Hey, guys. Welcome to the podcast. So, do you feel like you're practicing putting in the hours? And yet nothing's really changing in your jazz playing? It looks like you've got a garden full of half-grown plants, but it just looks messy, like it's overgrown.
Or some days you look at the plants like, wow, things are in bloom. The flowers are beautiful, but other days it feels like you're just throwing seeds into the wind, right? You're hoping for the best. So this is what I call the gardening effect of jazz guitar. And it's the difference between the guys who make real progress on a daily basis, and the guys who are just kind of stuck.
And this is something I talk about on the blog. I'll tell you how to get the resources, but this is one of the greatest analogies, things that resonate with most of you guys. So if you want to find out one what the gardening effect is and number two, how to solve it, stay tuned.
Welcome to Jazz Guitar Lessons, where we help guitarists to learn jazz faster, express themselves more fluently, and have fun along the way. My name is Mark, and if you're looking to learn jazz, form better practice habits, and especially if you enjoy French accent, make sure to subscribe.
All right. To get started. Welcome back. My name is Mark from Jazz Guitar Lessons. Welcome to our insights. So I think in general there are really two types of guitarists. There are the seeders and the gardeners. And trust me, you don't want to be either. And here's why. You may find yourself looking into your situation and go, oh my God, I've been seeding for so many years.
If that's the case, I'm sorry. But at the same time, I'll tell you there is hope. There's a solution. It's pretty easy. It's pretty effective. And I'll get back to that a bit later in the episode. So here's a seeder mindset. If you seed, you obsess over learning new things like new chords, new scales, new arpeggio theory. You'll be planting new seeds, but never quite maintaining them.
So I used to have a slide on the website and on a video showing this, like you plant the seed you watered a little bit. Did you plant another one and then you water it a little bit. You've water is you plant another one, two other ones, you water them and then you're like, oh, maybe I got the wrong types of seeds, right.
So you go find a random YouTube deep dive, you buy a new book, or you switch up your practice routine, or worse, you may just go and try to grab a new guitar or a new amp or a new pedal, or you say, let me go to guitar camps. That's the solution, right? But when you sit down to play, things that are quite come together, you can't really play a standard from beginning to end.
You will sit with a friend, go, what do you want to play? I don't know, what do you want to play like yet? I've been playing like 20 years, man. We should be playing tunes I know right? So this is just planting a bunch of seeds or watering them once or twice or one week, then moving on, and plant more seeds instead.
Instead of tending to what's already there, like tending to your garden. That's the seeding analogy. And it's it's a very strong image because at I related to this, it's only once I click that it's not the amount of stuff that I'm looking into or the seeds I plant, but it's the seed a little bit. And to really watch that growth and to to to tend to that little seed that will yield, repercussions.
But then again, it's all your fault because when we look at players like Pat Metheny or John Scofield or even Wes Montgomery, we go, wow, there's tremendous complexity in what they're playing. And therefore I conclude that there must be tremendous complexity and a way to learn that thing. And trust me, it's not the case because here's the gardener.
I think my old word was the constant gardener, because I was also movie. The Constant Gardeners will focus on growing and maintaining what they've already planted. More important than the seeding itself. They prune and water and nurture their skills like a garden. Every time they sit down to practice, their playing gets more refined, more musical, more effortless. They're not learning 50 new things.
They're getting deeper into the things they already know. Right? So are you a seeder or a gardener? If you're a gardener, good for you. Tremendous. Also, I love that, I probably was a Michael Brecker quote or John Coltrane quote, I forget, but someone in jazz said, don't be the guy that plays a thousand things once. Be the guy that plays the same thing 1000 times or something to that effect.
So you want to be tending more musical, more effortless looking to the same old things and and developing mastery of certain key elements. There is also a martial arts analogy, like you're still just punching and kicking and grappling, you always doing the same techniques, but you're refining how you approach it.
So final thoughts. So if you're feeling stuck, take a deep breath. Take a second look at your practice routine. Are you actually growing? Are you seeding? Are you scattered? Do you find that? Oh my God, I've done this for like a week or two. And then you moved on to something else that's like holding more information, right?
If it's the case, start planting more seeds. Start tending to your musical garden. The results will be way better. All right. And if there's anything, there's nothing you'll find in another YouTube video, another in the book, or another method. Right. I have to finish with that Michael Brecker quote. It was awesome. He showed a pattern and was asked how long to practice it, and he said, "That's for this year, man."
So now go order your musical garden guys. Stop seeding. And if you want a guide, the pinnacle method grab it in the link below. I'll see you next time. Take care.
