Hibernating Grizzly Fitness Scheme
Published: Tue, 01/03/23
I don't know about you, but once the holiday season is finally winding down, I find myself thinking mostly about one of two things: first, how am I going to hone and improve my practice routine in the coming months, and second, how much winter fat could I potentially shed between now and next Halloween? Luckily, no one on the podcast was remotely interested in discussing my hibernating-grizzly fitness schemes, so my fellow guest Marlene Hutchinson and I stuck to the topic at hand, namely, how to achieve more of your guitar playing goals in 2023.
The podcast's hosts, Nick Grizzle and Jamie Stillway, had collected a number of questions about learning and practicing from the magazine's readership, which is how we found ourselves getting into a pretty detailed discussion about a really interesting idea: what does it take to stop feeling like a beginning guitar player and start feeling like more of an intermediate? Spoiler alert: we generally agreed it had to do with things like being able to play complete songs, having a better sense of time, and achieving a degree of independence from the printed page. The cool thing is, improving in any one of those areas has nothing to do with speed, or chops, or really anything technical – they're musical skills, and as such, entirely accessible to anyone willing to put in a small amount of focused effort on a regular basis for a somewhat sustained period of time.
We talked about a lot of other stuff, too. You can find the whole two-part episode at the link below:
The Acoustic Guitar Podcast
More soon,
David
In addition to helping you build your traditional and contemporary blues repertoire, the Fingerstyle Five membership provides the tools you need to develop all the musical skills mentioned above, including simple exercises to sharpen your picking-hand coordination, efficient drills for learning the fretboard, and an organized way to plan and carry out a weekly practice schedule. Learn more and sign up at https://www.fretboardconfidential.com/