Guitar Lessons Tulsa | Smoothing Out a Song
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Some students as you’re teaching them, guitar lessons Tulsa can have a difficult time, plane songs smoothly. And the difficult thing about playing songs smoothly is that you not only have to have your finger placed in the correct place and in the correct fret, but you also have to have the correct pick technique with your right hand. So even if the note is placed correctly, you also have your right hand if you are a right handed performer that you have to consider where it is placed. So there’s different aspects of things that are happening that will require you to play the note at the correct time. One of the best things that can help playing songs smoothly is forcing the student to slow down. And if you’re able to be successful in helping the guitar student to slow down the song, it will be much easier for them to play this song smoothly.
And when it comes to playing the guitar, a lot of times this student is going to pick a song that is one that they are familiar with. And although this is a huge benefit to understanding how the song is played, it can be a detriment in actually practicing the song in a way that they can play it efficiently through practice. One of the biggest occurrences that happens when attempting to practice a song that a student is likely to be familiar with is the fact that the student will try to play it at the exact speed of the actual song. So if it’s a song that they’re familiar with, then that song can be difficult to slowly because they’re so familiar with the way that it’s supposed to be played. A good example of this is a song like Yankee doodle. If you are playing Yankee doodle, chances are you have heard this song before.
So if you’re getting ready to practice it, you’re thinking in your head the tune, you’re thinking of the speed of the tune even before you begin to play it with your fingers. So if this is something that is occurring with your guitar students, you’ll have to explain to them that it’s okay to slow a song down when you’re practicing it. That way you can gradually speed it up through the course of practice and as you continue to get better at the song, you’ll be able to speed it up much easier than when you originally started practicing it. So if your student is having a difficult time smoothing out a song, the number one thing that you will want that student to do is to slow it down so that they can play it smoothly. Another thing that is helpful to, to get a student to play a song smoothly is just to continue to allow them to play through the song over and over and over.
If the student is only able to read the notes that they are currently playing without looking ahead in the song, they are going to be constantly pausing throughout the song because they’re not entirely confident in what is upcoming in the next section of the song. So if you give that student the opportunity to play through the song multiple times, it will help them to smooth it out consistently. And even if they are practicing the song throughout the week, you can even spend a little bit of time in the guitar lessons Tulsa to slow down the song, to give them a few times to run through it and just ensure that they are indeed getting reps through this song. So if you have decided that the student needs a little bit more work, it go ahead and spend a few moments, Paul out a metronome and set the beats per minute for a time that makes sense for the student to learn and go through it and see what happens, see if that helps them to smooth out the song even as quickly as one guitar lessons Tulsa.
So if you are able to make the student yeah, slow down and relax a little bit, you can very likely help them to smooth it out. So another thing about smoothing out songs is once they understand what it is that the song is supposed to sound like, if they’re unfamiliar with this song, it can also help. A lot of times if the song is in three, four time, if it’s in a strange time signature, it can be tricky to smooth it out because chances are they are thinking in terms of four, four time and if they are playing a song that is in four four time, then that’s just normal. Most songs are in that time signature. But if they play in a three, four time, if you think of a waltz that’s three, four time and that is a little bit more difficult to play because it isn’t quite as natural.
It kind of feels like a three sided square or something, you know, it just doesn’t make much sense. So a lot of times students will pause at the end of the measure before moving onto the next measure. They will add an additional beat to essentially make this song for four instead of keeping the song at a three four time like it’s supposed to be. So this can be one thing that causes students to not play smoothly. And if they continue to play songs, if they continue to feel what it is like to play in a three, four time, it will help them in the future to continue to smooth out the song. And one of the things that helps with this again is a metronome, a metronome walk, force them to here only three beats in the measure because the metronome does not lie. The metronome is like a robot that just continues on going and going like the energizer bunny. So use a metronome to help your students as they are learning the guitar, as they’re taking their guitar lessons Tulsa, you want them to help smooth out songs so that they can continue to get better and better and that their songs sound great and smooth. That’s the biggest thing that you want your guitar players to do, is to have a nice and smooth song.