The admission of failure
It had been years since I played badly intro of this fabulous piece from Creed. Sometimes I missed a note, sometimes and I had an extra note or two and, very rarely, did I play it correctly but only by chance.
Anyway, I was going nowhere on this cool guitar part.
The solution
Finally this week I took the decision to put some serious energy into this and to really work on this arpeggio.
After doing some research on YouTube to go through the usual crappy videos, I came across the video below from a Brazilian site (yes it is in Portuguese and I don't speak Portuguese). It is super well done and explains each measure at ultra slow speed the arpeggio in question:
The website Cifra Club: www.cifraclub.com.br
The YouTube channel of the site to more than 1.5 million subscribers to give you an idea of the size of the thing!
Anyway, after a good night to play the part at an ultra slow tempo, I'm very close to master it properly. It remains some work to do to be able to play it flawlessly and up to the original tempo but I am finally getting there.
I was so happy with this achievement I posted a quick video on The Guitar Channel Instagram account:
An iOS application must: Amazing Slow Downer
Another tool recently discovered thanks to Ludovic Egraz that I met on the interview with John Petrucci: the free iOS app "Amazing Slow Downer" (Roni Music) which allows, as its name suggests slow down without changing the pitch any song from your iTunes library. Quite efficient!
Indeed, without almost any degradation of the audio the app can greatly slow down the song so you can validate note per note what you play versus the original.
In addition the ability to play the passage slowly helps a lot to work on the rhythmic placement. The more you work with a slow tempo rhythmic, the more the errors you make are obvious.
Moral of the story
To progress there is nothing like playing the passage in question VERY slowly until the rhythmic placement is perfect and only then accelerates the tempo. You might need to slow down sometimes to make sure you have it completely before moving on.
Tell me if my educational journey has been helpful in your own work.
And you, do you have any specific tips to improve?
Pierre.
