Working the old way!

[Jimi75]

Hey folks,

I have the impression that most of the guitar player world has unlearned to work with documentation in paper form. Most guys sit in front of their computer, gather thousands of tabs, BTs, youtube videos of lessons and store them on their hardrive. Here they lay and rot in most cases.

I once did a workshop with John Petrucci the guitarist of Dreamtheater. He said that he still files good articles or tabs out of magazines. The advantage is that you can make notices on them and physically working with a document is something completely different. The learning effect is higher. For me it is way more efficient. After that workshop I decided to make my own guitar dossier/file. First I put some stuff in it, I also looked for printable PDFs like the ones you find sometimes on the guitar world site. I then categorized into , warm up, scales, blues, modes, licks and so on. The good thing is that you do not want your file to explode, so you filter the stuff, which means that only the good things get into your file. As you do not have the time to read every document you find on the net you will quickly start learning to distinguish between what you currently need or not. Shortly after the workshop I started to take lessons again and my teacher made the same proposal with the file. I then proudly presented him my grimoire and he helped me to add useful things to it so that the file had a kind of timeline that followed the topics I was working on and also prepared for related upcoming topics without losing the plot.

I made handwritten notices when I discovered something, I have taped my lessons and then made the tabs to the lessons manually, markering with colour and then filing them. The big advantage is that you work with the material which releases quite a bunch of creative power.

For those who haveb't tried this so far, give it a try it will definitely improve your working style and of course your playing.

[tot_Ou_tard]

I don't practice in front of a computer. I always use paper, preferably with standard notation (if it also has tab, then that is a bonus as it helps with voicing).

I print stuff out or get it from books. I'll burn the examples or backing tracks to CD so I can use them in my basement.

Videos are great for watching for tricks & the ergonomics of playing. All that subtle stuff that you didn't know you didn't know.

[Jimi75]

I don't practice in front of a computer. I always use paper, preferably with standard notation (if it also has tab, then that is a bonus as it helps with voicing).

I print stuff out or get it from books. I'll burn the examples or backing tracks to CD so I can use them in my basement.

Videos are great for watching for tricks & the ergonomics of playing. All that subtle stuff that you didn't know you didn't know.

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