Yet another way to have more fun and more success by practicing smarter.
Thirty years ago I had just arrived in the bright lights of New York City—a very different place than the little Idaho towns where I grew up—and my friend had gotten me a cool gig.
I was filling in for a couple songs at Coney Island High as the guitarist for the legendary punk rocker Jayne County. Here’s an awesome picture of Jayne:
Photo by Allan Warren, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
I thought I was a pretty good guitarist.
I learned the songs quickly, and when the night came I made my way through a cast of characters who would have seemed slightly out of place in Kendrick, Idaho, jumped onstage, and the gig was on.
The first song went great. It sounded just like the record. The lights were bright, the music was loud, the club was packed and I felt a little bit like a rock star.
But during the second song, at what seemed like a random point, Jayne suddenly turned toward me and yelled:
“Take it, guitarist!”
I quickly glanced around to see if there might be another guitarist she was referring to.
Unfortunately, I was the only one.
And I was not prepared to take it.
Which was crazy, because I knew so many licks and scales and solos. I loved improvising. But I had been taken completely by surprise.
I panicked and lunged toward a go-to Chuck Berry style double-stop lick. Except it didn’t sound much like a “Chuck”, it sounded more like “clunk”.
A few bars later, my so-called solo was over, and I felt shaken and humiliated.
I thought I could play guitar.
But it turned out I could only play guitar if I knew what was coming.
The Smothers Brothers famously joked that if a guitarist is told to “take it,” they are obligated to take it. It is a holy mission. A sacred responsibility.
I swore that day that I would always be ready to take it.
The Problem With Grinding
I thought about that long ago experience while listening to a couple master classes by Dr. Noa Kageyama last week.
Noa is a music psychologist who specializes in the psychology of practicing, learning, and performing music. He’s such a great explainer that we’ve actually brought him in three times over the past year to speak to NYC Guitar School students and staff.
Above: Noa with NYC Guitar School students and team members after one of his great master classes.
Now, I’ve spent my entire career trying to make it as easy as possible for people to learn guitar.
The truth is…it’s not easy.
You have to practice. There’s no way around that.
But there are smarter ways to practice.
Over the years I’ve talked a lot with our students and teachers about the idea of deliberate practice—basically the idea that practice works much better when:
- you know what you’re trying to improve,
- you pay close attention while practicing,
- and you notice whether your work is actually improving the outcome.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
But Dr. Kageyama blew my mind with a concept that goes beyond even that—and one that I wish I’d spent much more time thinking about and sharing over the years.
It’s very natural to grind.
And by “natural,” I don’t mean “fun.” I mean it makes intuitive sense.
If you want to get better at a lick, why not play it 1,000 times in a row?
Wax on, wax off.
That’s exactly what I did in my twenties: playing licks over and over and over again trying to get them right.
The Problem With “Perfect Practice”
The problem is this:
In the real world, when you need the lick… you don’t get your 999 warmup reps first.
When you need to make a chord change in a song, you don’t get to stop the band and practice it 50 times.
When you’re singing a song and playing a cool intro, you don’t get to ask the audience to wait while you rehearse the intro again.
Nope.
You need to do it right the first time you need it.
And here’s the wild part:
Even if you practiced something 1,000 times in a row, you only practiced “doing it right the first time” once out of those thousand reps.
Once Again, For the First Time
So what can you do about that?
That’s why I loved Noa’s presentation so much.
The solution is surprisingly simple:
If you want to get good at doing something right the first time… you have to practice doing it the first time.
That means instead of practicing one thing 1,000 times in a row, you mix things up.
This is where the research on interleaved practice comes in.
“Blocked practice” is when you practice one thing repeatedly before moving on.
For example:
- play a scale 10 times,
- then a chord progression 10 times,
- then a lick 10 times.
That’s not bad at all.
But research suggests that interleaved practice—mixing skills together—creates stronger long-term learning.
So let’s say you have a gig in two weeks, you’re in pretty good shape but there’s a tricky intro you really want to nail. You have 30 minutes to squeeze in some practice today.
Blocked practice might look like:
- 15 straight minutes of the intro, then 15 minutes of one of the songs
Not bad! But here’s what interleaved practice might look:
- 5 minutes on the intro
- 5 minutes on a song
- back to the intro
- another song
- back to the intro
- another song
- back to the intro
In other words:
You repeatedly practice “finding it again.”
And according to the research, even though this feels harder and more frustrating during practice, it tends to create stronger long-term retention and performance.
In other words:
You get more chances to practice playing it “for the first time.”
Take It
There’s way more I could say about this in the future.
In the meantime, check out Noa’s blog, The Bulletproof Musician, for more info on Interleaved Practice and loads of other practice and performance insights.
(By the way, I have no business relationship with him beyond bringing him in to speak to our students and team. I just think his material is excellent!)
And guess what?
If you and I are jamming someday and you yell:
“Take it!”
…I promise you:
I will take it.
On To Greatness!
Dan
Learn Guitar in NYC
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