempo. Let’s say I am in 4/4 time signature. I will tap my foot to the quarter note and have my hand tap whole notes for four measures, then half notes, then quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes and do it all over in reverse order. It usually takes a few minutes. It requires a lot of coordination.

Some people will find it very easy, some very hard. It’s an exercise that I can practice anywhere and it doesn’t require an instrument. When it comes to intermediate to advanced students, I will have them use a metronome if a song is really hard and really fast. I’ll have them focus on the rhythm and practice their transitions. I’ll also have them play the song with a recording of it. On YouTube you can slow down videos to 75%, 50% and 25% speed.

The great thing about it is that it doesn’t change the pitch of the song like older technology used to do. It’s an awesome tool, because it can help to hear the little details and practice the parts that I struggle to play at a speed that is comfortable.

Rhythm and Transitions

Often, I see students practicing a song fast during the parts that they are good at and slow during the parts that are challenging. One of the most important things when it comes to a song or solo is to practice the transitions and keep the tempo steady.

Make sure that you play the song at a speed that you are comfortable with for the hard parts. Otherwise, if you keep practicing fast in the easy parts and slow in the hard parts, you’ll get into the habit of changing tempos constantly. It will feel like you are the passenger in a car with a beginner driver with a standard transmission; your neck will hurt a lot.

I know it is tempting to play fast because we all want to feel like pros, but if there is a constant variation in tempo, the song does not sound like the song. It might feel painful at first to go slowly during the easy parts, but it’s for the good of the song. The most important thing in music is rhythm, so make sure that you consider that when you are working on a song. Often, if you are practicing a solo and you know you have the right notes, but it still doesn’t sound right, it is usually because you are making mistakes rhythmically. So, slow down your tempo and try to make sure that your notes are where they should be. I often try to tap with my fingers or my hand to the rhythm of the changes that are difficult for me.

I break down the parts into rhythm and notes, then I put the pieces back together. Recently, I have been working on really hard songs on the bass. I get challenged by some songs, just like anybody else. The difference is that I know that if I practice slowly, I’ll get better faster. I had to practice this really hard funk song from Tower of Power for my funk band. What I did was to practice it at 75% of the speed for several weeks (to do that, go on Youtube, look in the gear icon in the corner of your video, you will find playback settings where you can change the speed). Then, a few days before our rehearsal, I played the song a few times at full speed and when came the band practice, it went alright. One of the reasons why this technique works so well for me is that when I practice at a slower tempo, I focus on making sure that I am playing the right notes at the right time without feeling pressured by the speed of the song. It teaches me to be relaxed, so that when it comes time to play at full speed, I am calm and my fingers know what to do instinctively. Another thing that I did with this song, and I do that with any hard song, is that while I am playing it at full speed I keep telling myself to relax. I can’t play anything fast while being tensed, I have to consciously relax otherwise my muscles tense up and I make more mistakes.

Briefly, try to be creative with how you practice your instrument. You don’t have to be a martyr and feel like if it’s not boring you’re not practicing hard enough. Find ways that work for you, have fun with it and practice without your instrument sometimes. Make sure that you enjoy your practice, keep it fresh, keep it interesting and you’ll want to play more, so you’ll get better faster. Break songs down into parts, so it doesn’t feel too overwhelming. Make sure to play, don’t practice!