So today I'm going to talk a little bit about personal development. Yet we have to go through that. And I wanted to discuss positions. I mean guitar positions and as in scale positions and such. Welcome to jazz guitar lessons, where we help guitarists 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. So first part of the podcast, why I want to talk about personal stuff because, well, I think it's very, very important regarding learning an instrument, because when we do, we are sort of attempting to change the way the brain functions. Right? Or we're trying to change the way we learn things. And hopefully by that time, you may have understood that if you don't change the way you internalize stuff, it will be harder if you stick to a certain way of learning. you say when you learn to write or when you learn mathematics, when you're a kid, you want to ingrain the things in a certain specific way. But in music, if you don't change the process in which you learn, you're not going to get very far. So personal development is part of that, like working on your character, you know, becoming a, let's say, quote unquote better person. And there's something I've published on the website, it's, a series of articles, articles that are, compilations of a really interesting author I found on a website called Steve Berliner. And this guy says, you know, basically whatever you do, you should try to be a better person doing it, going at it. And I strongly noticed that in my own musical development and development in general, if I worked on myself first, all the things would take care of themselves. and that goes from really simple things, as you know, putting your nails or changing what you eat and exercising. And it goes all the way to, you know, dealing with the issues you may have with your relationships in your past or dealing with, the way you deal with others addictions to drugs or whatever types of addictions. And all of this plays, a big role in learning music, because I find that the best artists that I've encountered so far are really super, super humans, you know, the people that are really nice and not only a faith type of nice, but they deep down, you know, that they worked on themselves to appear to the better light and honestly, a big part of that is being able to see reality for what it is. And that can be a little confusing with that can be shocking. You know, when you find out that you know, you've been having a misconception about thing, a thing or things in your life. And, that's why, you know, honestly, I think people grow all the time. And that's why you may say, you know, I didn't see it at first, and I was married for 14 years, but now it doesn't work. And there's something else that may work out for that or whatever your story of my story is doesn't matter. So I just wanted to, you know, mentioned that. Keep that in mind for me. On a really personal note, when I started to really take care of what I was eating and to really, honestly, you know, spend time in practice and see, okay, am I really practicing six hours and during a day? No, it's more like an hour and a half. Oh, okay. So let's just see that in the right light. And, am I able to perform at that tempo or am I able to, you know, produce, write, compose three tunes a week or am I able to do this or do that? And, it, it came to be to play a big part in my own development, just seeing things, exercising also is a big one. I mean, I was talking to someone about, on one of the videos about, you know, what's the most comfortable position, you know, take your acts and make sure you relax. For me, the exercise part is really yoga. it's a really old, age, old Indian type of, you know, school. It's a practice. In fact, it's not just like exercising, like running or going on a bicycle ride. so that really does it for me. So anyways, I want to wrap this up now, but keep in mind that whatever you do when you work on yourself, you can never go wrong. even if you don't practice the instrument much, if you change your mindset, if you change your, inside your personality, other things outside of you will change. Also. Hey, everyone, just a quick break here. If you're loving this episode and you want to elevate your own jazz star skills, reach out to us. We've gathered thousands of guitarists and becoming accomplished jazzers beyond their wildest dreams, so check the link in the description or visit Jazz Guitar Lessons dot net to get started today. Okay, now back to the episode. Now for the second part of this podcast. So I wanted to talk about scale positions, and I see all sorts of things on the web that see sorry, I see all sorts of things in students. And I see, and I hear all sorts of things on recordings and there's a lot of, maybe there's a, a rather big misconception. And that's probably the biggest point I want to make today, sadly, is that a lot of guitarists, guitarists think that, something is good if they can play it in all positions and, there's a part of truth to that, and that's for sure. But the thing is, if you want to play, only you should really be able to play it really well in one fingering that you decided, and not necessarily in 12 fingerings because, hey, what's the