Practice the easy stuff
On Monday, I was playing my latest song for a small group. It went over well, but I did make a few small guitar mistakes. This has happened at my last few shows, strong vocals, mistakes on the guitar. If you ask me what's the strongest part of my music, I'd easily say guitar.
Upon reflection, I realized that I put most of my practice time on the vocals. I worked on how I was breathing, what note to hit where, different phrasings, etc. I recognized challenging areas, practiced the transitions, and figured out how to recover from mistakes. Since the guitar part was relatively easy, I only practiced to support the voice. In essence, I took the guitar parts for granted. It's no wonder that I made mistakes.
My take home lesson is to practice the easy stuff (guitar) with the same intensity as the hard stuff (vocals).
Labels: guitar, performance, songwriter, songwriting, songwriting tips, vocals
posted by Jeff Oxenford @ 10:53 AM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Good post.
If you or a friend has a small PA system it is good practice to also do your gig preps in front of a real microphone.
If you don't have access to a PA system for practice, at least put a mic on a stand and practice singing into an unplugged mic.
For me it was always a challenge to look down at the guitar and then look up in time to sing - which would result in me messing up on either the guitar, or vocals - or sometimes both.
-dm
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