Taking stock

Well it's the end of the summer and I'm back to guitar lessons and practice again.  It's amazing how a break can make you look at things with fresh eyes - I don't remember feeling like this last year - but maybe that was because I continued having lessons over the summer, doing pretty much the same thing as usual, just at a more leisurely pace.  I feel like I ought to take stock - it's not a new calendar year but I feel like it's a new guitar year, so regardless of the date I will do an end of year roundup.  And contrary to my usual pessimistic approach, I will concentrate on the good things that happened as opposed to what fell through the cracks (or yawning chasms... I know I said I wouldn't be downbeat but just that one little comment ;))

  Let's see, at the beginning of the year I was happy to be starting to work on a piece I had been waiting to learn -  "Birds flew over the spire" by Gary Ryan, I moved from G4 to G3 in the orchestra, which was good because I didn't have to keep tuning down and at least some of the music was mildly tuneful.  I learned the piece and we played several performance including opening for a "real" guitarist!  I got myself a great new guitar,  and despite it being a longer scale than my trusty 630, I was finally getting accustomed to it.  My biggest worry was I was still having a lot of problems playing for anyone but myself.  Even recording on my phone often involved hours of effort until I settled down enough not to choke.   So what has happened since? I've been playing almost weekly at the dementia unit of the local nursing home, and although my progress in confidence has been slow, it's definitely coming  It seems to have gone in stages - at first each visit was really really stressful.  I don't think my heart rate returned to normal for an hour after I left, and each time it was a survival exercise.
Then gradually I noticed I was becoming less panic stricken, I could even eat lunch after leaving!  I was also getting a lot less bothered by my mistakes and much better at forging ahead regardless.  However my playing left a lot to be desired - I was still blanking out and making lots of mistakes, and on top of that  I was having a hard time ignoring all the stuff going on around me leading to yet more mistakes.   I took note of the areas I had trouble with or "forgot" under stress and made a point of subjecting those parts to my latest attempt to improve my conscious memory - learning the left hand separately.  And on subsequent visits those parts at least didn't cause problems.  I also work every time on not analyzing my playing as I'm going along.  Thinking "I've messed up that x8$! part again" invariably results in further mistakes. Instead I'm making a conscious effort to think ahead on how I want to play the next bit. Also when there is a disturbance, same thing, I try to haul myself back to thinking about what dynamics to add to the next bit.  Of course it doesn't always work.  Once I turned up not feeling especially with it, and  additionally failed to warm up beforehand. We will draw a veil over that visit - If nothing else it taught me I absolutely have to warm up - no exceptions. And if things aren't going well, dial it way back.   However recently I am finding  I'm playing more of my pieces much closer to how I play them at home - not totally without mistakes, but that rarely happens anyway.    And just today I played at least half the pieces pretty close to how I normally play them.   This comes right on top of another first - at folk camp over the weekend one the teachers asked me to play something for them, and I did!  It's been one of my goals - to be able to comply if someone says "play something for us"!    Maybe I will even think about playing an open stage or open mic this year - not because I am at all interested in trying to perform, but I want to know I can do it.
Was there a particular secret to making progress?  Not really.  It was mostly getting started then persevering.  For me that involved finding a venue that wasn't a huge leap up in stress - ie a place where I didn't feel judged.  And then it was a case of keep doing it until the stress started to settle, After that, gradually working on better preparation (still got a long way to go there). The biggest thing was having done it once, it was in the back of my mind that I'd done it before so I could do it again.

So that's the good stuff.  So far as playing goes - I don't know.  I was talking with some friends about it at camp, and it's funny - we were all coming to the same conclusions.  When we started to learn our instruments, it was enough just to be able to play a tune or two. We weren't too interested in doing the technical work.  Now we are realizing we need to go back and apply ourselves to the technical work to make those tunes worth listening to!  So I guess that's progress of a sort - you need to know what you need to know....and once you know,  you can go ahead and work on knowing it!!!  :)