Iron out that wrinkle – a way to practice.

Let’s imagine you are getting ready for an important meeting, and you need your suit or dress needs pressing.

You pull it out of the closet, lay it down on the ironing board and begin. You do all the easy parts first, and then notice a significant wrinkle.

Question: Do you take the time to iron out that wrinkle, or work around it and pretend no one will notice?

If you want to look good, you would be wise to spend a bit of time ironing out that specific wrinkle before moving on the the rest of the garment. It’s not going to go away by itself.

So why do I so often notice, that many uke (and guitar) players practice songs by starting and going full throttle until they hit a rough spot, then chuckling about how “that is a hard chord”, then moving on, pretending that the problem will fix itself somehow?

If you really want to learn and get better – you’d be wise to stop at the “wrinkle” in the song, and work on it. Iron it out. Forget the rest of the song for the time being and work just on the problem area, over and over, until you’ve smoothed it out and you no longer notice any difficulty.

Then, go back and practice the whole song again, and glide right through that former rough spot, making your entire song sound as wonderful as it should.

 

Tags: practice