use? You know, if someone listens to you on the recording, you won't know what the well, what which one of the 12 positions you chose to to play the tune tuning. So in my opinion, positions are a great learning tool for taking the neck apart, saying this is one box, this is one box, this is one box. But the instruments, the instruments of the guitar, I mean, is not the boxes. The instrument is itself. The boxes are just the way we decided to separate it. So hopefully if you practice enough positions, you're trying to get rid of them. And that's my whole philosophy in there. Meaning you're attempting to do position shifts that are seamless and you can improvise and not be thinking of, okay, I'm going to stick to this position for this music, creative patterns, whatever you're doing or should not be bounded by positions. And if you're working on a pattern and that's, once more, I know people can throw tomatoes at me for saying this, but if you're learning a pattern, let's say we're in C major now. Okay. Here I want to tell you what fingerings. I just want you to hear this. That's C major. So if you're working on this. You know. It doesn't really matter if you're able to do this in all positions. Yes, it's a good mechanical exercise. But in another way you should be able to say, all right, I'll do like a saxophone player. You start at the bottom of the instrument here. You. Know, you start at the lowest note and you do that up until the highest note. That's my approach at my philosophy. And why would I say that? Instead of saying positions, I could say, yeah, do positions. But somewhere in the position you'll find a fingering that's awkward and you need to use your pinky, and your pinky is not so strong. If you have tendinitis, I don't know what. And you'll find that musically it detracts from the music. So what I say is take the lowest note on your instrument, start your pattern, go all the way up. Go all the way back down. You know what? You see positions in there, but you'll see position shifts. You'll see you go from one position to another. You'll see this. You see that. And same thing applies if you're attempting to learn a really hard tune. you don't have to take Autumn leaves or Shadow of Your Smile or similar and say, I learned it in four positions. I as a teacher, what I want to hear is close my eyes and close my eyes, right? Play me solo. Can you make it sound good? Yes. Cool. That's it. You got. And the thing with positions is, you know, if you go really overkill, you'll be able to learn a tune every six months. And I don't think it's worth it. I think the, being able to freely skate and, that's paraphrasing a good trick, if you will, to go, up and down your instrument and hear what you're doing is more important than being really, really strict about positions. But once more, I'm not disregarding positions. I think they're great. I think they're a great learning tool. But it's not everything to do. You see, in positions, you know, for instance, there was a guy that, wanted to take private lessons and took a few lessons with me. Was a really great player. In fact. And, we were looking at different things on blues and, you know, by Wes Montgomery and, started to play a solo. And then I showed him a few things. He said, yeah, but you're not saying in the position. So. Yes. So, you know, well says, well, you know, the jazz masters, all the greats, people, it flows really nicely. You say? Yes, but how how is the flow related to sticking to one position? You know, then we went on YouTube. You watch West Montgomery play for five minutes. You're like, oh, okay, there's no such thing as trying to play in a position and it doesn't mean that West did not learn his position. No, on the contrary, he learned all positions. He did his stuff, you know. All right. But then this type of thinking patterns for me are can be really, a problem in guitarists. Learn your stuff and then goes back to your personal development, learn your stuff and then see other ways you can learn the same exact stuff. Right? Especially another example if you're trying to learn, Donald Lee by Charlie Parker or a bebop song, you know, something fast? anthropology, I don't know, whatever you like. if you are saying I want to stick to one position, I would have to ask you why? Because first things. The first thing that comes into my mind is so tune. This tune was written by a sax player. There's no such thing as a better position to play it. It's just sound. And it might be a better fingering to do it on the sax, that's for sure. But as far as guitar goes, you may have to switch position in the middle of it because something that will be, either impossible or not practical, you know what I mean? They will be really difficult to render at high speed or at the speed the song was written. So if you're learning sax tune, a trumpet tune, a piano tune, a violin tune, and whatever tune, you should really now do that. So that'll be it for today. I mean, keep learning your positions, but you may also try to find other ways you may deal with your fretboard. So that's it for a podcast. Number nine jazz guitar lessons dot net. Improve your jazz guitar playing with a real teacher. See you next time.
